Customs

“We have a song for every situation. We feel money takes away from the enjoyment of life. But to earn a livelihood, people have to learn other languages.” – Santal teacher Pada Murmu interviewed by Nandini Nair (OPEN Magazine, 13 January 2017)
https://openthemagazine.com/features/dispatch/santali-talking-time/
https://indiantribalheritage.org/?p=21581

Bringing indigenous knowledge systems into a “pedagogy of the collective”: Kora, Munda, Oraon, Mahli and Santal communities’ egalitarian value system is a source of strength – West Bengal

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Santal educationist Dr. Boro Baski describes the effects of the ‘Pass-Fail’ policy introduced by the West Bengal government in an essay published on on 25th November 2019 by the Bengali daily Anandabazar Patrika >> Text: Courtesy Boro Baski by email 7 December 2019Photo © Anandabazar Patrika Adivasi learner and ‘pass-fail’ policy by Dr. Boro BaskiEnglish … Read more

“We have much to learn from their culture”: Deriving hope and inspiration from the rich tradition of democratic living in Adivasi society

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Cultivating the elements of adivasi way of life in the society at large is the need of the hour, opined renowned development economist Jean Dreze on Wednesday BHUBANESWAR: Cultivating the elements of adivasi way of life in the society at large is the need of the hour, opined renowned development economist Jean Dreze on Wednesday. … Read more

Resources for the classroom: Learning from and about India’s tribal communities, their culture and knowledge systems

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“[I]t is some of the basic values and ideology imbibed in the traditional tribal socio-cultural milieus that should have been emulated and promoted amongst the non-tribal mainstream, not, as has been going on, the other way round.” – Arup Maharatna (Professor, Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, Pune), in Who Is Civilised?’: In Praise of Tribal … Read more

Interview with Richard K. Wolf on his study titled “The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India”

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Excerpt from an interview with Richard K. Wolf, author of an award-winning study of Kota culture: The Black Cow’s Footprint: Time, Space, and Music in the Lives of the Kotas of South India (Permanent Black, Delhi 2005 ISBN 81-7824-126-9) and University of Illinois Press, 2006. It was a promising start. While at the University of Illinois, Wolf met … Read more

Research on populations of different social rank: “The genetic heritage of the earliest settlers persists”

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The word “tribe” itself, in fact, has always been a contentious term. Due to the lack of an adequate term, indigenous people chose to adopt it to identify their place in the world. The narrative is changing today. […] Tribes are people with a functional social order, culture, customs, cosmology and metaphysics. They must be … Read more