NE NEWS SERVICE
RONO HILLS, MAR 11
A national conference on ‘Tribes, State and the Environment: Contemporary Research in India’s North East’, jointly organized by the Department of Anthropology, Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU), Arunachal Pradesh and Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology – Gandhinagar (Gujarat), was held at the RGU campus here on March 6 and 7 last.
The conference, funded by Anthropological Survey of India, ICSSR- New Delhi & ICSSR-NERC, Shillong, saw 21 participants from 18 universities across India and four from outside India (University of North Carolina, Wageningen University, University of Cape Town and Western Sydney University, Australia).
Speaking at the inaugural function, HoD (Economics), Prof P Nayak highlighted the need to address issues of environment, development and people. He also raised concerns about the lack of studies on mithun, as there is no information on their population. He suggested it is important to have a census of mithun, culturally important to many societies in Northeast India.
Speaking on the occasion, Jt Director, ASI (Kolkata), Dr M Sasikumar paid tributes to Verrier Elwin for his commitment and research on tribal communities in Arunachal Pradesh and how he shaped the anthropological research of the region.
Registrar N T Rikam spoke of the need to create awareness about the environment problems and how they impact the tribal communities. Dean of Social Sciences, Prof Sarit K Chaudhuri emphasized the need to bring together the scholars of Northeast India to discuss the issues of environment and development along with the rich indigenous knowledge of the tribal communities.
In the similar lines, Prof Ambika Aiyadurai from IITGN highlighted that the North East region must be considered as an eco-cultural zone where people’s lives, identity and livelihood are deeply entangled with their environment.
Dr P R Gajurel, Professor, Department of Forestry at NERIST spoke on the ethnobotany and indigenous knowledge of Arunachal.
Chukhu Loma, DFO Bomdilla delivered a lecture on how wildlife conservation and cultural identity can go hand-hand, using the example of hornbill conservation.
The conference focused on issues of environment and their linkages with the tribal communities in North East India. Issues about environmental resources, accessibility and identity are emerging themes shaping the region. This region, while sustaining and shaping the lives of the indigenous communities with its rich natural resources and eco-cultural heritage, is also a site of contestation between the state, people and other actors.
The conference addressed themes concerning the state of natural resources, human-animal relations, indigenous knowledge systems, indigenous world views and development.
Large number of faculty members, research scholars, and students of various departments of RGU actively participated in the two-day conference.
(Courtesy: http://echoofarunachal.in/)
