Paper short abstract:

This is an ethnography of hunting & gathering tribe that migrated out of their home in the forests due to the dominant conservation ethic, and offers a voice to a displaced tribe as it learns to live in a global city.

Paper long abstract:

In the 1970s, a number of tiger and wildlife reserves were created in India in the process of which the indigenous people living in the forests were evicted. The Hakki Pikki was one such tribe. For several decades, they wandered from place to place in search of a new home. A small group landed up in the periphery of western Bangalore, and along with other homeless people, formed a settlement that came to be called the Hakki Pikki Colony. The film is an ethnography of four families from this slum, told entirely in their own voices - their histories, present conditions of living and livelihoods, their memories and aspirations as they cope to survive on the margins of an emerging global city.