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Join us for a joint Tibet Himalaya Initiative and Department of Geography colloquium event with Dr. Mabel D. Gergan. Dr. Gergan will present her work titled "An Indigenous Geopoetics for the Apocalypse." This event is open to all.

• Date: January 30th, 2026
• Location: Guggenheim 205
• Time: 3:35 PM - 5:00 PM

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Abstract:Ìý

Somewhere deep in the Dzongu valley, in the shadow of Mt. Kanchendzonga, lies a secret pathway to Mayal Kyong – a hidden paradise of abundance, home to seven immortal couples revered as ancestors by the Lepchas (Mutanchi Rongkup Rumkup). Mayal Kyong is one though perhaps the most significant of several hidden places believed to exist in Dzongu, where sacred scriptures, relics, religious teachings, and even precious jewels are said to lie concealed in rocky caves, crags, and waterfalls. These treasures are believed to reveal themselves only in moments of great need or at the end of the mortal world. One such sacred treasure is a pot filled to the brim with grains and seeds, meant to help the Lepcha people rebuild in the event of an apocalypse.

Since 2006, Dzongu has been the site of a vibrant anti-dam movement led by the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), which successfully pressured the state to withdraw four proposed dams on the River Teesta in Sikkim, India. Today, however, much of the Teesta has been dammed, and only a few free-flowing stretches remain. Hydropower development has also intensified the impacts of cyclical disasters, the most devastating of which include the 6.9 magnitude earthquake in 2011 and the 2023 Glacial Lake Outburst Flood. Despite significant pressure and criticism, ACT members continue to nurture the hope that the Teesta will remain a free-flowing river. Their activism is nourished and sustained by their belief in the power and protection of Sikkim's sacred landscapes. It is this act of nurturing hope, and the beliefs and practices that sustain it, that inform my analysis here.

In Lepcha oral histories and prophecies, the apocalypse much like in its original Greek meaning signals not only a time of disaster and doom but also a moment of sacred revelation. In conversation with Indigenous Himalayan and critical geographic theorizations of geopoetics, sacred landscapes, and prophecy, I understand these articulations as an Indigenous geopoetics: a praxis and philosophy grounded in the particularity of place, one that reads the earth and its signs in ways that maintain hope in times of crisis and uncertainty.

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About the Speaker:

Dr. Mabel D. Gergan, an Assistant Professor of Asian Studies at Vanderbilt University, is a geographer by training, and her research focuses on postcolonial environmentalism, Tribal/Indigenous theorization, anti-colonial politics, and race and ethnicity in South Asia. So far, she has focused on the Indian Himalayan borderlands and the relationship between frontier territories and 'mainland' India, characterized on the one hand, by state-led development interventions in the region and on the other, through the movement of racialized bodies from the borderland to India's urban heartland. More recently, she has collaborated with scholars working on Indigenous politics in North America (British Columbia and the Navajo Nation), focusing on Indigenous youth activism, infrastructure politics, and decolonial futurity.

Born in Sikkim, India, she has lived and worked extensively in the Eastern (Sikkim) and Western (Uttarakhand and Ladakh) Himalayas. She holds her PhD from the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before joining Vanderbilt, she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Florida State University.ÌýÌý