CURATED NEWS MAY 2023
Curated news is a bi-monthly newsletter showcasing ideas, initiatives and practices from around the world and here in Ritoma. Bringing insight, connection and nourishment.
I N S I G H T
Contemplate collecting the intangible with Cuban artist José Bedia.
Ponder the Amazon Tribe’s deep connection with the rainforest with anthropologist Eduardo Kohn.
Unearth innovation in locally rooted knowledge with Marina Tabassum’s Khudi Bari (Bengali for “tiny house”).
C O N N E C T
Travel to the Dhaka Art Summit, invoking minds and bodies through art to make sense of change and summon rain. 
Discover the work of visual artist Aislan Pankararu from the Pankararu people of Petrolândia.
Watch Velvet Queen, a moving quest to document the infamously elusive snow leopard in the Tibetan Plateau.
N O U R I S H
Practice the Tibetan yogas of dream and sleep.
Immerse into the sounds of the natural world in ‘The Great Animal Orchestra,’ Fondation Cartier.
Follow the personal odyssey of three hikers meeting high in the mountains in BERG, now streaming on MUBI.
L O C A L N E W S
February 15th: Norlha Atelier re-opens for a New Year of the Rabbit
The New Year annual holiday is the longest of the year, when nomads have the most time to spare. For our workshop employees, it is a time to catch up with family and friends or go to more distant areas on pilgrimage. After a month of resting and feasting everyone came back refreshed, ready to start their work anew.
March 20th: Laptse
Laptse is a festival where men from all the clans in Ritoma, riding their horses and bearing their family arrows gather to honor the local deities, pledging their allegiance and appealing for their guidance and blessings for good fortune.
The laptse held on the 11th on the second month of the lunar calendar, is the first of the year and different from those that will follow. The men ride over the Amnye Tongra, Ritoma’s highest and most sacred peak with the monks, who pray and make offerings. There, they liberate an animal, a Tsethar, meaning ‘Life that has been spared’, marking it with a ribbon. It is their attempt at negating the negative karma of having to kill for their livelihood over many years. They appeal to the local deity, who reigns over this peak, to help them begin anew in harmony, avoiding grazing disputes, animal diseases, insufficient rain and attacks from wolves.
May 1st, Dukar/Dolma Prayers
These prayers take place each year at the onset of spring. Monks come to each household to pray to the two female deities Dukar, or Victorious White Parasol, and Dolma, or Tara, the female embodiment of compassion. Both, with their all-seeing compassion, project the power to appease and protect beings from disease and natural catastrophes for the coming year. In the old days, when families were not as affluent, prayers were simple, monks sometimes arriving to an empty dwelling, as all the family members would be out grazing their animals. The monks would recite the necessary prayers and leave. Nowadays, families are more affluent and preparations are lavish, often followed by a feast where friends and relatives from the village are invited. April in Ritoma is a month of prayer with the Monastery’s 104 monks making the rounds of 240 families in about 20 days.