Indigenous

“Behind a word there was a geography, the name of a river, children’s voices and a landscape of life and people.”

— Mamang Dai

Under clear skies in the Siang Valley, children once counted stars to a rhyme now only partly remembered. In the Nilgiris, the wind can carry warning, season, spirit and direction. The name of a plant holds generations of observation; a faded wedding saree leads a daughter back to the looms of her community. In translation, a word searches for another home. These are some of the threads and contours that run through Indigenous, Issue 11 of our journal.

The word Indigenous often arrives already burdened with definition: as identity, ancestry, territory, inheritance. But what if indigeneity is also lived and remade in the present? What happens as practices, languages and forms change while remaining bound to particular communities and places?

In this issue, indigeneity is not an artefact preserved behind glass, but a living relationship: the wisdom gathered when we listen to a place long enough to be shaped by it.