Seminars and Symposium

Objectives:

• Bridge between the knowledgeable elders and the educated elites.
• To sensitize the communities about their cultural inheritance.
• Authentic source of information and knowledge for students and researchers alike.
• To reflect on one’s traditional systems from one’s own perspective.
• Evaluating and where necessary rectifying the often mischievously written records of missionaries, Western / Western-trained anthropologists.

For Example :
The Noctes are described as: Head Hunters, implying that the Noctes killed men for sport. Though the scholars used it during the Seminar on the Noctes, the context made it clear that the Noctes were not demonic murderers. As any community sometimes had to, the Noctes too fought battles. A sign of heroism was killing the enemy whose heads would then be brought and reverently worshipped because the dead too were someone’s kith and kin. This is a homage that is annually paid to this day in the Noctes’ Paangs / Morongs - the Community Centres. ‘Head hunters’ or highly evolved people ?

• Building the self-confidence of the communities in their traditional systems, on their ancestors and by extension on themselves.
• Triggering the evolution of the traditional systems.
• Encouraging the communities to develop through their culture, i.e. to adapt traditional values and skills for sustainable development.

Who Is Involved:

• The intelligentsia in scholastic and organising work.
• Villagers in group discussions and purposeful drama on traditional systems practiced from birth to death of that particular community.
• Knowledgeable elders in sharing their knowledge with the literati for documentation.
• Experienced and visionary officers participate as Moderators – guiding the Seminar proceedings.
• Committed intellectuals including Office-bearers of Arunachal Pradesh’s Spirituo-cultural organizations such as the Donyipolo Yelam Kebang, the Nyedar Namlo, the Rangfraa Faith and Promotion Society, the Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh also participate.
• Youth in organising work and in deliberation and educative cultural programmes.