Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I examine my collaboration on an ethnographic project initiated by the Koyas, an Indigenous community residing in rural Telangana, India and argue that this project is a form of decolonising endeavour.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I examine my collaboration on a ethnographic project initiated by the Koyas, an Indigenous community residing in rural Telangana, India and argue that it consitutes a form of decolonising endeavour. I choose ‘endeavour’ to reflect the incipient efforts of the Koyas in exercising their sovereignty on what constitutes Koya Indigenous knowledge and the potentialities that can emerge from their efforts. According to Sium, Desai and Ritskes (2012, iii), a decolonising project is one that ‘seeks to reimagine and rearticulate power, change, and knowledge through a multiplicity of epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies’. It calls for us to recognise and appreciate diverse forms of knowledge, beings, and values. The project aligns closely with this definition for it captures the efforts by the Koyas to articulate their own ways of knowing and living in the world. Also, the project represents a form of agency and refusal. The agency is manifested in the intent of the Koyas to reclaim what constitutes their knowledge and to foreground their own perspectives and narratives. As for refusal, the project allows the Koyas to refuse static notions of tribal identity imposed by the Indian state and to forge their own narratives. Hence, it is a decolonising endeavour that facilitates a generative approach towards Koya identity and an expression of the agential power of the Koyas.