Indigenous flavor

Enhancing the Role of Indigenous Women towards Sustainable Development
In ordinary usage, development implies movement from one level to another, usually with some increase in size, number, or quality of sort. In other words, the word develop is a verb which means "to unfold, bring out latent powers of; expand, strengthen; grow; evolve etc (Penguin English Dictionary). For our purposes, these meanings of development apply to human societies. It is important to note that somewhere somehow, many societies had already felt the impact of other dominating forces. Be it slavery in America, some Islamic countries in Africa, colonized continents such as the third world countries. Gone are those days, today every existing society aspire to develop and upgrade the living standard of the communities or citizen be it international charter act, constitutions or other social issues such as education, health, income generation, savings, thinking, decision making, women empowerment etc. Today the paradigm or the worldview emerges out of (sustainable) development recognized the need to ensure and facilitate components such as integration of conservation & development; maintenance of ecological integrity; satisfaction of basic human needs; achievement of equity and social justice and provision of social self-determination and cultural diversity. I often find it rather fascinating when it comes to our society, a society who claimed to have herald the welfare of women and their achievement. I strongly felt that although idealized, gendered allocation of space towards development in our society has never been fully actualized. The study briefly streamline the broad implications of the concept development which is sustainable.
Sustainable development refers to a development process which enhances peoples' capacity to create and consume wealth on a lasting basis. Sustainable development requires, among other things, a socio-economic, political and cultural environment which enables people to engage in and sustain the development process. The political system should provide stability to allow people to engage in production. Intra-ethnic conflicts, tribal wars and social tensions, as well as denial of basic human rights, constrain efforts to promote sustainable development. The social relationships between individuals and communities can either promote or constrain sustainable development. Social security is thus one of the necessary prerequisites for promoting sustainable development.
Besides social security, there is a need for economic freedom. Economic freedom in this context refers to a condition which enables people to utilize their innovative and creative capacities in the development process; protects individual economic rights to have access to productive assets, including land rights; provides a right to control one's labour in terms of decisions to engage in economic activity of one's choice; and conveys a right to control the fruits of one's labour. It also implies a right to gainful employment.
This study takes us through those questions and the various answers that have been offered. It tries to present the arguments as cogently as possible, but using a framework which makes the content easier to understand and debate upon. What is offered here is an edited and expanded form of the original material presented by the writer in one of the civil forum in recent time.
The concern with gender relation in development has strengthened the affirmation that equality to fully utilized potentials of both men and women is fundamental to every society. I think development requires more than the accessing to education- it definitely requires the creation of conducive environment for men and women to seize those opportunities. It is therefore not just education but quality & creative education, it is not just physical visibility of reformation but the creation of mental platform to adapt diversity and value transformation.
In it's quest to localized the study and experiences, the article tries to focus on women in general, and indigenous women in particular and see the creative dimension towards enhancing their roles in sustainable developmen and empowerment of the wider community. The interest to highlight the indigenous women was duely generated because it realizes the great untapped capacity for sustainable development intrinsic in indigenous spirituality with it's closeness to nature. Indigenous women have a significant potential role as ‘stewards’ of national and global natural resources and biodiversity. Indigenous women are also repositories of varied and locally rooted knowledge systems that make an important contribution to the world’s heritage. They are also rich in cultural diversity, a valuable quality. Significantly, indigenous women have a key role to play in peace brokering and conflict mitigation with potential scopes specially in our locality like Northeast India today.
This paper also highlights some of the concerns of indigenous women and the challenges they face. Based on the first hand experiences shared, the study makes suggestions on how to expand and deepen their role towards sustainable development and empowerment of the wider community and tries to build a roadmap eventually. As most indigenous women live in marginal areas within specific geographical boundaries, where property rights are ill-defined, secure access to land, forests, water and related resources is a major issue. It is also important to address indigenous women’s basic human rights to food, health, education, intellectual property rights, culture, dignity and peace. It also acknowledges these elements as crucial to the building of partnerships, and the ownership, and hence sustainability, of human social development initiatives. Recent studies have further shown that no sustainable development is possible without peace. Peace is a prerequisite component for sustainable development and today the challenge to be an agent of peace for the indigenous community and specially women have become quite crucial.
As the article started taking it's own breath and the study progresses, say am rather amazed by the way how the subject entails indepth enquiry regarding applicability of cultural factors, structural variables, the process of economic and social development and the influence of modernisation to tribal women, extent to which tribal women make use of such systems and its impact to thier lives. Therefore, the focuses would be upon the diversity of human experiences and the alternative measures of values and standard for the assessment of progress and the institutionalization of human development with specific focus on the empowerment of the indigenous women. The study would directly engage and employ entirely the writer's thoughts drawn out of its wider field experiences. It is a broad conceptual discourse & investigation and thus open to wider and deeper exploration.
