World Indigenous Peoples’ Day (Part 1)

This World Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I feel a strong need to talk about these peoples and document their cultures, before we completely lose them in the face of globalization and other factors.

Supposedly a language isolate tribe, the Shompen are the indigenous people of the interior of Great Nicobar Island. Very little is known about their contact with the outside world before the 1840s and there is still a raging debate among the anthropologists about their autonym. However, it is now established that there are at least two language variants among the Shompen and that the Shompen living on the western side of the island call themselves Kalay, and those on the eastern side Keyet, with both groups referring to each other as Buavela.

From 1998-2000, I had the wonderful opportunity of living in the Army Cantonment of Port Blair, and therefore getting to see and interact with some of the indigenous peoples living in the Andamans. About them, you might otherwise read in the published anthropological literature.

Contributed By :

Shriya Gautam