Understanding the forest the way city kids understand traffic lights and zebra crossings – ActionAid’s schools team

Guest blogger Mari Marcel Thekaekara is a human rights activist and writer based in Gudalur, Tamil Nadu.  She co-founded ACCORD (Action for Community Organisation, Rehabilitation and Development) in 1985 to work with Adivasi people of Chembakolli, Tamil Nadu, southern India. “I was with the ACCORD team in 1988 when the Adivasi people from Chembakolli decided they … Read more

eBook | The No-Nonsense Guide to Indigenous Peoples

This guide looks beyond the exotic images tracing the story of different indigenous people from their first contact with explorers and colonizers to the present day. Much of this story is told by the indigenous people themselves and they present the issues behind the challenge to give them their own space in their own lands … Read more

Similarities and differences between African diasporas in the Americas and those in India: Historical roots and customs of the Siddis – Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra

Sidis [Sidhi] in India are now completely assimilated into local communities. Sidis are settled in Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. When we think of African diasporas, we think of the Americas and the horrors of the slave trade, of African experiences of disruption and displacement. To most people it comes as a surprise that … Read more

“Fire in our Hearts”: Award winning tribal documentary – Thane/New York

A documentary film made by fifteen year-old Jayshree Janu Kharpade, a tribal girl from Wada taluka of Thane district, has won an award in the Asian American Film Festival held in New York recently [in 2012]. Jayashree, who studies in Eklavya Parivartan Vidyalaya here, made the 27-minute-long documentary- ‘Fire in our Hearts’ on the lives … Read more

Demonstrating the brain’s astonishing capacity to decode information – Ancient “whistled languages” used by indigenous communities in India, China, Turkey & Spain

For generations, the residents of Meghalaya’s Kongthong village have communicated with each other using a unique form of whistled identity instead of names! | Read the full story and view more images >> In The Whistling Village of Meghalaya, Every Child Has a ‘Unique Lullaby ID’! In most ways, Kongthong resembles countless other villages nestled in the … Read more