My Summer Internship Experience at Keystone Foundation
By Aadi Mullan, Intern This summer, I worked at the Keystone Foundation as an inaugural student for the Youth Internship Program. Being passionate about environmental sciences and conservation, I was extremely excited as I settled into my room at Keystone’s campus in Kotagiri. Not only was I blown away by the incredible experiences I went […]
Celebrating Indigenous Knowledge, Community Resilience, and Sustainable Development
By Kavya-People & Nature Collective, Fazeela –Community willbeing In the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve, where nature, culture, and community are deeply intertwined, Keystone Foundation continues to champion initiatives that strengthen cultural pride, ecological resilience, and community well-being. Two powerful events exemplify this effort: the Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration, “Nanka Maath, Nanka Theeni,” and the Disaster Management Training combined […]
Indigenous Peoples Language Workshop at Nilambur
By Syamjith and Faisal Rehman, People & Nature Collective After the previous versions of the Barefoot Linguist Programme and Language Technologies workshop held with Irula community members, the People and Nature Collectives (PNC) conducted its second iteration of the Barefoot Linguists programme workshop in collaboration with Karthick Narayanan and Ktien Hima, at Nilambur Keystone Foundation […]
Experimenting with Language Technology to Preserve the Irula Language
By Jeyanthi–People & Nature Collective Introduction to Language Documentation Efforts In the last few years, the Community Researchers and Foundations at our programme have forayed into the documentation of their languages and cultural traditions. With support from the ILED and GAGGA network, we held our first Barefoot Linguist Programme last August with Irula speakers to […]
World Museum Day Celebrations in Nilambur
By Aswathy A.S., People and Nature Collectives This year, World Museum Day was celebrated on May 18, with the theme being: “The Future of Museums in Rapidly Changing Communities”. Aswathy shares how the Nilambur office celebrated the day: We celebrated International Museum Day in our office today. We were able to have a discussion focused […]
Radio Kotagiri Wins National Award for Cultural Preservation
By Manickam A., Knowledge Hub Keystone Foundation is proud to announce that Radio Kotagiri won Second Prize at the WAVES Sammelan, organized by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. The award recognized our program covering the local Irula community’s Thodu Aata Festival, under the theme of Local Cultural Preservation. Dr. L. Murugan, […]
Workshop on Community Archives
By Mira Kudva Driskell, People and Nature Collectives The Community Archives, hosted on Mukurtu, exist to ensure that Adivasi-Indigenous communities can document and safeguard traditional knowledge; unlike our Institutional Archives, which are open access, community archives are accessible by community members, and designed to respect cultural norms around knowledge transfer. In doing so, we hope […]
An Equal Music: Pillur Musicians Collaborate with T.M. Krishna at Ooty Literary Festival
By Mira Diana Kudva Driskell,People Nature Collective On March 15th, Pillur musicians joined renowned Karnatik musician T.M. Krishna on stage at Ooty Literary Festival for a session entitled “An Equal Music”. Alexander, Bharti, K. Raja, Kuppammal, Murugan, Murugesan, Murugan, Nagaraj, Prema and Saranya all gathered outside the Nilgiri Library to perform in front of an […]
A Learning Journey to Understand the Tribal Language and the Forest
By Kavyanjali K K , People Nature Collective As part of ILED’s “100 Forest Stories in 100 Languages” campaign, we organized a journey to Begur with children from the Kammana, Necholi, and Poolakkal hamlets, supported by a Gothradeepam education volunteer. A total of 12 children joined us, with the primary goal of experiencing a forest […]
Presenting on Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Practices in Pune
By Faisal Rehman, Programme Coordinator, People and Nature Collectives Mounthees Kuttan and Faisal Rehman from the Biodiversity Conservation and People and Nature Collectives programmes participated in an Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) sponsored and FLAME University organized national seminar titled “Shaping the Future – Trends and Perspectives in Indian Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable […]