[Interview] How a Nagaland activist is reviving conventional practices

Within the hills of Phek district, nestled inside Nagaland’s verdant landscapes, the ethos of neighborhood reverberates by way of each village. The quite a few youth and girls societies, and tribal and college students’ unions in these villages of the Northeast-Indian state paint an image of social cohesion. So it made sense that for 51-year-old Seno Tsuhah, a social activist from the Chakhesang tribe, sustainable growth all the time started with initiatives that furthered a neighborhood’s well-being.

Born within the early Seventies, Seno Tsuhah grew up in Chizami village perched amid the hills of the district, lower than 100 kilometres from the capital of Kohima. On the time, an armed battle was being intensely fought between the Indian authorities and Naga teams, who’ve been demanding sovereignty for many years. Tsuhah later turned a member of the youth society and the ladies’s society in her village and was actively concerned in varied initiatives together with girls’s well being care. Then in 1996, she began partaking with the North East Community (NEN), a regional girls’s rights organisation, by way of the Chizami Girls’s Society. She would go on to spearhead a number of tasks supported by NEN, together with beginning a seed financial institution accumulating a number of styles of Indigenous seeds and Chizami Weaves, an initiative geared toward selling native weaving and giving girls weavers livelihood alternatives.

By way of these initiatives, Tsuhah and the others finally realised that to enhance the lives of the ladies locally, it was important to concentrate on ecology and Indigenous assets. Tsuhah, who additionally manages a faculty, began advocating for ecological farming practices for ladies farmers. This included the transfer to conventional styles of millet, a cereal crop, to deal with altering local weather circumstances in Nagaland.

In 2008, she was awarded the Stree Shakti Puraskar, an award by the Indian Ministry of Girls and Baby Growth for doing “excellent work” within the realm of ladies’s well being. She additionally obtained the Governor’s Commendation Certificates for Social Work in January 2017, the Peace Channel Award (conferred on people in Nagaland) and the Balipara Basis Naturenomics Award in 2020.

To know extra about her journey, Mongabay spoke with Tsuhah over a video name. This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Mongabay: What was Chizami like if you had been rising up?

Seno Tsuhah: I used to be born within the early Seventies. Since I can recall, the neighborhood in Chizami has been tightly linked and may be very cohesive. I grew up dwelling with my mother and father and with my grandparents round. We’d have enjoyable with our household, neighbours and pals; going to the forest and foraging, choosing up berries and climbing timber. That was additionally a time when the conflict was active. So we had been additionally dwelling in concern.

Nearly all of the Naga villages had been gripped with concern. My mother and father had very painful reminiscences. Chizami was burnt down in 1964. That was the time when girls had been grouped and put underneath home arrest and males had been taken away. When the entire village was burnt, it was painful. My mom noticed a teenager being shot and bleeding to loss of life. They couldn’t assist as a result of they needed to run away from that. My mother and father handed on these reminiscences to us and we lived in concern, particularly from males in uniform.

In any other case, it was a fun-filled childhood. We had been lucky that our mother and father despatched us to highschool and gave us a proper schooling. My mother and father, particularly my mom, had by no means been to highschool. So, on her aspect of the household, my brothers and I had been the primary era of youngsters going to highschool.

Mongabay: How did the expertise of violence have an effect on the neighborhood in Chizami on the time?

Seno Tsuhah: There was a concern psychosis, individuals had misplaced their livelihoods and had gone by way of psychological trauma. All the things was affected within the Indo-Naga battle and there was a lack of belief due to the concern psychosis.

However, now we have an egalitarian, solidarity-based neighborhood and all the time got here collectively to assist one another, particularly in instances of disaster – whether or not it’s a battle the place we had been subjected to the very painful expertise of our village being burnt collectively or throughout happier instances.

Mongabay: How did you begin getting concerned in community-centric initiatives?

Seno Tsuhah: When a lady is born in my village, they change into a bonafide member of Chizami Girls’s Society. I used to be part of it, however began actively working with CWS in 1997. Within the preliminary days, the Girls’s Society centered on addressing social points locally. One initiative, as I recall, taken by a number of of our senior members, was to regulate alcohol use within the village. By the point I joined, CWS had began engaged on peace-building, and aid work and serving to girls, who had been subjected to violence.

Then, as a scholar, I turned part of the scholars’ union, which taken care of the scholars’ welfare. We’d talk about points and name for motion. We organised a cleanliness drive, seminars on profession steerage, occasions and campaigns.

Mongabay: Was there a degree you determined that you simply needed to change into extra concerned in these initiatives and even spearhead them in the future?

