Taking cue from James Clifford’s notion of ”routes” as involving both travel and dwelling, I will concentrate on two recent and contradictory phenomenon in Northeast India; 1) the outmigration of indigenous youths and, 2) the… Read More »Indigenous routes: migration and food sovereignty in northeast India

This paper highlights the importance of exploring what can be termed as emic understandings of anthropogenic change and of local thresholds (ecological tipping points) in History by mapping environmental change in Eastern India in the… Read More »Introductory Lecture
What the Adivasis of eastern India can tell us about the global environmental crises

“Adivasi writing may sound a contradiction in terms, as the literary traditions of Adivasis have largely been oral. Yet, in contemporary India, Adivasis are writing not only in their local languages, but also in the… Read More »Roundtable
Contemporary Adivasi writing in India: paradigms, issues and perspectives

Looking at several tribal communities and situations in more detail: i. Verrier Elwin laid a wonderful if idiosyncratic groundwork for understanding central Indian tribes anthropologically. The Baiga (1939) is a detailed groundbreaking ethnography of shifting… Read More »Understanding tribal social structure and knowledge systems

These 3 terms are commonly used. ‘Adivasis’ (‘first dwellers’) effectively replaced ‘Aboriginals’ (not used in India since 1940s), and cannot be used in Northeast India for politiocal/historical reasons since the British moved several million Adivasis… Read More »Evolving Adivasi, tribal and indigenous identities in India