“Tribal languages are a treasure trove of knowledge about a region’s flora, fauna and medicinal plants. Usually, this information is passed from generation to generation. However, when a language declines, that knowledge system is completely gone.” – Ayesha Kidwai (Centre for Linguistics, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi) quoted by Abhijit Mohanty in “Seven decades after independence, many tribal languages in India face extinction threat” (Down to Earth, 26 August 2020)
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/blog/governance/seven-decades-after-independence-many-tribal-languages-in-india-face-extinction-threat-73071
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=6879
The Indian state of Kerala has a high literacy rate and human development index compared to other states in India. But this has not extended to the tribal population of the state. Female tribal populations are particularly disadvantaged for a variety of reasons including vulnerability to exploitation and abuse. This study investigates factors contributing to … Read more
How Adivasis of one Jharkhand village are trying to preserve ethnomedicine With ‘civilisation’ and ‘modernity’ having made inroads into India’s tribal areas, its heritage of traditional tribal systems of medicine is increasingly under threat […] “‘Ethnomedicine’, as defined by George Foster and Barbara Anderson in their 1978 essay Medical Anthropology, is the totality of health, … Read more
Places like Kerala where there were numerous sacred groves and related culture, are ecologically disturbed now due to ill conceived developments chartered out by those who did not have any knowledge or concern about nature/ecology. Modernists could not understand the natural significance of the numerous rituals and myths. The tribal communities had their own thoughts … Read more
Within the world of food collection […] Hunts such as these, all of them taking place in the months preceding the monsoon and involving only men, made me first realize that ‘hunting’ is not synonymous with ‘meat’ or ‘food’, and that there were other connotations attached to the activity. They inevitably involved rituals and, often, first fruit … Read more