Seno Tsuhah: I all the time needed to commit myself to the bigger neighborhood, I wasn’t simply a person, a scholar, a younger woman going to highschool, school and church. I all the time wish to be part of the change. I really feel deeply about not simply serving to myself and my household, however serving to others. The contribution of ladies to the household or the bigger neighborhood is rarely acknowledged. I needed to do one thing about that and declare the place that we deserve.

Then in 1996, I used to be despatched by the CWS to accompany the elders for coaching on group formation and neighborhood growth, which Monisha Behal [a founding member of NEN] had organised in a neighbouring city. The ladies’s society inspired and motivated me by saying that they require youthful individuals like me to be part of this coaching. And so, I received engaged with the North East Community.

After coming again, the 5 of us who had participated met with a whole lot of ladies from Chizami and I facilitated a session about what we had discovered. That was the primary time I used to be sharing my learnings by way of group actions. They had been very engaged within the dialogue and I began considering that I may do one thing with these girls. That was the juncture that made me relook at myself. From then on, the CWS requested me to be part of the manager workforce and I used to be made the finance secretary in 1996.

[Later] I turned a coordinator for the North East Community chapter in Nagaland.

Mongabay: In the entire neighborhood constructing tasks you had been doing up till that time for the event of ladies and youth locally, how a lot did the surroundings, ecology and sustainable growth characteristic within the discussions you had been having?

Seno Tsuhah: At that time, within the mid-’90s, one of many points was that the CWS was specializing in methods to enhance livelihoods. We began taking a look at kitchen gardens and collective farming. Then, once we began partaking with NEN, which was specializing in girls’s reproductive well being on the time, we considered beginning the Chizami Girls’s Well being. We realised that to be able to these issues we did to enhance the well being of the ladies of our neighborhood we want to consider concerned our agriculture, ecology, indigenous techniques and regenerating our assets.

So round that point, we began taking a look at well being, vitamin and conventional, native therapeutic techniques that concerned various kinds of herbs. We’d take a stroll within the forest areas with girls to establish the vegetation and the native assets. These native information techniques had been turning into much less and fewer seen as individuals had been switching to allopathic medication. We’d additionally organise a standard meals potluck every now and then. We didn’t know at the moment that what we had been doing was part of the sluggish meals tradition. In a means, we had been attempting to doc the therapeutic techniques, though we didn’t take a look at it that means. For us, it was a means of celebrating life and our dishes, which we needed to revive. It was performed spontaneously.

Later, we additionally received speaking about local weather change and its results. We turned satisfied that indigenous ecological rules ought to be on the core of our work and began taking a look at modes of manufacturing, land use and consumption from the lens of sustainability and fairness.

I’ve grown up with my mother and father locally and neighbourhood and have been part of the farming life. Searching and gathering practices have change into over-excessive, which isn’t good for our neighborhood. The keystone of our livelihood is agriculture – jhum cultivation (shifting cultivation conventional to northeast India) and collective farming. On the time a whole lot of policymakers condemned jhum cultivation and blamed it for deforestation. At CWS, we tried wanting on the good points of jhum cultivation. It’s a storehouse of genetic variety. The entire neighborhood participates on this type of shifting cultivation, which ensures fairness by way of land use. Alternatively, plantations are very individualistic, and just one particular person advantages from this. Moreover, we additionally began taking a look at climate-compliant crops like millet. After we had been doing a examine in 2009, we requested our neighborhood, particularly the ladies, what had been the meals up to now and within the current, and what they might wish to eat sooner or later. That’s the time when girls introduced up millets. So, since 2011, we began selling millet-based agro-biodiversity. The millet is a climate-compliant crop and might face up to warmth. It’s nutritious and likewise ensures ecological safety. We travelled round, displaying video clips about millet farming in several villages. Girls, males and kids may relate to this. We additionally tried to affect the federal government by way of signature campaigns and even met one the union ministers.

We additionally began figuring out indigenous seeds [including millet seeds and others] and engaged girls and younger girls to be part of this. Ultimately, CWS with some assist from NEN began a seed financial institution for upto 10 villages in Phek district. It formally opened in 2017-18.

Mongabay: Presently if you had been assessing millet consumption, had been millets being eaten? Did the interventions of CWS and NEN affect extra individuals to take up millet farming?

Seno Tsuhah: It [millet] had already disappeared from our plates. I bear in mind solely having it at house once I was in highschool. Just one or two households in our village had been nonetheless cultivating only for continuity. Millets are the primary grains which might be harvested within the season, and so they’re susceptible to hen assaults. Many individuals have now began cultivating them, however they nonetheless face hen assaults. Along with this problem, a whole lot of households have given up agricultural lands. One cause is that younger persons are leaving farming. So, it’s only the elders and the mother and father who’re concerned. It’s turning into a difficulty in all of the villages in all places.