My responsibility is such that am expected to travel across the country and monitor our humanitarian projects form time to time. It is really a hectic job of sort but i do celebrate my travel meeting and learning different human stories of aspiration. From one of the experience that i countered in the case of the people in some of the interior parts of the Kashmir valley, it was during the south asia famous earthquake catastrophe that we decided to provide medical relief and food items for the survivors in the valley. What actually knocked me was that... women were not allowed to received any medical assistance if the medical staff is a male doctor even at the point of death. Hence no right to their own body. While in the case of santhal tribal and low caste women in Bihar, they're whole through the year under the dominant of landlords or their husband families. The women from the fishermen's community in Andaman & Nicobar Islands aren't far away. After disasters, since they're economically backward, they are very much prone to sexual exploitation and life torture. At the same time, the prosperous women groups in punjab or mizoram are the other positive examples how women takes ownership of the enterprises and franchises. Such cases are the real condition of women in our country today. I know... these examples sounds non-applicable to a society like ours, but wander how far we have make a conscious afford to involved women towards sustainable development. With an open mind, I take women's movement do resembles, much more, the constantly growing and shifting cobweb characteristics of new politics in the global age, possibly though could be differentiated by caste, race, ethnicity, religion, geographical locations etc. My intention is rather to underline that somehow we are somewhere within that cobweb. Development is invading on the other end, our embedded norms and values are persisting on the other.
I fully take this opportunity as a way to share some of the findings and learnings acquired from various intervention. With great honour and respect, as i trace my root with this beautiful community of Oinam (now known as Oneame) village, as a child my story goes back to the hard and dark time in the history where my village was set on fire and covered with blood stain in 9th July, 1987 for whatever reason that i sincerely doesn't know till today. Despite the dark age, am extremely proud today to see how this community have evolved. I know we have lost some of the greatest possession, many children have been left orphan, many become widowed and it took a while for many of us to catch up with the rest of the society.
I purposely try to mention the above blue bird incident to build the foundation of this study and give a fresh perspective to capture the pivotal role of the Oneame women towards development which is sustainble and the many reason because of which today many oneame children were able to access to better education, job opportunities, build families and responsibilities in the nearby towns or faraway metros. History also support that engagement to making pottery suggest the contribution of the indigenous women of Oneame to social development and most of all the promotion of rich cultural heritage across boundaries. However slowly as society gives birth to modernization, urbanization has taken high toll leaving handful to continue that legacy. This findings expose the naked truth and legitimizes the critical role. However, many a times the role of women in this participatory ancestral active engagement at the same time delineation of domains has often been underlined. Today we are consciously or unconsciously sandwich between the so called tradition which implies our cultural values/ obligations and modernity which often implies equality, freedom, rights etc. I don't dare saying that cultural values are evil nor am I a protagonist of modernism. The study solely intent to address the scope and opportunities women can tap and the available resources they can access and preserve wherever possible to reduce poverty, increased sustainable livelihood security and the valorization of indigenous cultural value systems.
India’s economy has undergone a substantial transformation since the country’s independence in 1947. Surely this country is a multifaceted society where no generalization could apply to all of the nation’s various regional, religious, social, and economic groups. Nevertheless, certain broad circumstances in which specially the indigenous women live affect the ways they participate in the economy.
Simalarities are drawn here that although the indigenous women's work and contribute to the economy in one form or another, much of their work is not documented or accounted for in official statistics. She plow fields and harvest crops while working on farms; weave and make handicrafts while working in household bussiness; sell food and gather wood while working in the informal sector. Additionally, they are traditionally responsible for the daily household chores (e.g., cooking, fetching water, and looking after children). When we walk down through the Senapati District headquarter town, it is rather heartwarming to see how our Oneame women have embrassed the new bussiness as smart vegetable marketeers at the heart of the district having high market competition from the mainland Indian big bussiness groups, manipuri emas and the rest of the Naga & Poumai explorers. Am completely amazed by their marketting skills and their courage to venture into such slippery domain of uncertainty where many of us would rather shy away from such challenges. The heart of this study was therefore borne out of the pure inspiration drawn from such examples like them. But the confounding of the usual relationship between education, employment and development studies proved that how illiterate she may be, indigenous women are highly capable of bieng sustainers and developers of natural resources efficiently. Today, as the world stands together to combat against climate change & global warming, I realize how these Oneame women have long been custodians of valuable indigenous knowledge related to management of natural resources, including forests and their products. They have often create their own locally adapted and accepted rules for the use of forests that frame their local ‘institutions’. Through process of learning, I have realized the importance of building on these strengths, by revitalizing indigenous knowledge and blending it with modern systems. Recognition of such traditional assets is now widely taken account of as a legal right and leverage for future emancipation when it comes to sustainability and empowerment. The varieties of indigenous species found in forests are interestingly precious resources that represent valuable assets for poor indigenous women.
