Washington DC: Indianapolis International Festival is an annual celebration of central Indiana’s rich ethnic and cultural diversity hosted by the Nationalities Council of Indiana (NCI). The festival is designed to feed the body, mind, and spirit with tempting foods, educational experiences, and artistic performances from every continent. Volunteers in traditional dress in dozens of booths share stories of their ethnic heritage, and many offer authentic foods and displays of cultural items. On stage, talented performers showcase the beautiful choreography, exciting rhythms, and traditional dress of their native lands.
One of the primary missions of the International Festival is to provide students and teachers with an enriching cultural and educational experience. These students will have a unique opportunity to learn about diversity and explore their own ethnic roots as they “travel” the festival using student passports provided by the NCI.
Although Indiana has a very small Tibetan population, yet lesser in its host city Indianapolis, they have successfully managed to participate in the festival since its inception. Tibet booth is started and managed by ITIM (International Tibet Independence Movement), a nonprofit organisation co-founded by the late Taktser Rinpoche Thupten Jigme Norbu, the elder brother of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The founding name was ITIM booth, and it stayed under the same name throughout its heyday years. Currently, it’s called Tibet booth and is organised and maintained by Indiana Tibetan community, accompanied by Tibetans in Ohio and Kentucky.
This year’s international festival was held for three days from 13 to 15, with the given theme “Arts and Crafts around the world.” Accordingly, Tibet booth was set up with information on Tibet’s unique arts and crafts in addition to general info on Tibet. The summarised version of Tibetan arts and crafts were presented in eight pages with the related images in colour. Actual handmade crafts were also displayed, including colourful wooden carved table, some statues, thangkas, prayer wheels, Tibetan Pecha (loose-leaf Tibetan Buddhist scripture), wooden carved eight auspicious symbols, masks, copper teapot, ornamented white conch, traditional flint lighter (mechak) etc.
And more importantly, to educate on Tibet’s cause, there were displays of big Tibetan national flag, Tibetan cultural map, currencies and postal stamp of independent Tibet, a globe depicting Tibet’s political map (partial), and colour pictured books on the political status of Tibet and Tibetans. There were also leftover merchandises for minimum costs from ITIM, including Free Tibet walk t-shirts from past Free Tibet walks, free Tibet badges, Free Tibet Now stickers, Tibet and Tibetan images postcards etc. Free booklets received from the Office of Tibet on Middle way policy in English and Chinese languages were also distributed freely.
For school children’s passports, special ink stamp with a Tibet map and the label were made along with the info needed to fill up their booklet. Being in the process of recovering from the pandemic, although there weren’t many people as it used to be in the past, nonetheless, hundreds of school children did show up with “passports” for stamp and alertly listened to Tibet’s information.
The volunteers, both Tibetan and non-Tibetan in their traditional Tibetan costumes or Free Tibet shirts, managed booth informing and explaining Tibet to audiences, especially to school children. In addition, this year, the team had exceptional help from visiting Tibetan students from IU Bloomington in representing Tibet on stage and very actively educated audiences on various topics on Tibet.
As a part of festival events, Tibetan also participated in the ‘Parade of Nations” carrying Tibet placards and the Tibetan national flag.
Overall, it was a great success in raising awareness, promoting and educating Tibet to many school children and the public in attendance. At the end of the third day, the Tibetan representative thanked NCI event organiser’s leader with a small gift and khata. And expressed their gratitude for this rare and valuable opportunity and hope they would continue this with more school and public participation in the future.
-Report filed by OoT Washington DC