Tribal Culture, Cultural Genocide and the Importance of Remembering

<strong>School of Arts &amp; Aesthetics, JNU</strong> a talk by <strong>Felix Padel</strong> on <strong>Tribal Culture, Cultural Genocide and the Importance of Remembering</strong> <strong>Friday, 6 November 2015</strong> <strong>Abstract : </strong>Dance, song, stories, painting house walls, making things - the arts are at the centre of India's tribal cultures. But these cultures are under attack from every angle now, with mass displacement to make way for industrial projects, dams, sanctuaries and firing ranges; and assimilation into the mainstream through an education system that - with some notable, outstanding exceptions - display gross insensitivity towards indigenous cultures, whose own system of education and knowledge transmission avoided imposing on the individual or even telling children what to do, trusting the momentum of each child's unique impetus towards learning. In this context, it is important that people remember these cultures, and support the many ongoing initiatives to stay on the land, in community <strong>Speaker: </strong>Felix Padel, the great, great grandson of Charles Darwin, is a sociologist/anthropologist and activist; author of "Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape" (1995/2010), "Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel" (with Samarendra Das, 2010), and "Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection" (with Ajay Dandekar and Jeemol Unni, 2013). He is presently Visiting Professor at the North East India Studies Programme, JNU.