As I read this I find information to be lacking. I write the below based on an award winning 2016 documentary I watched, about the Drokpa.
They lost free access to the land and all had to graze in more or less the same place, this is how desertification began. Where there were lakes are now pastures, and where there were pastures are now sand dunes, sand that get into the butter and everything, the Drokpa try to cover dunes with yak manure to delay desertification. Pristine areas of nature actually depend on the constant work of tribal or nomadic people, climate change necessitating their inventiveness. But people or businesses give money to NGOs not them.
They relate that some little mammal whose name I forgot dig too many holes, contributing to desertification. The state’s solution was to give them poison for those animals. Instead of them dying, it killed big animals, yaks, vultures.
There were families, and if a woman wanted to divorce a man for, say, not respecting her mother, she could, thus kicking him out perhaps. That is one ongoing story line in the film.
Collective living seems necessary, her mother lived with them. The linked article made their culture sound rather individualistic when I doubt it is compared to ours. Their children are schooled even if they cannot afford it, they see their livelihood being threatened and make the sacrifices.
Yithan, an older women was fetching water, making yak butter and the oldest woman doing something to the wool, or they collectively make yak wool which require rolling it tightly in a big roll after applying a mixture to it. Men if not herding, were seen playing a board game, smoking, watching TV. It has been a coupla days since I saw this but I’m sure the men never fetched water.
Yaks are sacred animals to them, their lives are interconnected. They would only sell a yak if it is to prevent all of them (yaks included) to not starve. It seemed so, a yak was sold because they had to rent private land to have more grass for the yaks. They pitched their tents there, that year the production of yak milk was halved. The yaks are not used to being enclosed, she said. Later all the yaks got a disease. Yithan (I stand corrected, sorry I’ve not had time to rewatch it) was then burning some things among the yaks, a Buddhist monk told her to do so, the reason she gave was given by the Buddhist monk. And yet too many of their yaks died, and they had to move into Chinese government housing whereby they take a loan to pay and get 3 interest free years. This is designed to convert their pastoral lifestyle to a regular rural lifestyle. I can’t help but think the grass that they had to rent to feed the yaks was poisoned with some Monsanto or other stuff, thus making the yaks ill. If it were my cat, I would’ve said so but what do I know about yaks.
The doccie ended on a celebration for the no-longer nomadic people, of horse-racing (a nomadic tradition though not theirs, they didn’t have a horse. They had a dog, a blue tractor and women carried the loads of manure too alongside for the sand dunes), there were paper things thrown all over the grass. It’s big idk if it’s called confetti. But here we were in a yakless landscape and this sad confetti covers a vast area of grass and we don’t have to worry about yaks ingesting it because there are no yaks. #Iknownothingaboutyaks
The transmission of their lifestyle through daily chores witnessed by a baby until they are schooled, or witnessed during the vac or by taken on by those who don’t do well academically is over when they lose access to the land. Will theoretical knowledge help those growing up now? At some point, someone had said that the Tibetan authorities looked on a map (as in did not refer to their knowledge of the land or of their lifestyle) and pointed to an area, and restricted their collective grazing to that area. Based on what though? The man doesn’t ask, but did foreign ‘experts’ recommend that?
