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Paper short abstract

This paper contributes to the panel by showing how Rang Rih, the Papiackum sacred thorned chair, embodies an Indigenous jurisprudence where oral narratives inscribe justice into ecological and ancestral landscapes, resonating with global traditions of nature-rooted truth.

Paper long abstract

Among the Papiackum people, Rang Rih — the sacred thorned chair — embodies an ancestral jurisprudence where justice, truth, and reconciliation are enacted through oral tradition. Constructed from living thorn branches, Rang Rih symbolizes the paradox of justice: its thorns pierce falsehood, while truth, though painful, purifies. To approach or sit upon the chair is to enter into covenant with ancestors, community, and the natural world, where the guilty are unmasked and the truthful vindicated.

This paper examines the cosmological, ecological, and performative dimensions of Rang Rih. Drawing on oral narratives, ritual enactments, and intergenerational testimony, it traces how the thorned chair operates as both juridical instrument and symbolic archive of ethical memory. It preserves Indigenous epistemologies of justice that resist colonial erasure, while ensuring balance between human action, ancestral mandate, and ecological order.

Placed in comparative perspective, Rang Rih resonates with global Indigenous traditions where natural forms become vehicles of truth and accountability. Yet its distinctiveness lies in its refusal to separate pain from healing: thorns wound but also cleanse, ensuring justice restores both social and spiritual harmony.

Fore grounded in the panel Roots and Voices: Exploring Nature, Identity, and the Sacred in Oral Narratives from Indigenous Communities across Cultures and Continents, this contribution argues for the recognition of oral traditions as jurisprudence — living legal philosophies grounded in ecological and spiritual worlds. Rang Rih thus illuminates how Indigenous communities inscribe justice into nature and memory, embodying a thorned but healing path toward ancestral continuity.