Tourism, Persistence, and Change: Sherpa Spirituality and Place in Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone, Nepal

Ecotourism and cultural tourism are emerging as vehicles for many of the world’s indigenous peoples to integrate into the global market economy. The ecological knowledge and understanding of these societies may in turn be affected by these nascent industries. As part of shifting human-environment relationships, tourism can influence place-based spirituality. In this manuscript, I describe research on how tourism affected Khumbu Sherpa place-based spiritual values in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park and Buffer Zone, Nepal. As Tibetan Buddhists, the Sherpa embodied dual overlapping conceptions of sacred landscape that connected people to place in some environmentally sustainable ways. Since the 1960s, tourism had been consistently increasing in their homeland, totaling more than 25,000 visitors in 2008. The Sherpa maintained a degree of control over the tourism economy through locally run lodges, teashops, and providing trekking and mountaineering services. Tourism as a vector of integration into the global market economy may consequently influence these spiritual values in concert with other social and ecological forces. I chose a stratified random sample of 100 individuals and 12 monks and used quantitative and qualitative ethnographic methods to assess fundamental place-based spiritual values across select demographics at the time of study. The values chosen by key Sherpa consultants to represent their spiritual connection to place included: sacred valleys, mountain protector deities, principles of kindness and compassion towards animals, sentient trees and groves, and water spirits. Results showed that indeed tourism and other related drivers appeared to influence ecological knowledge and understanding exemplified by less knowledge of spiritual values among the more market-integrated individuals and younger generations. Principles of kindness and compassion towards animals were stable and knowledge of mountain protector deities was reinforced and remade by tourism. Journal of Ecological Anthropology 42 Vol. 15 no. 1 2011-2012 (e.g., Bruner 2005; Ortner 1999). Tourism industries can be quite competitive, relying on the surplus funds of tourists. Indeed, these global flows of capital are capable of bringing about or perpetuating economic inequality within and between indigenous and other societies. To examine the influence of tourism on Sherpa place-based spiritual values,4 I hypothesized that certain political and economic drivers were causing shifts in place-based spiritual values, especially due to the degree of tourism interaction (market integration), the level of western-style education, and the decrease of participation in agropastoralism. The relationships of the host cultures to the environment in these tourism contexts can reflect ecological knowledge and understanding expressing thousands of years of lived experience as well as shorter-term learning related to the local ecological, political, and economic context. Berkes and Turner (2006) explain that ecological knowledge and understanding develops from long-term social and ecological understanding and lessons learned from crisis and mistakes. This knowledge thus adapts according to need. A way of knowing may be judged beneficial to environmental health at one time and detrimental at another. People-nature relationships in these contact zones reflect heterogeneity depending on a myriad of factors, particularly whether the land is perceived as a market commodity. Various studies found that increased participation in the global market economy, often dubbed market integration, caused a change (usually erosion) of plant and mammal knowledge (e.g., Godoy et al. 1998; Reyes-Garcia et al. 2005). Most of this research assumed that proximity to a vector of the market, such as a developed village or road, was an indicator of increased market integration. Alternatively, Guest (2002) found that Ecuadorian shrimp farming knowledge is being transmitted expediently potentially because it had a market value, and Zarger and Stepp (2004) illustrate that Tzeltal Maya children’s knowledge of plant names remained stable despite political and economic driven change seemingly because youth are helping their families with farming after school. Indeed, there is no singular trend in how the market influences ecological knowledge and understanding. These ways of knowing persist or adapt depending on what people need to know in a particular time and place. PlACE-BASEd SPIrITuAl VAluES AS ECologICAl KnowlEdgE And