The Approach

“What we were aware of right from the beginning was the idea of finding something worthwhile within the participants before venturing outside. The essence of storytelling goes back to the intention of telling these stories. In order to reflect on storytelling as a method in modern times, it was important to align all of the participants including the organisers towards the intention of telling and listening thereby paving a way towards arriving at their ancestral connection to these stories. What was important was not the output but acknowledging the emotions and internal processes that were observed in the process of making the stories come alive with no-judgement. With participants coming from various geopolitical regions and belonging to various religious backgrounds, it was imperative for the participants to identify their voices, their fear, their hope, and their trauma that they carried in their bodies. To achieve this, an initial self-reflection on the term ‘sacred’ allowed the meaning and answer to come from each participant rather than building on a predefined answer of what sacred was supposed to mean or engaging in finding a common definition of ‘sacred’. We honoured their differences and attempted to respect and acknowledge these differences until they started merging at their own pace to the ancestral memories that they carried with the land. It was important that we framed the project with honesty towards our positionality and set the mutual truthful and safe ground at the start. We are not sure if all the participants arrived at the stage of assurance to define their positionality but it was important for us to set the tone of truthfulness to oneself.” Minket Lepcha

“The essence of storytelling goes back to the intention of telling these stories and initiating self-reflection on the listener’s part. In order to reflect on sacred stories in modern times, it was important to align all of the participants including the organisers towards the intention of telling thereby paving a way towards arriving at their ancestral connection to these stories. The focus was on transferring the ancestral knowledge by addressing the ancestral trauma first. These two are interconnected and cannot operate in isolation. What was important was not the output but acknowledging the emotions that were observed in the process of making the stories come alive with no-judgement. With participants coming from various geopolitical regions and belonging to various religious backgrounds, it was imperative for the participants to identify their voices, their fear, their hope, and their trauma that they carried in their bodies. To achieve this, an initial self-reflection on the term ‘sacred’ allowed the meaning and answer to come from each participant rather than building on a predefined answer of what sacred was supposed to mean or engaging in finding a common definition of ‘sacred.’ We along with mentors honoured their differences and attempted to respect and acknowledge these differences until they started merging at their own pace to the ancestral memories that they carried with the land. It was important that we framed the project with honesty towards our positionality and set the mutual truthful and safe ground at the start. We are not sure if all the participants arrived at the stage of assurance to define their positionality but it was important for us to set the tone of truthfulness to oneself.”  Minket Lepcha

“It was important for the participants to be allowed to listen and acknowledge their voices which were hidden within them. These voices were somehow lost with the homogenised labelling of ‘the Lepchas’ as a ‘meek’ community. With the change in the landscape and the culture that is evolving in the hills, somehow the community’s transition from ‘meek’ to ‘wanting to express’ always occurred in polarised political discussions or never took place at all. The internalisation of this trauma remained within them and remains within me also. It was important for the participants to realise that they have a voice inside them and to listen to that voice. In the online workshop a series of self-reflective processes initiated by different facilitators pushed the participants to identify and explore their voices. Many Knowledge Keepers were invited – old and young – and the sessions were designed so they could share their experience which allowed participants to incorporate what inspired them the most from these sessions. It was a conscious decision to include non-Mutanchi Rongkup perspectives in the workshop and open the bubble of Mutanchi Rongkup worldview to remind the participant of co-existence and interconnection acknowledging the respect that we as a community should have with other communities in spite of the trauma and hurt that we carry and was given to us. The focus was on transferring the ancestral knowledge by addressing the ancestral trauma first. These two are interconnected and cannot operate in isolation.”  Minket Lepcha

“In this fragmented and contested borderland of Darjeeling, Kalimpong, and Sikkim social and political life is strongly coined by a self-understanding drawing on ethno-logics and ‘ethnification’ (Karlsson 2011, 6). In order to start an inclusive conversation on how methods can be decolonised (Smith 2012) and which position stories take in theory building (Archibald 2008) an awareness is required that concepts and distinctions based on hierarchies of race, culture, and economic models that still prevail today, were coined by colonial practices and anthropological thought-schools and were most likely not relevant parameters for interactions and relationships in the past. The “Discovering Sacred Lands” project was not about romanticising a pre-colonial past, but about questioning that these distinctions are a ‘given’ – even primordially so – and creating a setting to explore how relationship between humans, land, and other-than-human beings can be formulated while drawing on knowledge and practices passed down within Mutanchi Rongkup community. Such projects of ideating what the future can look like are a baseline for co-creating theory or methods that can truly reformulate what respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility (4Rs) (Kirknesss and Barnhard 1991) in academic work means.” Jenny Bentley

“There is the 5th R, relationship building, to the already mentioned 4Rs in the ‘Discovering Sacred Lands’ project. There was a safe space, creating a language of care and love, and constantly and consciously reminding ourselves to create an environment where the participants were being listened to and valued for their opinion. This was a healing and nourishing process for all of us where we didn’t have to be on the edge for having to defend our ancestry. This was a fragile process where the circle that we created was to be honoured and a pathway for self determination had to be cleared along which the youth could find their own connection to their ancestry and land. The mental health space of the participant was crucial for us rather than the deadline of the project. We held each other throughout the process and reminded each other of the intention, responsibility and sacred space that we came from as a collective. This project also aims to bring the ‘alive and living’ aspect of the community voices in relation to written form of knowledge production.” Minket Lepcha

“With our community fragmented in different layers across the regions due to various reasons, this process was to build a community. We gave participants an option to work in pairs or individually. There were many of them who got to know each other in the process of sharing their commonality or differences forming kinship where the conversations went beyond the project. Many of us found safe spaces within the circle to share personal issues that we went through during the period of the project. We would like to believe that we are still around for each other. We avoided addressing each other with titles and called each other as ‘Anom, Anum, Ing, Tyol.’ (elder sister, elder brother, younger sibling, or friend in Rongring) This itself built a community of its own organically, away from polarised and hierarchical systems, not to separate from the system but to find a voice from within the system and amongst that polarity hoping to create a worldview which will help the future generation to live with respect and reverence to the land that we come from.” Minket Lepcha