By Sahil Nijhawan, Achili Mihu, Iho Tapo, Alinji Rondo, Jibi Pulu, and Marcus Rowcliffe
After centuries of struggle, there is now rising recognition of the tenure, use and management rights of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) within wildlife conservation. Recently collected evidence has shown what has been long known by IPLCs that their lands are just as or more effective than government protected areas at halting deforestation and protecting endangered species. However, they function only when rights over their lands and traditional governance institutions are recognized and protected. The future viability of such institutions is uncertain as IPLCs change in response to external pressures and internal aspirations, potentially rendering many traditional institutions weak and open to exploitation. This is particularly true for wildlife hunting, which remains a central socio-cultural and economic activity for many IPLCs.
We are a group of Indigenous (Idu Mishmi) and non-Indigenous researchers. In 2015, we led interdisciplinary research to understand how socio-cultural changes are impacting the ability of a key cultural institution of the Idu Mishmi community of Northeast India – taboos – to regulating hunting. The Idu Mishmi have an expansive system of taboos, called iyu-ena, linked to notions of cosmic retribution. They permeate all aspects of life including hunting and consumption of large wild mammals and pheasants, childbirth, weddings, funerals, and other shamanic rituals. We gathered monthly data on wildmeat consumption, hunting and taboo adherence with 90 households from Idu and in-migrant communities. We attempted to understand how wildmeat intake and taboo adherence varied with wealth, gender, level of formal education, urbanization, ethnicity, religion, and seasonality.
We found that wealthy non-locals and the wealthiest among the Idu consumed considerably more wildmeat than others. Rather than hunt themselves, wealthier Idus bought meat from the less wealthy, thereby using their wealth to transfer the burden of taboo observance over to the poorer. Importantly, we found that despite alerted socio-economic conditions, temporal taboos continue to regulate wildmeat consumption behaviour highlighting their resilience. However, their conservation impact is increasingly being shaped by larger socio-economic forces and shifting gender roles. Formal education and Christianity complicate adherence to tradition in ways that may weaken conservation outcomes or, in some cases, reframe them through a lens of modernity.
We caution against viewing Indigenous cultural practices as static tools for conservation. Instead, they must be understood as embedded in lived experiences and worldviews. We call for strengthening IPLC land rights, institutional autonomy, and cultural self-determination. Finally, we believe that instead of romanticising IPLC traditions, collaborative and ethical research should focus on understanding how IPLCs are changing, what this change means for their identity, aspirations, and the resilience of traditional governance institutions, and how these complex dynamics is reconfiguring relationships with nonhuman animals and their futures.
Relational Thinking 