By Paul Levy
They had expected to celebrate their New Year. Instead, the Twin Cities’ Tibetan community gathered Tuesday at a funeral home to bid tearful farewell to a fallen son.
“After all the Tibetan people have been through. … Losing our country, physical torture, escaping through the Himalayas on foot just to survive. … After all that, why this?” asked Pema Dolma Norbu, one of hundreds of Tibetans stunned by Thursday’s fatal shootings outside a Columbia Heights pool hall.
A flurry of bullets killed Tashi Sonam Jagottsang, 21, a former Tibetan monk, and Bunsean Lieng, 19, a Cambodian, both of Minneapolis. Four others were shot by gang members, who may have thought they were firing at a rival gang, according to police.
“We can fight through this with the tools of our own heritage and culture: compassion and tolerance,” said Dr. Tsewang Ngodup, who serves as president of Minnesota’s Tibetan American Foundation.
“This will bring our community together even more,” he said. “We’ve got to try to get something positive out of this.”
For the 1,300 Tibetans in Minnesota, that may be difficult. More than 300 of them crammed into the Hillside Funeral Home in northeast Minneapolis, and nothing, many said, could lift the shock — not an hour’s worth of chanting by eight monks in maroon robes or the incense burning near a picture of the Dalai Lama.
Norbu, 48, was one of the first three Tibetans to immigrate to the Twin Cities from India in 1992. She has watched Minnesota’s Tibetan population grow to become second only to New York’s in the United States, prompting a visit from the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader, four years ago.
She says that she and her husband, Pasang, are proud to raise their two teenage sons here. But everything changed Thursday night.
“I know it happens, but I never thought it would be one of us,” said Norbu, a nurse who works with Jagottsang’s mother at United Hospitals.
“I didn’t know much about America when I came here,” Norbu said. “But the more I learn, the more I worry. In India, not everybody carries a gun. Guns are not popular. They are not common. People might push and shove and say bad words, but we never worry.
“Now, we worry.”
A place for Tibetans
Norbu and other Tibetans are here because of Thupten Dadak, a former Tibetan monk who worked exhaustively to ensure that Minnesota would be one of seven selected sites for the Tibetan Resettlement Project that began in 1992.
Dadak, 52, has made dozens of trips to India, Nepal and Tibet, escorting Tibetans to the Twin Cities and finding them homes, host families, sponsors and jobs. He has organized programs steeped in Tibetan culture, was the first executive director of the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota and worked to reunite Tibetan families and to keep them in the Twin Cities.
A successful businessman, he owns the combined Heart of Tibet and Kmitsch Girls store in Stillwater, where Tibetan jewelry shares aisles with Madame Alexander dolls and other toy collectibles.
“I said Minnesota was the right place for Tibetans,” Dadak said. “I see the value people in Minnesota put on kindness.”
‘How do we deal?’
Jagottsang’s funeral was attended by dozens of teenagers and young adults, whose fashion sense ranged from Ralph Lauren to Michael Jordan to Sean John. For many, Minnesota is the only home they know.
They didn’t experience first-hand the invasion of Tibet by Chinese Communists in 1950, the failed revolt of 1959, or the thousands of Tibetans who followed the Dalai Lama into northern India.
Still in shock
Tashi Dorjee, 22, shot in the leg last Thursday, limped with a cane and said he was still in “shock.” Tenzin Woser, 23, sat in the back row, his crutches at his side, bandages covering the bullet wound visible under his trousers.
“It’s scary,” said Tenzin Choedon, Woser’s mother. “And it’s sad. What are the children to think?”
A festival, which starts today at Mall of America, will go on as scheduled. But a planned community celebration of the Tibetan new year, which begins today, has been canceled, Ngodup said.
Instead, the Tibetans will remember Jagottsang, who had recently returned from Massachusetts to help provide for his family. Contributions to his memorial can be sent to Tashi’s Fund, Tibetan American Foundation, 1096 Raymond Av., St. Paul 55108.
“In 12 years, we’ve had dozens of births, marriages and family reunions, like any other community,” Dadak said. “And we’ve had three deaths. Two were natural. We’ve dealt with those.
“How do we deal with this one?”
Said Dadak, “The Tibetan community really believes in harmony. Parents teach kids passion and kindness. But we can’t look like Buddha, with a laughing face 24 hours a day, after something like this happens.”
Paul Levy is at plevy@startribune.com
