Living with the land

This is a community initiative facilitated by led by the Kondhs – a group of indigenous communities residing in Odisha, India.

They are one of the few remaining Adivasi societies that have had a sustained community ethos for centuries, providing a rich insight and a radical worldview into an alternative society that follows the ideals of ecological preservation, while nurturing their lives and livelihoods. Using traditional exchange of labor, seeds, and skills, the community practices mixed farming that allows for a diversity of crops to co-exist. Women play an important role in maintaining a deep connection with nature. Their role in the food system is inextricable– from gathering, sowing seeds, harvesting, and processing crops. Such communities have zero negative impact on ecology, a practice which is fast changing in their villages with practices that is out of context and not adaptable to incoming environmental changes, especially in the present reality of climate change.

Greater cash needs for the community are forcing them to sell off resources from their homes, replacing subsistence with cash-crop agriculture, and large-scale migration of youths, both men and women, for work. The education in residential schools of the area delegitimize the Adivasi language and knowledge that people have been learning, understanding and passing on for centuries.

Dialogues and reflections with the community reveal that the Kondh women share a sharp understanding of their changing society, culture, and natural environment and a gradual erosion of their way of life. Under the leadership of Kondh women, the team has been working with the community to address the challenges of identity and integration, uniqueness or assimilation faced by the Kondhs and preserve their culture, society and the surrounding environment that are essential to their sustenance, as well as sustenance of the land and biodiversity nurtured by the community since the time of their existence.