On the Future of Indigenous Traditions - Munin

“We dream of our land.
Every thing we see, that we walk on, that we feel through our body,
it belongs to our land.
We need the land to think about ourselves,
to know who we are.
We are no people without our land.
The government should understand this.
This is not negotiable.
Land cannot be compensated.” 148
There is a need for understanding and interpretation of indigenous traditions and their
epistemologies. In the many sources they were portrayed almost as non-humans, the
classical literature portrayed them as exotic, the different disciplines treated them only
as part of the subjects, and the State sees them as poor, marginalised and schedules
them with least priority. There is another side of the picture too; it is something which
has kept them alive, which they have drawn out from their traditions, they would be
willing to share. The question is, is the modern world ready to accept that there are
indigenous peoples and they are not the successors of those who want to dominate.
148 Bineet Mundu, India Case Study. Workshop on Indigenous Peoples Extractive Industries and the
World Bank. United Kingdom: University of Oxford, 2003.
http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/prv_sector/eir/eir_internat_wshop_india_case_eng_apr03.pdf
(20 August 2006)
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