Environmental Insights from Indigenous People: Northeast India Perspective

Abstract

Indigenous people live with nature and survive on the natural resources around them. With the worldwide introduction of the Doctrine of Discovery in the mid-fifteenth century, superior powers conquered and controlled many lands. Due to the colonisation of lands, many traditional practices are neglected, forgotten, and intentionally silenced in Northeast India. With globalisation, modern science has hastened the manipulation of nature through unrestrained commercial growth. On the pretext of development, poor people are displaced from their homes and the forest they live in, and they become ecological refugees in their land. Forest and indigenous ways of relation to nature are critical for survival. Tribals have their own indigenous ecological traditions. Environmental insights from indigenous people in Northeast India can offer valuable lessons for sustainable development, conservation initiatives, and climate resilience efforts. Locally available tribal ecological prudence could enhance ecological health and benefit humans. Amid the universal ecological crisis, there is an urgent need to inculcate the tribal ethos of seeing the unseen spirits in the natural elements – trees, stones, animals and streams and accord respect and restrain. This paper orients us for a fresh analysis of our present environmental condition for the common good.