Tip | “Performing Identities: Celebrating Indigeneity in the Arts”: A book on local knowledge forms of indigenous communities across continents

Performing Identities brings together essays by scholars, artists and activists engaged in understanding and conserving rapidly disappearing local knowledge forms of indigenous communities across continents. It depicts the imaginative transactions evident in the interface of identity and cultural transformation, raising the issue of cultural rights of these otherwise marginalized communities. About the Authors G. N. Devy … Read more

The Adivasi way of life: Utopian or worth emulating by ‘mainstream’ society? – An ongoing debate

Anyone who has had some meaningful interaction with India’s indigenous or adivasi people, cannot fail to be touched by the encounter. There is a directness in them, an absence of artifice or guile, an almost childlike innocence, born of simplicity combined with a lack of greed and avarice. The more interior and untouched a village, … Read more

“Speech communities deserve dignity and respect”: Linguist Prof. Ganesh Devy on ways to avoid “global phonocide” – UNESCO lecture

Indigenous languages by GANESH N. DEVY | Full text | Backup (PDF, 100 KB)Excerpts from the modified version of the text of UNESCO lecture, October 2008 RECOGNIZED as ‘Aborigines’ in Australia, as ‘Mâori’ in New Zealand, as ‘First Nations’ in Canada, as ‘Indigenous’ in the United States, as ‘Janajatis’ in India, or as ‘tribes’ in … Read more

Storytelling enables tribal children to develop communication skill and leadership qualities – Tamil Nadu

Source: “Empowering indigenous voices through oral narrative” by P. S. Suresh Kumar, The Hindu, 10 August 2012Address : http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article3749059.eceDate Visited: Fri Aug 10 2012 20:43:41 GMT+0200 (CEST)

India’s tribal, folk and devotional music: Secular and ceremonial songs – An overview

“The great diversity of music in India is a direct manifestation of the diversity and fragmentation of the population in terms of race, religion, language, and other aspects of culture. Yet the distinction between tribal music and folk music is not always clearly defined.” – N.A. Jairazbhoy To illustrate the above observation, namely “The distinction between … Read more