Voices from the Ethnoverse is a medium for sharing and exchanging stories of Indigenous culture. We, Annelie & myself, started this blog to share some of our experiences with indigenous people's and their way of life. Not only studying their systems, but learning through living with such people. It is now more than six months that we have been with Khasi people based in the North east of India. Our initial scope was to understand their food systems, how and why they have changed over time.
It would take forever for us to understand how food is co related to the culture, traditions and beliefs of tribal people. Amongst many observation one seemed extremely important to us: the richer the knowledge on stories related to nature and the environment, the more remote the peoples and the richers the biodiversity was noticed; that inevitably led to less dependancy on outside sources. More so, a lot of these stories were an expression of how indigenous peoples co-exist with their environment, respect nature and learn to extract food from the earth whilst never forgetting to give back what is required to maintain a healthy soil.
We have witnessed with all our senses how indigenous farmers are the safe guardians of thousands of plant and animal species, knowing what is edible and what is not, what can cure diseases and what can kill. The more remarkable, however, is how this knowledge has been passed down orally for thousands of years and is kept alive by the people. Just like modern science is based on observation, traditional knowledge is the outcome of what people have learnt by living with and observing their environment.
So lets begin....
