Childhood

“Only the collaboration between the children and the adults will be able to solve the problems of our time.” – Maria Montessori from Madras on 11 November 1939 (Report on the First Indian Training Course in Education); quoted in Maria Montessori Writes to her Grandchildren: letters from India, 1939-1946 (Amsterdam, 2020), p. 38
https://montessori-pierson.com/india.html
https://worldcat.org/en/title/1273931392
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=16037

Adivasi Traditions Re-Emerge among Gund tribals – Chhattisgarh

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In Padutola village, Chhattisgarh, the Gund tribals still carry out the age-old customs and practices that make their culture unique. […] Scheduled Tribes of India comprise of 15% of the total population, varying anywhere between 0.04% (Goa) to 94% (Mizoram) of the state population. The Constitution of India recognizes 645 distinct tribes under the Scheduled … Read more

“They do so not just for themselves but for the larger good of the country and the ecological health of the world”: In support of a syllabus reflecting Adivasi knowledge systems and ways of life

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Source: “Adivasis Protest Awarding of World Congress of Anthropology 2023 to KISS” (Forward Press, 23 July 2020)URL: https://www.academia.edu/43929808/Date Visited: 28 November 2020 Mother’s love is unconditional, it is all-protective, all-enveloping; because it is unconditional it can also not be controlled or acquired. Its presence gives the loved person a sense of bliss; its absence produces … Read more

“Irulas are very knowledgeable about medicinal plants”: Interview with Zai Whitaker, Director of the Irula Tribal Women’s Welfare Society – Tamil Nadu

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The ITWWS is a women’s community-based development organization established in 1986. It was founded with the aim of protecting natural resources, empowering Irula women and using the Irula tribal knowledge of forest resources for economic prosperity. The organization started with five villages and now covers an area of over 100 villages in 4 districts. Because … Read more

Schooling of Scheduled Tribes in India: Lessons from the indigenous people of Brazil – Odisha

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Amarendra Das and I have visited a set of schools in the tribal villages of the Gajapati district of Odisha state (in India) early this year. Since these tribal communities speak a different language (namely Soura) (and they don’t speak the main language of the state – Oriya), schools here practice bilingual education in 1-4 … Read more

Time for an apology to the world’s Indigenous peoples: Residential schools, exploitation of natural resources and ill treatment in the name of “progress”

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One of many broken agreements was that children were to be educated “whenever the Indians of the reserve shall desire it” in schools on the reserves. But rather than instruction being optional for those bands who desired it, as agreed, the state abducted Indigenous children and forcibly confined them in residential schools far from their … Read more