Author Tara Douglas wrote the book Myth, Memory & Folktale of the Wancho Tribe of Arunachal Pradesh: The Stories of our Ancestors along with Jatwang Wangsa. The Kolkata Mail correspondent Priyanka Dutta caught up with Tara Douglas about the new book. Excerpts..

Why did you think of writing about the oral wonders of the Wancho community?

Tara Douglas- I had traveled and documented stories of other communities in North East India, as well as in Arunachal Pradesh specifically.   My background is in animation film, and I completed my Doctorate in Digital Media for a project titled Tales of the Tribes, Animation as a Tool for Indigenous Representation (2016) at Bournemouth University in the UK.   

For this practice-led research, I coordinated an Animation Workshop in Itanagar in 2013 to study and adapt a story from the state for a short animated film.  The event brought young people together from several different tribal groups, and as the majority were from the Tani groups who hold Abotani as their first ancestor, one of the Abotani stories was selected.  However, one of the participants who had been invited was from the Wancho community, and he expressed the wish to work on one of the Wancho stories, after the workshop.  He could not identify a Wancho story for his animation project, as he had gone to boarding school and later studied outside the state.   He asked me to help him, and so I began to research the Wancho stories.  Very limited published material was available, and I could see that I would need to do field research.  Finally, I got the permit to visit Longding District in 2019, and by that time I had managed to raise some funds from the Indian Government for a research project titled The Stories of our Ancestors.  I went to Longding District for the first time, and on that 30-day visit, I went to some of the upper Wancho villages, traveling with Jatwang Wangsa, who was a friend from Kamhua Noknu village.  He introduced me to storytellers in his village and some of the nearby villages. As a teacher, he could translate the stories that I recorded from Wancho into English. 

The original plan had been to find a story and to work with some young people from the community, and also with some students and young professionals of film in India, and adapt the selected story for a short animated film. The story that was chosen was the Story of the Gourd that was told by Jatwang’s late father.  It is a mythical story of the creation of the first Wancho chief in the village.  As mentioned in the book, the theme of the two brothers recurs.  In the Wancho society, the eldest son usually inherits the land and title of the family, but the story explains how this system is also turned around. 

In our story, two god-like brothers came from the sky. The elder brother is tricked to stay on earth. Later in the story, there are two gourds that spring from the soil. The gourd that contains the elder brother is destroyed, and from the second gourd emerges the first chief. The story has mythical elements but it also has facts, as it details many of the foundational cultural practices, for example, the equal division of meat captured during a hunt.  It also traces the evolution of the Wanchos from hunters to agriculturalists and setting up the political system.

Since the Wancho tribe leads a secluded life, how did you research for the book? Did the tribal people open up to you easily?

Tara Douglas- I was under the impression when I first arrived in Kamhua Noknu, that I was the first foreign woman to visit the village. The village people were in general shy but friendly, and slowly we became familiar with each other and could communicate a bit. However, the language issue is my main handicap, as I speak very little Wancho.  Mostly, I would be introduced by Jatwang to the storytellers, who would then decide what story they wanted to tell and I recorded it without understanding anything.

 It is Jatwang’s commitment and cooperation that made the project possible because it was very hard work to translate the stories from Wancho to English. I would play the video recordings on my laptop, and painstakingly, we would translate and create subtitles in English.  Also, there were different versions of the stories, and sometimes the stories were difficult to unravel and understand.  For the Wanchos, it was ultimately important that the names of the actors and the places where the stories happened were correct, so there was a lot of discussion about that. I have now visited the area 12 times, so the Wancho people are used to seeing me around and they like the collaboration and telling stories in front of the camera. Perhaps they consider that I am courageous enough to keep traveling to such a remote area.  It takes plenty of time to develop friendships, and revisiting counts for everything.

What fascinated you to write down these stories?

