It is the honey season and bee hives in the forest are bursting with sweetness. Over generations our people, the Kattunayakans have mastered the skills required to take honey from the hives. With a rich history of song, dance and ritual, honey gathering is crucial to our very identity. We would like to share with our children the thrill and joy of our traditions. | Read more >>
The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Forest Rights Act) gives members of tribal communities the right “to collect, use, and dispose of minor forest produce including bamboo, brush wood, stumps, cane, tussar, cocoons, honey, wax, lac, tendu or kendu leaves, medicinal plants and herbs, roots, tubers.” – Azim Premji University Team
Learn more about the tribal communities of the Nilgiri region
Bettakurumba | Kattunayaka | Kurumba | Mullukurumba | Paniya | Toda
More about Scheduled Tribes of Tamil Nadu | Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups >>
Regions noted for their wealth of tribal heritage: culture & ecology
Nilgiri Biosphere | Bake Restudy Project (UCLA Digital Library)
Regional Zonal Cultural Centres
Eastern Zonal Cultural Centre, Kolkata
Eastern region – Eastern Zonal Council
North Central Zone Cultural Centre, Prayagraj
Uttar Pradesh
North East Zone Cultural Centre, Dimapur
Seven Sister States & Sikkim – North Eastern Council
North Zone Cultural Centre, Patiala
Northern region – Northern Zonal Council
South Central Zone Cultural Centre, Nagpur
Central region – Central Zonal Council
South Zone Cultural Centre, Thanjavur
Southern region – Southern Zonal Council
West Zone Cultural Centre, Udaipur
Western region – Western Zonal Council
Up-to-date information: Zonal Cultural Centres >>
Learn more
Adivasi Academy & Museum of Adivasi Voice at Tejgadh | Lecture “A View of Higher Education in India”
Anganwadi | Community facilities | Ekalavya
Appropriate education for Adivasi children – the Vidyodaya School model at Gudalur
Childhood | Children’s books | Childrens rights: Education | UNICEF India | Safe search
eBook | Background guide for education
Santali education | Teaching Santal children by Boro Baski
Unesco | Unicef | Unicef India | United Nations
United Nations International Days and Weeks
We cannot let our culture and society stop (interview)
Home, shelter and security as well as music, education, nature, and books for every child
In 1911, the American poet and novelist James Oppenheim wrote the now infamous poem “Bread and Roses“, inspired by the women’s suffrage activist Helen Todd. Working as a factory inspector for the state of Illinois, Todd spent her days listening to women’s accounts of low pay, inequality, and the drudgery of their work. Along with four other women from the Chicago Women’s Club, an association of wealthy middle-class women that had recently established some of the first kindergartens in Chicago, Todd began organising Illinois automobile workers for women’s right to vote in the summer of 1910. Inspired by a discussion she had with a young woman the night before giving a speech, Todd pronounced that the women’s “vote will go toward helping forward the time when life’s Bread, which is home, shelter and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature, and books, shall be the heritage of every child that is born in the country“. More than 70 years after the Seneca Falls convention declared women’s universal suffrage as its goal, the seemingly impossible became inevitable, and in 1920 Congress past the Nineteenth amendment to the US Constitution.
Source: Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future >>
“If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? … I think that by retaining one’s childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies and … toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable, and that by preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.”
George Orwell quoted in Two Cheers for Democracy (London: Penguin Books 1976), p. 76 | Learn more about Childhood | Childrens rights: UNICEF India | Safe search | Ecology and environment | Misconceptions | Modernity | Seasons and festivals | Social conventions >>
The house, in which British novelist George Orwell was born more than 110 years ago, has been converted into a museum by the Bihar Government >>
SafeSearch: Find educational and children’s books on tribal culture published in India
List of sites covered by this Google SafeSearch engine
https://books.katha.org (Katha Books)
https://publicationsdivision.nic.in
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Combine the name of any particular state, language or region with that of any tribal (Adivasi) community.
Add keywords of special interest (music, poetry, dance just as health, sacred grove and biodiversity); learn about the rights of Scheduled Tribes such as the “Forest Rights Act” (FRA); and the United Nations “Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples”, “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, “women’s rights”, or “children’s right to education”.
Ask a question that includes “tribal” or “Adivasi”, for instance: “Adivasi way of life better?” (or “tribal way of life worse?”)
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For official figures include “scheduled tribe ST” along with a union state or region: e.g. “Chhattisgarh ST community”, “Himalayan tribe”, “Scheduled tribe Tamil Nadu census”, “ST Kerala census”, “Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group Jharkhand”, “PVTG Rajasthan”, “Adivasi ST Kerala”, “Adibasi ST West Bengal” etc.
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