Very late to this, but I’d highly recommend watching Sherpa, a documentary about a whole community in Nepal supporting Western climbers want to get to top of Everest (1/n)

It is frankly diabolical that Western expedition operators don’t respect the Sherpa community or their safety, just so they can get to the top of the mountain (2/n)

Hate to break it to you, white Everest climbers, but you literally couldn’t have done it without the Sherpas carrying gas cylinders and tents up before you (3/n)

The rhetoric of all Sherpas being painted as irrational and selfish by just demanding their rights adequate to compensation and safety is new-age imperialism at its worst (4/n)

For context, the people going up Everest pay five to six figures (US dollars) to make the trip. They will live another day. (5/n)

And of course, it wasn’t until Western climbers were killed by an avalanche on Everest the year after the documentary was filmed that it was much more accepted for the mountain to be closed (6/n)

Asian people have been seen as subservient and quiet for too long. And when we - rightfully - get angry, we’re not taken seriously. It’s a pattern you see in workplaces, relationships and fiction. (7/n)

Sherpas asking for their rights to work safely and be compensated well enough to carry out risky work, and white tourists labelling that ‘terrorism’, is one of the worst examples of that stereotype getting out of hand (8/8).

Apologies for the spelling errors in this thread. But one more thing. One of the Western expedition operators was implicitly threatening the Sherpas using economic / monetary arguments. Essentially, if they gave up on the expeditions, who would put food on their table? (9/10)

So powerful that the Sherpas themselves were willing to give that income up for the safety and security of their communities. Goes to show the power of communal ways of living that doesn’t cross the standard Westerner’s mind. (10/10)