Back in September I sat besides a Petzl employee on a flight into Kathmandu. Petzl had tasked him with teaching snow safety and mountain skills to Nepalis who would otherwise not have access to this instruction.
Plus their gear is great.
Plus their gear is great.
Even the Sherpa are relatively recent migrants to the region (~400 years), and the Rai people have only moved into the highlands with the modern demand for labor. By and large they're coming from a tradition of subsistence farming.
As an example, a friend was traveling in the Khumbu last year and his party came across a deceased porter around 6000m. He had presumably been paid off after getting sick and sent down on his own. All they could do was build a cairn over his body.