However now, farmers are adapting new methods of cultivating millets. Often, we sow millet seeds in March. Now due to the hen assaults, we sow it in August, in order that it’s harvested in November, much like the time of paddy harvest.

What has been your contribution to those initiatives?

Seno Tsuhah: I contributed to the thought constructing, organising, connecting with individuals, telling our tales and getting specialists to come back to a small village like Chizami, to be part of this journey of optimistic considering and alter. I’m extra of an innovator, any individual who thinks out of the field, who thinks all types of loopy issues. I’m lucky as a result of my co-workers and mentor Monisha Behal at NEN are open to and assist these concepts.

Mongabay: One of many greatest tasks NEN has been concerned in is Chizami Weaves. Are you able to inform me concerning the journey with that mission? 

Seno Tsuhah: We began Chizami Weaves in February 1998. Just a few of us, together with Monisha and I, began exploring tasks we may do collectively. We determined to do one thing to enhance the livelihoods of native weavers. We roped in a younger designer, a pal of Monisha’s. The primary goal was to assist the ladies get entry to livelihood alternatives and, most significantly, promote the distinctive textile custom of Naga. Our textiles and our attires are part of our identification and tradition. It has so many social meanings. Each tribe has its personal distinctive apparel. As a Chakhesang girl, I principally put on what we weave. However that’s not on the market.

However for right now’s era, it’s important that our expertise meet the wants of the neighborhood, and that we create livelihoods by way of this. So we began taking a look at merchandise past the standard mekhalas (skirts worn by Naga girls) and shawls, which girls weave. That is when Rajiv Gautam, the designer, introduced up the concepts of cushion covers, desk runners, and desk units. Within the first two years, we didn’t even use a measuring tape as a result of historically we use our fingers and toes to measure the size of material. However, we needed to change this contemplating the wants of the market. It took us two years, and from seven weavers we finally grew to contain round 600 weavers. In 2017, we realised that as a result of that is rising we are able to’t be with NEN, which doesn’t work for revenue. So in October 2017, we registered as one other entity, which we named Nenterprise.

General all the ladies are incomes and are glad. It has introduced a change of their outlook. They’ve change into leaders of their villages. They don’t seem to be solely getting these alternatives to earn, however are proud to be part of a motion reviving the standard expertise and the Indigenous information system. Chizami Weaves additionally seems to be at native information techniques round pure dyes, and harvesting native cotton. There are aged girls (greater than 60 years of age), who’ve this data of rising and harvesting pure fibre and might cross this on to the youthful weavers, who’re simply 15 or 16 years previous.

Mongabay: It looks as if you might be all the time busy with these community-led initiatives. How does your loved ones react to this?

Seno Tsuhah: They used to complain at instances. After ending school [in the capital city, Kohima], I returned and have become the breadwinner for my siblings and household. A few years again, my mom scolded me so much when my colleague and I went to the neighbouring city to make a cellphone name for work. This was in 1999-2000 and we didn’t have telephones. It was already darkish and there have been no automobiles. We walked 21 kilometres again to my village. We began at 6 p.m. and reached at 11 p.m. That was the time when the battle was nonetheless energetic and a whole lot of extortion was occurring on the highways. We occurred to be strolling on the freeway.

Apart from this, my household has been very supportive. Since final 12 months, I’ve been taking care of a faculty, which has 93 college students in one other neighborhood. My life is simply that – I’m going to highschool within the mornings and am there from 9 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. After that, I come house and see my household. Generally I disappear for weeks since I’ve to work from our NEN useful resource centre. Throughout these days I trip between the Centre and the varsity. My household does miss me then.

I’ve now touched 50 and am not as energetic as I was. Earlier, I used to stroll 8-9 km (5-5.6 mi) a day, however now have change into a lot slower. I’m additionally out of the administration of NEN since December 2020. I are available in at any time when I’m free. However I’m nonetheless in a position to do issues I’m obsessed with and am nonetheless part of CWS and a contributing member of this village. As an illustration, after this interview, I shall be going to gather firewood for the church.

This sluggish tempo has helped me mirror and change into aware and aware. I’m realising that compassion has a boundary too and there are specific issues we received’t be capable of do. For me, respect and dignity are crucial and others must also be handled with this respect and dignity. So the journey in direction of justice won’t ever finish. It’ll proceed with new challenges and new alternatives. I shall be part of this in small methods, together with my neighborhood, the bigger girls’s community and the indigenous motion, I’ll hold attempting in small methods.

---

Learn extra: Two younger girls in Nagaland are main a campaign in opposition to e-waste

---

 

Banner picture: Naga activist Seno Tsuhah provides a chat. Picture courtesy of Seno Tsuhah.