By Faisal Rehman, Programme Coordinator, People and Nature Collectives
The People and Nature Collectives took an important step forward in its efforts to address larger questions of Tribal identity and knowledge mobilisation through organising a meeting in Hyderabad from the 25th – 27th of November, 2024. Convened under the banner ‘Language, Culture and Identity: Indigenous Led Education Initiatives’, this is the start of a country wide network of community-led initiatives working on education, intergenerational knowledge transfer and inclusive spaces and public systems for marginalised Indigenous-Adivasi communities.
The meeting was an opportunity to understand how initiatives in different parts of the country working in dissimilar political or cultural contexts, approach the need to build cultural resilience. Language is emerging as an important area for community-based action that can lead to building community knowledge resources for securing rights, entitlements, and stronger community institutions.
The understanding amongst many initiatives is that languages carry their community knowledge, and it is crucial to facilitate the transfer of these systems to keep Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions vibrant, and practised effectively. Adivasi languages are changing in their form and content rapidly; this signals a potential disruption in a communities’ association with its land and cultural territories.
Participants:
75 participants from Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh met to exchange ideas. The initiative intends to take the learnings forward through working towards securing resources to support Indigenous-led efforts for language revitalisation and creating effective advocacy platforms.
Over the three days, we discussed community-based knowledge transfer mechanisms, and the need to supplant these spaces with scientific methods, digital tools, and a creative economy sensitive to the specific needs of languages and cultures based on oralities. Professors, film makers, teachers, researchers, educators and activists from the Adivasi communities attended the event. We will release a detailed report soon. The initiative was supported by the ILED Network and Rutu Foundation, which are agencies that support Indigenous communities across the world.
