Biocultural Storytelling Pedagogy in Indigenous Nagaland: The Relational Worlds of Easterine Kire’s Novels

Abstract

In the quest for glocal solutions to glocal ecological breakdown, in which sustainability and biodiversity conservation have become powerful concepts at an international level, the causes of the ecological crises must be understood by their socio-economic ontological roots. Today, international fora increasingly recognise the contribution of Indigenous Peoples in safeguarding biodiversity, and attempt to embrace a culturally diverse, inclusive approach to ‘nature’ conservation. Two biodiversity hotspots that are at once notably rich in cultural diversity, we find converging around the forested slopes inhabited by the Nagas across the Indo-Myanmar border and at the foot of the Eastern Himalayas. As part of a decolonial quest for epistemic diversity, and out of a critique on the globalised ideals of ‘modernity’ and the ‘Western’ science hegemony with its entrenched human-nature divide, alternative ways to understand and relate with the ‘more-than-human’ world are sought as philosophical ground for sustainability co-existence relations, that integrate human livelihood practices with biodiversity conservation. Considering the relations and values found in Tenyimia Naga cosmology as encountered through the contemporary literary storytelling of Naga author Easterine Kire, entailing kinship relations, reverence and fear for spirit landowners, and therianthropic soul-travel to the embodiment of wild tigers, Kire’s literary cultural heritage storytelling is explored as socio-ecological pedagogy. Though based on a recognition of more-than-human subjecthood, agency and kinship, traditionally giving rise to complex systems of taboos, her books furthermore detail aspects of cultural change, through colonisation, Christianity and missionary schools’ education, and as such avoid simplistic traditional vs. modern discourse. Kire’s literature is thereby presented as a potent narrative site of cultural (re)construction, and cultural heritage revitalisation amidst a context of ‘Western’ science dominance in the socio-ecological realm. As such I locate this research within the Indigenous research paradigm and environmental humanities, interlinking the study of literature, cosmology and spirituality, pedagogy and ecological ethics and management practices. Besides text analysis of Kire’s books, the thesis builds on a theoretical literature review, as well as dialogical interviews with Kire and few other local actors that shed light on contextual layers, and the paradoxes of heritage continuities through change, in conservation efforts today.