This document summarizes an academic presentation about the Dordo people of northeast Tibet. It discusses how the Dordo have rejected claims that they are descended from 13th century Mongols, despite their last traditional leader previously making this claim. It examines the predicament of the Dordo people who find themselves between Tibetan and Chinese identity. It also notes that the Dordo language appears to be endangered with more children acquiring Tibetan rather than their traditional language. The document questions what the future may hold for linguistic diversity in Tibet.

1. “Please Tell Them We’re Not Mongolian”
Identity and History Among the
Dordo of Northeast Tibet
Gerald Roche
DECRA Fellow,
Asia Institute, University of Melbourne
Mongolian Studies Open Conference
Australian National University
Nov 3, 2015

2. Ethnicity and Assimilation in China:
The Case of the Monguor in Tibet
• ‘Between two Potatoes’: Minority Languages
in Tibet
• Examines the predicament of a group of
people caught between the Tibetan nation
and the Chinese state.
• Dordo (a subgroup of the Monguor/ Tuzu)

3. Monguor

4. Rebgong, in the Guchu Valley.
Dordo

5. Manegacha Ngandehua

6. 1,200km from Lhasa; 1,300km from Beijing; 1,400km from Ulaanbaator

7. Please Tell Them…
• Shawo Tsering
• Last traditional leader of the Dordo people.
• Wrote a history of the Dordo in Chinese and
was involved with the writing of a history in
Tibetan.

8. • Claimed that Dordo
were descended from
13th century Mongols.
• Recanted.

9. The History of Gomar
By Gendun Dondruv

10. WeChat, June 2015
“I could never consider Dordo people to be
Tibetans. You’re not only not Tibetans, you’re
not even people…. You’re worse than garbage…
You Dordo are dog shit… You can’t read or write
Chinese and you don’t know how to speak it.
You don’t read or write Tibetan and you don’t
know how to speak that either. You don’t know
how to wear Chinese clothes properly and you
don’t know how to wear Tibetan clothes
properly either...”

11. Language Shift
… language shift appears to be underway among
[Manegacha] speakers… more and more
children… are growing up in otherwise
[Manegacha] speaking homes and villages, but
have Tibetan as their mother tongue. These
children appear to be acquiring only passive
knowledge of [Manegacha].
Fried 2010:11

12. Scaling Up
• 59 ‘doculects’
• About 80% endangered to varying degrees
• What can the Dordo, and their rejection of
their ‘Mongolian’ past tell us about the future
of linguistic diversity in Tibet?

13. G.Roche@unimelb.edu.au.
https://unimelb.academia.edu/GeraldRoche
• Roche, Gerald and Kevin Stuart (eds). 2015. Mapping the
Monguor. Special Issue of Asian Highlands Perspectives. 36.
• Fried, Robert. 2010. A Grammar of Bao’an Tu, a Mongolic
Language of Northwest China.
• Lcag mo tshe ring and Gerald Roche. 2013. Notes of the
Maintenance of Diversity in Amdo: Language Use in Gnyan
thog Village Annual Rituals. Studia Orientalia 113: 165-179.
• Roche, Gerald. The Vitality of Tibet’s Minority Languages in
the 21st Century: Preliminary Remarks. Multiethnica 35: 24-
31.
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