'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics

This is a reflective essay on materiality and imagination of Indigenous land ethics as expressed in global Indigenous writing.  I explore Adivasi land ethics, particularly from the contexts of Odisha and Jharkhand, placing them alongside North American First Nations writings. The paper traces a rang...

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Main Author: Ananya Mishra
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: University of East Anglia 2025-01-01
Series:New Area Studies
Online Access:https://account.newareastudies.com/index.php/up-j-nas/article/view/76
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author Ananya Mishra
author_facet Ananya Mishra
author_sort Ananya Mishra
collection DOAJ
description This is a reflective essay on materiality and imagination of Indigenous land ethics as expressed in global Indigenous writing.  I explore Adivasi land ethics, particularly from the contexts of Odisha and Jharkhand, placing them alongside North American First Nations writings. The paper traces a range of resonances to inform queries on land ethics; in this, it begins from particular sites to global spaces to articulate broader questions for Environmental Studies. This is in the hope that the questions might enlighten and reify contemporary concerns in these respective geographical and intellectual locations, complicating the site and probing the intellectual divide between the Global North and the Global South in area studies, to see how Indigenous concerns globally are aligned in the face of a global climate crisis, as they are disproportionately affected due to historical injustices of empire, settler colonial enterprise, caste orders and religious nationalisms. While I draw from American Environmental Studies to situate the materiality of Indigenous philosophies, the essay affirms the enabling mindfulness of metaphors and how they can inform and strengthen material claims in the negotiation for Indigenous political rights in India, and elsewhere, by resisting co-options of Indigeneity that accompany pitfalls of literality. In this, the essay attempts to connect the generative iterations and expressions of ‘imagination’ as written by Indigenous writers who envision collective futures through Indigenous ‘humanisms’ that account the impact of colonial histories of dispossession, and affirm ethical responsibility towards the human and non-human world.
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spelling doaj-art-75701d54249b45a9b9a2194e318077772025-02-11T05:40:29ZengUniversity of East AngliaNew Area Studies2633-37162025-01-014310.37975/NAS.7653'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land EthicsAnanya Mishra0Lecturer in Global Race studies, Queen Mary University of LondonThis is a reflective essay on materiality and imagination of Indigenous land ethics as expressed in global Indigenous writing.  I explore Adivasi land ethics, particularly from the contexts of Odisha and Jharkhand, placing them alongside North American First Nations writings. The paper traces a range of resonances to inform queries on land ethics; in this, it begins from particular sites to global spaces to articulate broader questions for Environmental Studies. This is in the hope that the questions might enlighten and reify contemporary concerns in these respective geographical and intellectual locations, complicating the site and probing the intellectual divide between the Global North and the Global South in area studies, to see how Indigenous concerns globally are aligned in the face of a global climate crisis, as they are disproportionately affected due to historical injustices of empire, settler colonial enterprise, caste orders and religious nationalisms. While I draw from American Environmental Studies to situate the materiality of Indigenous philosophies, the essay affirms the enabling mindfulness of metaphors and how they can inform and strengthen material claims in the negotiation for Indigenous political rights in India, and elsewhere, by resisting co-options of Indigeneity that accompany pitfalls of literality. In this, the essay attempts to connect the generative iterations and expressions of ‘imagination’ as written by Indigenous writers who envision collective futures through Indigenous ‘humanisms’ that account the impact of colonial histories of dispossession, and affirm ethical responsibility towards the human and non-human world.https://account.newareastudies.com/index.php/up-j-nas/article/view/76
spellingShingle Ananya Mishra
'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics
New Area Studies
title 'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics
title_full 'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics
title_fullStr 'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics
title_full_unstemmed 'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics
title_short 'Jami Chadiba Nahin' (We Will Not Leave this Land): Materiality and Imagination in Indigenous Land Ethics
title_sort jami chadiba nahin we will not leave this land materiality and imagination in indigenous land ethics
url https://account.newareastudies.com/index.php/up-j-nas/article/view/76
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