Problems and Methods

While recognizing the importance of reading the non-Western societies through a prism of decolonization, this chapter engages with the same in a limited way. It acknowledges the necessity to invoke decolonial framework while reading the societies which were erstwhile ruled by the European colonial powers. It also explains why the focus of the book falls largely outside the purview of decolonization, yet it cannot remain completely outside the same. While scholarship on most of the erstwhile colonies are working under decolonial framework, Northeast India is still facing colonial onslaught, leading to a complex site of contestation. Along with decoloniality, several important issues like overlapping nature of ethnicity and the indigenous, problems of first-person perspective, and gendered binaries have been discussed. The chapter highlights the significance of collective first-person account as a method to read the lives of the indigenous people. It also shows how ontology of self-narration is captured through different community stories. Such a practice, even though ancient, may be brought under the decolonial project. Finally, complimentary and inseparable relationship between the male and the female forces (energies) in the ethnic lifeworld has been presented as an alternate way of reading social relationship and gender. This hints towards the discourse of indigenous knowledge tradition.