Indigenous Resilience in West Bengal
Context
Indigenous Resilience is focused on cultural praxis and climate resilience among communities in the Purulia District of West Bengal, in collaboration with Professor Debashree Dattaray at Jadavpur University and Professor Nibedita Mukherjee at Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University.
The villages are known for their mud huts externally adorned with wall paintings. Made of locally procurable and cheap construction material that is ecofriendly, these huts are models of sustainability. The muralists collect colours from readily available and often discarded materials, following a tradition of wall painting that has continued since 10,000–4,000 BC. They help to keep the huts cool in the terribly hot summers. The rainy season often destroys these paintings, which are renewed in October-November to mark the Sohrai Parab. Wall adorning also occurs during special occasions, connecting the lives of families/communities intrinsically with the ecosystem.
Working with communities to document these practices and the underpinning Traditional Ecological Knowledge, we will develop a model of collaborative research that stresses academic social responsibility and the principles of co-production to illuminate this socio-ecosystem and inform ethical and sustainable relational research praxis.
Aims and Objectives
The long-term aim is to document and examine, in collaboration with local knowledge holders, the tradition of hut painting in many of the Santal and Kurmi villages. In doing so, we seek to understand the relationship they represent between aesthetic and cultural practices, traditional ecological knowledge, and climate resilience.
The sustainable practices of using organic colours for hut painting helps these marginalised groups to maintain an ecological balance which is being lost with the onslaught of the capitalocene. In doing so, we also aim to develop a model for long-term co-produced research between colleagues at York, at Jadavpur University and Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University in Purulia, and with communities in West Bengal.
Prof David Stirrup, Department of English and Related Literature
Bio: David Stirrup is Professor of American Literature and Indigenous Studies and is based in the Department of English and Related Literature. He is a founding co-editor of the online, open access journal Transmotion, which publishes scholarship on contemporary, innovative Indigenous writing from around the world.
In 2019 David launched Europe’s first Centre for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Studies at the University of Kent, drawing on a broad network of institutions in the UK, US, and Canada. The “hub” of the Centre has come to York with him, with co-Directors at Kent, Alberta, and LCC. Alongside research activity, the Centre collaborates with non-University groups, including the Indigenous Rights-focused NGO, Incomindios UK, and the Greenham Common-Shoshone Nuclear Colonialism project.
David is the author of two monographs (Louise Erdrich, Manchester UP, 2010; and Visuality and Visual Sovereignty in Contemporary Anishinaabe Literature, Michigan State UP, 2020). He has co-edited Tribal Fantasies: Native Americans in the European Imaginary, 1900-2010 (with James Mackay, Palgrave, 2013), Parallel Encounters: Culture at the Canada-US Border (with Gillian Roberts, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2014), Enduring Critical Poses, Beyond Nation and History (with Gordon Henry, Jr. and Margaret Noodin, SUNY Press, 2021), and The Canada US Border: Culture and Theory (with Jeffrey Orr, Edinburgh University Press, 2024) along with four special journal issues on subjects ranging from culture and the Canada-US Border to Native Americans in the European Imaginary.
Recent grant-funded projects include Beyond the Spectacle: Native North Americans in the European Imaginary (AHRC), Indigenous Knowledges (AHRC-NEH), and The Metis: a Global Indigenous People (AHRC). He is particularly interested in questions of relational praxis through co-production, Indigenous-centred methodologies, and ethical engagement from Europe.
Debashree Dattaray, Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University
Bio: Debashree Dattaray is Associate Professor in Comparative Literature and Deputy Coordinator, Centre for Canadian Studies at Jadavpur University. Her areas of research and publication are Ecocriticism, Indigenous Studies, Canadian Studies, Comparative Literature Methodology and Oral Narratives with a specific focus on North East India. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright Alumni Award 2019, the Shastri Mobility Programme at McGill University, CICOPS Fellowship at University of Pavia, Italy, a Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Lecturer Fellowship at UC Berkeley, the Erasmus Mundus Europe Asia Fellowship at the University of Amsterdam and Fulbright Doctoral Fellowship at State University of New York, Stony Brook.
Her areas of research and publication are Environmental Studies, Indigenous Studies, Comparative Indian Literature Methodology and Gender Studies. She is author of Oral Traditions of the North East: A Case Study of Karbi Oral Traditions (2015) and has co-edited At the Crossroads of Literature and Culture (2016), Following Forkhead Paths: Discussions on the Narrative (2017), Ecocriticism and Environment: Rethinking Literature and Culture (2017), Literature and the Other Arts (2023), Finding Philosophers in Global Fiction (Bloomsbury: September 2024) and has been Issue Editor for a special volume on Indigenous Studies for Littcrit: An Indian Response to Literature (December 2017). She has been Principal Investigator for the Jadavpur University RUSA 2.0 Project on ‘Locating Indigeneity in the Global South: Revival, Conservation, Sustainability.’ She is on the Editorial Board of Littcrit: An Indian Response to Literature and Lagoonscapes: The Venice Journal of Environmental Studies. She is Principal Investigator on an ICSSR Major Research Project on “Digital Empowerment and Traditional Knowledge Systems: A Case Study from Bankura and Purulia, West Bengal”. She is currently Zonal Representative (East) for the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. (IACLALS).