Human cultures have through time adopted and adapted diverse habitats and utilized, altered and nurtured resources to meet countless everyday needs. Consequently, the process of resource harvesting and domestication of plants and animals have stimulated interdependence between natural and human-induced biodiversity. There is no doubt that horticulture over the last eleven thousand years has come to occupy a crucial place as an agricultural enterprise, attracting investors and indicating its potential towards economic growth. Its value is further amplified in its scope to increase productivity and employment growth to address poverty.
Though horticulture provides an array of options and possibilities, it has nonetheless been a very difficult issue where it has involved mega-corporates in relation to indigenous peoples, their land and resources. Bio-diversity has been an essential asset and need of indigenous people, who have over the years practiced the use of land and resources in ways consistent with their value, knowledge system and way of life. However, with the advent of corporates, whose primarily objective is profit-making, it has brought these two different paradigms and values in conflict with each other.
Central to this conflict has been the questions of land ownership and sustainable management of resources. This has necessitated creating alternative paradigms that addresses the vacuum caused by diversion of subsistence modes of production that has for generations served the purpose of meeting the needs of the family and community.
Land and related resource rights are elementary to indigenous peoples existence, since they constitute the basis of their economic livelihood and are the source of their spiritual, social, cultural and political identity. Dominant development approaches have however viewed them as non-productive and detrimental to the supposedly modernizing aspirations of states. As a result, many developmental policies are directly or indirectly weakening and affecting indigenous modes of production. In the name of development, various policies have dispossessed indigenous peoples of their lands and natural resources; undermining their dignified survival.
At this vital point in time, when Nagas as indigenous people are exploring ways to define affective modes of production to meet their needs, it is essential to engage in a public and democratic discourse to generate solutions from indigenous perspective. Tragically, the repetitive cycle of having ‘expertise’ from non-indigenous experiences with state-centered paradigms has often led to solutions derived on convenience and interest. Such approaches have proven to be unsustainable and detrimental to the survival of indigenous people.
A vital lesson from the Expo teaches us that it is time to invest on indigenizing modes of production and strengthening local knowledge systems, so that, a paradigm that affectively increases production and respects the values and dignity of the people can be realized. Throughout history, peoples and societies have transformed dramatically when new ways to increase food production has been realized. Perhaps modernizing the indigenization of production is a respectful solution that finds new ways to use land and to maximize quality of life.
