The “Discovering Sacred Lands” brought Indigenous youth of the Mutanchi Rongkup community together with Knowledge Keepers and encouraged them to reconnect with their ancestral roots. We intended to create a space where together diverse Mutanchi Rongkup youth could reflect on alternative ways to connect with the knowledge of their own community and redefine their relationships to place, environment, and ancestry by finding a medium to express that connection.

We felt the mutual urgency to discover ways to interact with the world, environment and its inhabitants and create spaces to engage with intergenerational land-based knowledge – especially regarding the global Covid-19 pandemic, climate crisis and the passing of many Mutanchi Rongkup Knowledge Keepers. “Discovering Sacred Lands” engaged with Mutanchi Rongkup stories as intertwined in land and memory, ancestors and stories. The intention was to experiment with channels and mediums to explore and rediscover relatedness of story and place within a Mutanchi Rongkup thought-framework – as encapsulated in the stories and knowledge sharings of Elders. Based on Minket Lepcha’s approach, a main aim was to develop a safe space and support healing of intergenerational disenfranchisement and trauma. 

In August 2024 we had the opportunity to meet with some of our contributors in Echostream in Gangtok. Is a video with some impressions of the days we spent together.

“I feel the damage that being documented on and turned into a ‘subject’ has done to our community by the scholars/members from within our own community and outside the community, and resonate deeply with the lines of an Elder who writes ‘If we have been re-searched to death, maybe it’s time we started researching ourselves back to life’(Castellano 2004, p. 98). That was one of the main reasons for my collaboration in this project. The methodology that I designed was built on Indigenous Mutanchi Rongkup principles coming purely from the intention of wanting to find a solution to the conflict/discomfort that I have experienced as an Indigenous storyteller/filmmaker/researcher from Darjeeling and a growing concern that the future generation (beyond Mutanchi Rongkup community) of the region will have to suffer with the environmental hazards. With ‘… the troubling albeit convenient relationship of inequality between observer and observed’ (Merry 2005, p. 241) and lack of Indigenous voices or lack of effort to understand and incorporate Indigenous knowledge in environmental issues, the methodology came from the need to find a space of trying to find a voice to be heard and to be understood beyond the articles that were written about the community. It was a conscious decision to empower Mutanchi Rongkup youth to connect with their ancestral knowledge beyond ‘just’ collecting stories and data and reminding them of a storyteller that existed within them and at their own capacity. It was essential for these stories to be passed down so that the ancestral traditional knowledge can be transferred from an Elder to youth to safeguard the landscape and not to claim or reclaim anything. Since over a decade (2012 to 2021) there were series of interactions and learning from various projects and workshops in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh where the participants were guided in a self-reflective process and supported to see value in their own ancestral knowledge system and regain their confidence and self-worth (Lepcha 2021a, b, c). These interactions helped me localise environmental issues in their regions, too. ‘Re-meeting the roots’ project in 2020-21 (Lepcha 2021a) was one such project which engaged with thirty young Indigenous women participants and partners from North East of India and provided a platform for their relation with their rivers in their expressions. The methodology evolved almost with the same team in the ‘Discovering Sacred Lands’ project’ building a relationship of trust. This was an important ecosystem to further build on the framework.” Minket Lepcha

“I was drawn to anthropology as a discipline to engage with learning and relatedness between people themselves, environment and more-than-humans that are different than the ones I grew up in. Protesting atom bomb tests, extractives policies, labour injustice, and anti-immigrant movements while growing up, I had this deep unease with the capitalist understanding of the world – where care and relatedness is merely transactional. It could not shape a sustainable future and would definitely not shape a society I wanted to live and grow old in. But what are the alternatives? How do we humans interact without taking away the right to live from certain people and other-than-humans? How we engage with care, respect, and reciprocity? It was such questions that initiated my interest to discover other thought-frameworks and practices of world-making. While aware of questions of privilege, colonial exploitations and ongoing intergenerational social and environmental injustice – and the role of research in this –, “Discovering Sacred Lands” project builds on such sentiments and is strongly driven by the need to reshape how we interact, how we learn, how we understand and position ourselves as humans.” Jenny Bentley

Due to the pandemic, but also the different regions and places the participants lived in, our workshop was conducted online with 13 sessions facilitated by Minket Lepcha and Jenny Bentley in English and Nepali language.

• Introductory session with Minket Lepcha and Jenny Bentley  
• Self-reflective and exploration with Arundathi. She leads the participants to explore their own sacred place within through meditation and art.  
• Relevance of oral tradition with Dr. Reep Pandi Lepcha. She explains the nuances of Indigenous narratives and their importance within the Mútunci community.  
• Methods of collecting stories with Dr. Kachyo Lepcha and Dr. Jenny Bentley. They bring (auto)ethnographic approach closer to the participants. 
• Traditional storytelling with Namgyal Lepcha, Dr. Kachyo Lepcha and Dr. Jenny Bentley. Ren Namgyal introduces the participants to the art of storytelling within the Mútunci community and shares some of his knowledge. Dr. Kachyo Lepcha and Dr. Jenny Bentley facilitated the session.  
• Sacredness, Biodiversity and Interdependence with Dr. Mona Chettri and Usha Lachungpa. They introduce different perspectives of interdependence with the larger ecosystem, its flora and fauna as well as with the various communities living in the Eastern Himalayan range. 
• Environment, Indigenous knowledge and development with Dr. Melissa Namchu, Chhaya Namchu, Ugen Lepcha, Dr. Tshering Lepcha. They introduce the participants to indigenous knowledge on biodiversity, environment and sacredness and its importance in the various aspects of the developmental sector (healthcare, management and conservation of biodiversity, climate change). 
• Storytelling and medium I with Chewang Rinchen Lepcha, Dawa Tshering Lepcha, Mickma Lepcha on illustrations, film and music.  
• Storytelling and medium II with Alyen Foning, Pasang Lepcha and Tshela Lepcha on craft, art and fashion.  
• New (digital) mediums of narration with Dr. Reep Pandi Lepcha on online tools to express art and narratives.  
• Concluding session with Minket Lepcha, Dr. Jenny Bentley and Dr. Frances Garrett, with a storytelling session by Minket Lepcha.

Dr. Kachyo Lepcha and Dr. Jenny Bentley facilitated four sessions on techniques of translation.

The participants decided on the story they wanted to tell. Some of them came together in groups to support each other with their abilities, others decided to work alone. They spent the months after the online workshop speaking with Elders and Knowledge Keepers, learning, and then from within expressing in the medium of their choice.

Depending on which medium the participants chose or their interests, we allotted them to specific mentors who came from among the facilitators of the workshop. The mentors engaged and supported the participants in their process.

A core group, comprising of the organizers Minket Lepcha and Jenny Bentley and the Knowledge Keepers and mentors Alyen Leezum Foning and Chewang Rinchen Lepcha, came together to ideate how the expressions and experiences could be brought together on the website and in potential further exhibitions. The idea was born to bring all the expressions together in a map – with Kongchen (Mount Kangchendzonga) at the centre and the expressions rooted in and woven of the land. Chewang illustrated the map with icon for each of the narratives, relocating them in a land space beyond the geographical.

During a workshop in Kalimpong in 2023 the participants dyed the canvas with tea and coffee and aged it by rubbing stones and other items. This canvas is the base of the art work. They offered sacred items from their respective sacred place, or an item that had a sacred meaning to them. The canvas and the sacred items are the base of a textile map that in a next phase will be co-created with Alyen Foning.