We are the Chinese tourists

I keep thinking that Heidi and I are the equivalent of the Chinese tourists that we saw in Tibet in August 2011, biking from Shanghai to Lhasa or the Tibetan side of Chomolungma (Everest Base Camp). They would then box their bikes up and take the train or fly home. We plan to bike all the way home, of course. But we keep reading about how the Spanish, then the Spanish/Mexicans, and now the Americans came to this region, "converted" the indigenous people to Catholicism, and mined, fished, logged the crap out of the place - all the while taking the wealth created from the natural resource extraction for themselves (and, of course, many/most of the indigenous people died from diseases introduced by the Europeans [who had resistance to many of the diseases they carried from living in close proximity to their domesticated livestock]). The Spanish "Mission system" "converted" the locals to Catholicism, had them move to the area of the mission, and work the fields.
The Chinese are making the nomadic Yak (etc) herders build permanent houses - and stop being nomadic.
The list goes on, of course.
But, I can't help but think that 100 or so years from now Tibet will have a lot more in common with CA - only the air will still be thinner - so there won't likely be as many Han Chinese there as there are European-Americans here.