The chapter, by deviating from the current debates on the morbid and disastrous turn in Anthropocenic discourses, aims to create an ‘alternative space’ that invests in the porousness of ‘man-nature’ borders, the constant negotiations and exchanges between them by looking at Indigenous cultural forms of the Garo and Bodo as a meeting point of both agential power and ‘naturalness’ of ecospheres. By reading the different stages of the Wangala festival of the Garo and Bathou of the Bodo, this chapter analyzes how such cultural practices are embodied performances of a community rooted in the region’s landscapes displaying a localized human-nature alignment that counters Western anthropocentricism. The discussion also considers how these cultural practices are connected to human production systems and in the process become a means to archive cultural conservation, patterns of shifting cultivation, and an Indigenous community’s movement through various sociopolitical pathways. Moreover, the chapter places Wangala at the heart of agricultural activities related to tended landscapes such as clearing, planting, ritual activities, pruning, weeding, harvesting, and resource pooling, thus highlighting a symbiotic human-nature conjunction. Bathou is located in the Bodo Indigenous landscape that relies on the organic growth of the cosmic whole, a conceptual framework that takes into its fold an ecocentric worldview countering Western cultural practices.

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Cultural Practices and Indigenous Traditions of the Garo and Bodo: Reinterpreting ‘Man-Nature’ Convergences in Wangala and Bathou

  • Namrata Pathak,
  • Rustam Brahma

摘要

The chapter, by deviating from the current debates on the morbid and disastrous turn in Anthropocenic discourses, aims to create an ‘alternative space’ that invests in the porousness of ‘man-nature’ borders, the constant negotiations and exchanges between them by looking at Indigenous cultural forms of the Garo and Bodo as a meeting point of both agential power and ‘naturalness’ of ecospheres. By reading the different stages of the Wangala festival of the Garo and Bathou of the Bodo, this chapter analyzes how such cultural practices are embodied performances of a community rooted in the region’s landscapes displaying a localized human-nature alignment that counters Western anthropocentricism. The discussion also considers how these cultural practices are connected to human production systems and in the process become a means to archive cultural conservation, patterns of shifting cultivation, and an Indigenous community’s movement through various sociopolitical pathways. Moreover, the chapter places Wangala at the heart of agricultural activities related to tended landscapes such as clearing, planting, ritual activities, pruning, weeding, harvesting, and resource pooling, thus highlighting a symbiotic human-nature conjunction. Bathou is located in the Bodo Indigenous landscape that relies on the organic growth of the cosmic whole, a conceptual framework that takes into its fold an ecocentric worldview countering Western cultural practices.