Tara Douglas- As mentioned, I was looking for an original story we could adapt for the medium of animated film. The more I studied the stories and became familiar with the place and people, the more fascinating it became.  That is because the stories have a context, and they speak about the ancestors of people who still live in the villages.  I had assumed that some of them were fantasies, but all the stories relate to the way of life: even those that have animal or creature protagonists show the relationships that the Wancho people have with the more than human world.  The stories are organic, there are twists and turns, there are heroes and villains and they speak about human behavior.  They are not fantasies, they had happened at a particular place, and I was standing at that place.  For instance, one of the stories, that of Omaan Jing that had been told first by Tangkaam Pheam, was how a particular forest had been given by Mintong village to Kamhua Noknu.  A couple of years ago, the story was recounted as evidence of why the young men were entitled to cut a large tree to make a new log drum for one of the Paa (morungs).  Therefore the oral traditions were the proof of how the Wancho villages came into being, and what the relationships were in the past between the villages.

How long did it take to write down these amazing stories?

Tara Douglas- I recorded the 32 stories in the book on the first visit to eastern Arunachal Pradesh. However, it took a lot longer to prepare the material for publication.  The first translations were done as soon as possible because once I was out of the district, I would not be able to find anyone who could translate. However, for the publication, the accuracy had to be checked and verified, especially the names of the people and places mentioned in the stories. We could not risk publishing wrong information which would have had consequences. The publication was originally intended to be bilingual, in both English and Wancho, so I insisted that the stories had to be written again in Wancho using the newly invented Wancho script.  Jatwang did all that hard work, and we are now working on the layout for the Wancho language version of the book, with the help of the Executive Director of the Wancho Literary Mission, Banwang Losu, who is also the inventor of the script.  It will be the first literature to be published in Wancho, other than some workbooks and textbooks, as they are teaching the script in some of the schools. It took about two years to deliver the text and illustrations for the book to Niyogi, and another two years for the publication to come out.

The way of life of these tribal people is changing. What kind of changes did you see?

Tara Douglas- The way of life of the Wancho people is certainly changing, even in the more remote villages.  The roads are improving, and that brings traffic and contact with the outside world: previously these villages were quite isolated.  Then there is the modern education system; most children now go to school, and that is bringing about changes because previously children worked alongside their parents in the field and forest.  Then there is the exposure to media and most young people aspire to have a mobile phone. They are influenced by Bollywood and other mass media entertainment, and they also have new ambitions and imperatives that draw them out of the village to seek employment, as there are few opportunities for income in the village.  I have recently completed a research project to document the traditional Wancho dwellings and community houses for the Endangered Wooden Architecture Programme (EWAP), administered by Oxford Brookes University in the UK.  The village vista and landscape are changing fast, and each year there are more modified constructions taking place. Some are modifications from the traditional house to the frame style of the house, but new building materials such as RCC and corrugated steel sheets are also becoming popular.  One can expect that the villages will look very different in 10 years. 

With the neglect and decline of the traditional buildings, the cultural practices are also declining.  The elders in the village are very concerned about this, and in the videos which are now archived, they urge the younger generation to maintain the traditions and to listen to the stories.  At least some of those stories are now written down in the book, though of course text is different from the oral way of imparting knowledge.

What will be your next work? Will it be again on some secluded tribe of India?

Tara Douglas- I always want to do more work: there is a lot that needs to be recorded, documented and archived before it is lost, as the knowledge is disappearing with the passing of the elders.  Culture is so important for the sense of identity, belonging, and wellbeing, there is also so much that an urban person can learn from those people who are in contact with the soil.  However, it is difficult to get grants to support this work, and at present there is nothing ahead though I keep applying for grants through Adivasi Arts Trust (an UK-registered charity).   Everything requires at least some funds now for travel, equipment, facilities, and village activities.

I would like to complete the animated story of the first chief who emerged from a gourd, but that requires funding, as it would take many months to do and requires a team.  Unfortunately, the project was mismanaged and terminated during the covid pandemic by the North-Eastern Hill University, where it was based.  I then attempted to do research about the Andamanese stories in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.  That is a culture that has almost vanished, and government policies prevent any research and collaboration there. 

My methodology is always to collaborate with the custodians of the knowledge, the people from the community. A cross-cultural collaboration like this becomes a two-way learning process that is enriching and meaningful. Despite many years in this field it do not become easier to get support, because the resources seem to be overwhelmingly directed towards digital technological development and AI, whereas this should be the juncture to record the indigenous knowledge and revitalize it, because this is the knowledge that was passed down from ancestors and it is still relevant today, once one looks deeply into it. 

Adivasi Arts Trust:  www.adivasiartstrust.co.uk