I do take this opportunity as my mouthpiece to recommend the value of restrengthening the existing formal or semi formal organizations and traditional governance systems for sustainable development not just to sustain but empowered themselves to explore wider challenges such as building community capacities and harmony. In most instances, the promotion of self-help groups (SHGs) creates additional social capital that can be used for other purposes. This promotion was duely successful in one of the project I professionally supported in Andaman amongst the women's group (post Tsunami). Scopes are also there as the group matured, they can conveniently open a joint account through NABARD or SBI rural development schemes. Time has come to address the importance for indigenous women like Oneame to organize themselves into groups or upgrade their capacities in order to increase their mobility, strengthen their decision-making power and improve their income.
But ironically, today, these natural endowments were declining at the high speed due to many practices created out of vested interest or many other shortsighted conclusion. Immediate examples could be like, deforestation or rather exploitation of nature due to so called 'kanja' and 'fenta' has taken a serious note directly impacting upon the overall wellbeing of the community creating enmities. A called for rewarding indigenous women and men for the environmental services they provide would allow for the establishment of sustainable mechanisms aimed at enhancing both the environment and the livelihoods of indigenous communities while building social empowerment. Clear opportunities are now seen to be emerging in this respect. Having said this, as I conclude, we can quickly capture some of the many concern of enhancing the role of indigenous community in general and indigenous women of Oneame in particular towards sustainable development through the following approach.
1. Exploring potentials of women and active equal participation in community decision making.
2. Building on their existing capacities and trainings on adaptive income generation.
3. Ensuring equitable distribution of resources and benefits.
4. Adopting creative corporate society for preserving cultural heritage of Oneame pottery by creating potential platform to exhibit and generate resources to sustain the initiatives. It is breathtaking to see how Naga hornbill festival have taken its own shape. Hence pottery can be one genuine area where Oneame women can explore wider particpation in such platforms.
5. Putting natural resources and assets as community heritage.
6. Reduce corruption of leaders and representatives and increased flow of government funds and entitlements.
7. Entrusting women’s groups ( women society) with funds and resources.
8. Ensure empowerment of women's group to curb social disruption and disturbances like selling and drinking alcohol, sexual exploitation, domestic violence, deforestation etc.
9. Revised the ill-defined traditional rules/ radical patricentric norms and pattern pertaining to Oneame women's freedom and aspiration.
10. Rights-based approach to development planning like construction of roads from Maram to Oinam for better transportation in order to build strong marketting strategies and accessibility while reducing health crisis and poverty.
11. Strengthening existing community assets & facilities like schools, primary health centres & anganwadi, telephone exchange, drinking water, electricity etc.
TO MY VISITOR READERS, THE ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN FOR A SPECIFIC COMMUNITY OF NAGA TRIBE IN NORTHEAST INDIA. OINAM HILLS IS THE VILLAGE NAME. SHE WENT TO WAR IN THE YEAR 1987, 9 JULY. TODAY, IN THE HISTORY OF NAGA'S STRUGGLE FOR INDEPENDENCE AND SOVEREIGNTY FROM THE INDIAN GOVERNMENT, THE HISTORY OF OINAM BLUE BIRD OPERATION ( WAR BETWEEN NAGA NSCN AND INDIAN ARMY) WAS DOCUMENTED AS THE BIGGEST AMBUSH EVER EXPERIENCED BY THE ARMY. IT IS ALSO INTERESTING TO KNOW THAT THE INDIAN MODERN HUMAN RIGHTS CHARTER WAS ESTABLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME AFTER THE INCIDENT. THE VILLAGE IS LOCATED AT ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAIN OVERSEEING MANY OTHER INTERSTATE BOUNDARIES. TILL TODAY, IN THE PROCESS OF FINDING JUSTICE, THE COUNCIL OF UN PEACE COMMITTEE CONTINUE TO VISIT THE VILLAGE FOR MANY HUMAN RIGHTS PURPOSES.....

LETS PRESERVE THIS BEAUTIFUL HUMAN RACE FROM POVERTY, EXPLOITATION AND VESTED POLITICAL GAIN.

(THE ABOVE PICTURES WERE CAPTURED DURING ONE OF THE SEED SOWING FESTIVAL CALLED THE CHITHENGA)