When the Dalai Lama visits Minnesota, he will greet a Tibetan community that has taken a curious path.
By Paul Levy, Star Tribune
On a shelf near the entrance of Stillwater’s Kmitch Girls and Heart of Tibet Imports, a store that sells the odd combination of collectible dolls and Tibetan artifacts, there is a photo of the store’s owner, Thupten Dadak, his wife, Nancy, and the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of the Tibet government in exile. The photo rests above a cash register.
Dadak, 53, is a former Tibetan monk and patriarch of the Twin Cities Tibetan community, having made dozens of trips to India and personally escorting many of the 1,500 Tibetans now living in Minnesota.
As he discussed the Dalai Lama’s Sunday and Monday visit to Minnesota, the irony of the photo’s placement by a cash register evoked a chuckle.
Tibet’s ancient culture meets America’s let’s-make-a-deal commercialism.
“We’re not only keeping Tibetan culture and beliefs, but we have great respect for the society in which we live,” said Dadak.
Much has changed since 1985, when Dadak, then a tour guide, fell in love and married a Minnesotan visiting India. When he moved to the Twin Cities with his bride, Dadak was one of two Tibetans living in Minnesota.
But a few years later, Congress made 1,000 visas available to displaced Tibetans, and Minnesota was one of seven resettlement sites.
The first wave of Tibetans selected for resettlement arrived in the Twin Cities in 1992. They were staggered by clashes between their distant and conservative culture and the anything-goes attitudes they encountered in America.
“At the time, there were concerns about losing the identity of Tibet,” Dadak said.
Fourteen years later, Minnesota’s Tibetan community — the second largest in America — has become ingrained in Minnesota culture. There is a Tibetan Center in St. Paul and a monastery, temporarily located in a private residence in south Minneapolis. Nearly a half dozen Twin Cities shops sell Tibetan antiques, jewelry or furniture. A Tibetan doctor practices Western medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center. There is a Tibetan school, with language and dance classes. A handful of Twin Cities restaurants prepare Tibetan meals. Minnesota’s Tibetan American Foundation, started by Dadak, is considered among the nation’s strongest.
Those “Free Tibet” bumper stickers, which once seemed merely trendy, now spark meaningful conversation.
“We didn’t want to isolate ourselves,” said Dadak, who since arriving here has divorced and remarried. “We tried to be accepted by society. We wanted our people to consider Minnesota home. But we want them to follow the example of His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] and to tell the people of Minnesota our story, the story of Tibet.”
It is the story of a country whose leaders live in exile. Chinese Communists invaded Tibet in 1950 and destroyed a nearly 500-year-old monastery, suppressed Buddhism and tortured and killed its followers. After a failed revolt in 1959, 90 monks followed their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, into exile in the foothills of the Himalayas and northern India, where traditional Tibetan life is maintained by more than 100,000 refugees.
But the horrors of this modern-day holocaust continue for those Tibetans who have continued to fight to maintain their culture in their homeland.
Dawa Tashi, 41, was among the first three Tibetans to migrate to Minnesota in 1992. He left Tibet when he was 11, walking 4 or 5 miles through the dark each night until he arrived in Nepal two months later. He fled his homeland at the urging of an uncle, who had been imprisoned and tortured. The uncle said that when he was jailed, he joined 6,000 other Tibetans, who were considered to be high officials. By the time Tashi settled in India, only 500 remained in prison. The others had been starved to death. Two of Tashi’s uncles were among those killed.
Tashi was considered one of the most promising Tibetan architects when he left India. But upon arriving in Minnesota, he settled for a job washing dishes at a pizza cafe in Minneapolis. He was grateful for the opportunity to earn enough money to stay in the Twin Cities and spread the gospel about his homeland.
“Every Tibetan wants a good job,” Tashi said five years ago. “But it’s more important that people in Minnesota know what happened to Tibet.”
Today, Tashi is married and the father of three young children. Along with maintaining his longtime job as a housekeeper at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, he is part owner of the Shangrila Grand Buffet restaurant in Plymouth, one of a handful of Twin Cities restaurants serving Tibetan food.
“Life is definitely good here,” Tashi said this week. “I think the Dalai Lama will be pleased.”
But as they immerse themselves in American culture, Minnesota’s Tibetans have experienced the hardships familiar to other immigrants: earning low wages, accepting jobs for which they are overqualified, waiting for family members to arrive.
The most painful induction to life in the Twin Cities came 14 months ago, when Tashi Sonam Jagottsang, 21, a former Tibetan monk, was caught in a gang member’s flurry of bullets and killed outside a Columbia Heights pool hall.
“I know it happens, but I never thought it would be one of us,” Pema Dolma Norbu, another of the first three Tibetans to come to Minnesota in 1992, said at the memorial service.
“We’re caught up in the modern way of living, and with the good comes the bad,” said Phuntsok Wangdu, 43, executive director of Minnesota’s Tibetan American Foundation. “We’ve come to realize that even in the freest world, there are dangers.
“Most saddening to me is the way the Tibetans rushed to get into the workforce when they arrived here, instead of emphasizing school,” said Wangdu, an Abbott Northwestern nurse. “You get caught up in that dollar cycle when what we should be following are the teachings of the Dalai Lama.”
As the Dalai Lama arrives in Minnesota for the second time and first time in five years, Namgyal Dorjee, another of the first three Tibetans to arrive in the Twin Cities in 1992, noted that many of Minnesota’s Tibetans own houses and cars. Some attend college.
“We’re doing well,” said Dorjee, 50, also a housekeeper at Abbott Northwestern. “Most Tibetans are happy. I hope His Holiness will be pleased.”
Paul Levy • 612-673-4419
