Paper short abstract:

Indigenous knowledge as a resource to promote an alternative citizenship Marine Carrin I will further explore how indigenous knowledge has become a tool of resistance, which articulates the defence of indigenous laws, considered as paradigms of self-governance, linking it with environmental issues .

Paper long abstract:

Indigenous knowledge as a resource to promote an alternative citizenship

Marine Carrin

From an historical point of view Jharkhand has benefited from legal exceptions shaped around tenure laws (Chotanagpur Tenancy Act, 1908 and Santal Parganas Tenancy Act, 1908, which aimed at protecting Adivasi lands from alienation). These laws have contributed to create the political space of Jharkhand where Adivasi populations have been emotionally invested in questions of identity, but other factors related to the exploitation of natural resources (forests, mines, water) have brought dispossession, exploitation and contradictions. I propose to explore how Adivasi stage their assertions of identity around the question of access to material resources, and to show how these resources are manipulated as arguments to create a kind of jurisprudence able to target the opaque bureaucracy and the intricate strategies of the different mafias which operate at different levels of clandestine production. As an example, I shall show how Santal men villages try to find new niches of production and how Santal women succeed in selling forest produces at the tribal markets. This kind of success promotes the idea of indigeneity, which is also expressed through religious movements, art and literature, which are rooted in Chotanagpur landscape. We will further explore how indigenous knowledge has become a tool of resistance, which articulates the defence of indigenous laws, considered as paradigms of self-governance, linking it with environmental issues as promoted by international agencies.