The indigenous tribes of North East India have time immemorial held onto the value of the interdependent relationship between man and nature which has seeped into and regulated every aspect of their worldview. There have been many folk tales of tribes from the North East where the stories center on the lives of animals and how animals have their encounter with man from folk lores of Vaiphei, Mizo and Zo's such as Chemtat te Pu, where the person who was sharpening his sword on the stone of the river when bitten by a lobster stomp his feet over the house of ants who in turn bit the elephants and so on. The narrative continued from man to animals organically.
The persistence of this cosmology has been carried forward and preserved in modern days through the rich traditional heritage of oral storytelling, ritualistic practices, the prevalence of shamans and seers and even in what seems like mundane everyday living, and the continued conservation of such practices. There is a wealth of folklore and indigenous practices as such from which the tribes draw and base their relationship with the environment.
This paper will be an attempt to explore and examine the various untapped faculties and wisdom with which the tribes have persevered amidst the rapid currents of change that threatens their existence, and how it has helped to build their social capital of ‘interdependence’ which can contribute to the evolving discourse of sustainability.
