Origins

The Tibetan communities in Canada were initially composed entirely of refugees who fled the Chinese occupation of Tibet after the Tibetan uprising of 1959. At first, most lived as exiles in refugee communities in neighbouring India and Nepal. Today Tibetan Canadians consist of three generations: those who were born in Tibet, those who were born in exile, and children of the latter born in Canada. All three groups consider themselves to be refugees.

Historic Tibet, which comprises about 2.5 million square kilometres of sparsely inhabited territory in central Asia, is often described as “the roof of the world” because of its high plateaus and mountains that average 4,000 metres above sea level. The country consists of three main provinces, U-Tsang, Amdo, and Kham, with an estimated population of 4.5 million to 6 million. At present there is an autonomous region of Tibet within the People’s Republic of China, but it is only half the size of historical Tibet and includes merely the province of U-Tsang, with an estimated population of 2 million (1988). Tibet is bordered in the east by China and in the south by Nepal, Bhutan, India, and Burma.

Until the second half of the twentieth century, the rugged landscape of the country, surrounded in part by the Himalaya Mountains, helped Tibetans maintain the isolation they sought from the rest of the world. They were distinguished from others by a religious culture marked by the Tibetan form of Buddhism, also known as Lamaism, and by the Tibetan language with its own unique script. Although Tibetan is structurally related to Burmese, the two languages are mutually unintelligible.

Sometime in the seventh century a unified Tibetan kingdom was formed with its capital at Lhasa. In the mid-eighth century, the Mahayana form of Buddhism was introduced by a monk from India who established at Lhasa a monastery whose monks were called lamas (“superior ones”). From its earliest days, the Tibetan kingdom was forced to deal with the neighbouring Chinese Empire to the east, with whom relations ranged from periods of military conflict to ones of peaceful ties and mutual respect. From the thirteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Tibet fell under Mongol influence. It was during that era that in 1641 the ruling Mongol prince turned over temporal and spiritual control of Tibet to the head of the Buddhist monastery, the Dalai Lama, who was proclaimed the divine reincarnation of the ancestor of the Tibetan people.

In 1720 Mongol rule was replaced by the Qing dynasty of Manchu emperors in China, which henceforth claimed sovereignty over Tibet. In actual practice, Chinese sovereignty was nominal, and relations with Tibet were governed by the so-called Choe-Yuen relationship, whereby the Dalai Lama would receive political protection from China in return for his acting as spiritual guide and priest to the Manchu emperors. As for the Tibetans, they never recognized Chinese claims of sovereignty over their country, and they were left to govern themselves until the end of imperial rule in China in 1911. On the eve of China’s imperial collapse, the British rulers of India had secured trading posts in Tibet and recognized Chinese sovereignty over the country (1906–07). But in 1912 the Tibetans succeeded in expelling the Chinese, and they maintained their independence until the Communists came to power in 1949.

The forces of Communist China invaded Tibet in late 1950 and the following year forced the Tibetans to accept an agreement whereby their country would become a “national autonomous region” of China under the traditional rule of the Dalai Lama. In fact, the Communists took over the country, introducing far-reaching land reforms and curtailing the role of the Tibetan monks. Scattered uprisings against such changes culminated in a large-scale revolt in 1959. The Chinese suppressed the rebellion, during which the Dalai Lama and 130,000 Tibetans fled the country to neighbouring India, Nepal, and Bhutan. Many still live in those countries to this day.

Since the abortive 1959 revolt, the Chinese government has carried out a systematic campaign to destroy the traditional Tibetan way of life. An estimated 6,000 monasteries have been destroyed, more than a million Tibetans have lost their lives, the country’s natural resources have been exploited for the needs of the central government of China, and large numbers of Han and other Chinese peoples have been settled in Tibet. Chinese was made the official language of the country, and young Tibetans who hope to get a higher education must study in Chinese and disassociate themselves from traditional Tibetan culture. The complete ban on religious customs was lifted in 1976, but subsequent Tibetan protests in the 1980s and 1990s were brutally suppressed by Chinese forces. Such a situation has prompted the Dalai Lama to declare from exile that his Tibetan people are being subjected to genocide.

Several foreign governments, including the United States and Canada, have expressed sympathy with the Tibetan people, but they have not challenged the Chinese claim that Tibet is historically an integral part of China. Meanwhile, the status of the Tibetan refugees in countries bordering on China remains precarious. There are still about 100,000 in India, 25,000 in Nepal, and 2,000 in Bhutan. In response to the demands that the refugee problem places on the limited resources of those countries, the Dalai Lama and his government-in-exile appealed in 1967 to the international community to offer long-term refuge for Tibetans. Switzerland was the first country to respond and accept Tibetan refugees. In the early 1970s, Tibetans were also allowed to enter Canada under its Tibetan Refugee Program.