We Need Your Help to Share 50 Incredible Stories

Last May our 10-member team spent two weeks videotaping the oral histories of 50 Tibetan elders living in Dharamsala, India. Please help us present these incredible stories to the world. We still need to raise $5,330 in order to publish these new oral histories on the Internet and to distribute them to libraries.

Please donate today to ensure the voices of the last generation to live in a free Tibet are heard around the world.

170 Interviews Now in Our Collection

TOHP has videotaped the oral histories of 170 Tibetan elders living in exile. This oral history collection is invaluable. It provides intimate portraits of the elders - the last generation to live in a free, unoccupied Tibet - and preserves for future generations the memories of their homeland.

The oral histories of 120 Tibetan elders are posted on the Interviews pages and 45 short videos with interview excerpts are available on TOHP's Vimeo Channel . The elders provide eyewitness accounts of early life in Tibet, and of the devastation that followed the Chinese invasion and occupation. They also recount memories of their flight from Tibet to escape oppression and to follow their spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, into exile.

INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS

"Tibet Oral History Project: Tibet
Remembered" [Length: 6min 50sec]

"With My Own Eyes: Eyewitness Accounts
from Tibet's Elders" [Length: 30min 35sec]

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RECEIVES TOHP's INTERVIEW COLLECTION

On November 13, 2012 President of TOHP's Board of Directors, Faye Straus, hand delivered the first set of TOHP's oral history collection to the largest library in the world, the U.S. Library of Congress. This milestone event for the Project enabled TOHP to permanently archive 67 interviews with Tibetan elders in the Library's Asian Division.

TOHP Founder, Marcella Adamski, presents
interviews to His Holiness the Dalai Lama

TOHP's oral history collection is being provided in video, print and digital formats. Please contact us if you would like to recommend other libraries to receive our interview collection or if you can help with the cost of printing and distributing to libraries and Tibetan communities.

HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA AND TIBETAN OFFICIALS URGE SUPPORT FOR TOHP

The Tibet Oral History Project (TOHP) is honored to have received letters of endorsement from the Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Speaker of Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, and the Kashag (Cabinet). The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama wrote:

His Holiness is pleased that the Tibet Oral History Project is making good progress. Your recording the life stories of elder Tibetans has much importance in preserving the reality of the situation in Tibet as experienced by these Tibetans.

Penpa Tsering, Speaker, Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile:

The Tibet Oral History Project is a very significant undertaking to record actual historical events of Tibet from an individual's perspective at the worst period of Tibetan history. The project needs to be intensified as the older generations are fast disappearing....

Prof. Samdhong Rinpoche, Kalon Tripa (Prime Minister):

I am particularly impressed with [TOHP's] efforts of translating these interviews in Chinese language so that Chinese citizens who are deprived of correct information can understand the true stories of Tibetan people and appreciate their culture and the cause the Tibetan people are fighting for. Similarly it will also bring benefits to the younger generation of Tibetans, primarily who are born and brought up in exile. Therefore, I welcome and support this project.

TOHP Director, Marcella Adamski,
and Outreach Director, Tenzin Yangchen,
give a set of interviews to the Private Office of His
Holiness, which were received by his Secretary

Marcella Adamski presents the interview collection
to Venerable Geshe Lhakdor, Director of the
Library of Tibetan Works and Archives
in Dharamsala, India

INTERVIEWS FEATURED ON RADIO FREE ASIA

Radio Free Asia’s Tibetan Service is broadcasting the Tibet Oral History Project’s interviews on their program "Life in Exile". Excerpts from 30 interviews with the elders from Bylakuppe have been broadcast to listeners in India, Nepal, China and Tibet. It is exciting for Tibetans to hear the voices of the elders in their various dialects and the program has requested the next set of TOHP interviews from Mundgod.

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT FOR OUR WORK

The following are some of the organizations endorsing the work of TOHP. Read their statements of support on the About Us page.

Library of Tibetan Works and Archives * Bureau of His Holiness the Dalai Lama * International Campaign for Tibet * International Tibet Support Network * Tibet Justice Center * Committee of 100 for Tibet * Canada Tibet Committee Ottawa * Tibetan Nuns Project * Tibetan Dickey Larsoe Settlement * Tibetan Youth Congress Bylakuppe * The Tibetan Co-operative Society Ltd., Bylakuppe * Lugsam Samdupling Tibetan Settlement * Doeguling Tibetan Settlement * Regional Tibetan Women's Association Bylakuppe * The Tibetan Service Co-Op Bank, Ltd., Mundgod * Gyuto Vajrayana Center, San Jose

Sue Gershenson with Bylakuppe interviewee,
Dickey, and videographer, Tsewang Dorjee

A TRIBUTE TO SUE GERSHENSON

The Tibet Oral History Project wishes to honor the memory of Sue Gershenson who passed away on October 25, 2011. We are deeply grateful to Sue for her contributions to TOHP as a member of the Board of Directors, coordinator for our first mission to Bylakuppe, interviewer of the Tibetan elders, and generous donor. Sue was proud and pleased to know her interviews will be preserved in the U.S. Library of Congress. We shall miss her indomitable spirit and always cherish her contributions to our work.

Read Sue's interviews: Dickey, Dawa Dolma