ABSTRACT
Moonlight streams over the grassland as Lhamo lifts the flap of her family's tent and steps into the frosty morning air. Ignoring the whine of a scraggly Tibetan mastiff curled up at the tent door, the young nomad woman rouses a herd of yaks tethered nearby. Lhamo's father, Tibetan nomad Sonam, also starts the day with a ritual. To him, it is just as vital as the daily milking. As Lhamo stokes the breakfast fire with yak dung, Sonam rises and wraps a wool blanket around his ragged cotton shirt and pants. Like most Tibetan nomads, Sonam is a devout Buddhist. The faith permeates his life, anchoring his values and ideas about the world as it has for Tibetans for centuries. When Sonam was seven years old in 1949, Communist Chinese troops occupied his homeland in eastern Tibet and set out to eradicate the nomads' ancient, devout way of life.
