Earthkeepers Project: Noklak Border Mission

Abstract

This article describes exploratory fieldwork in Noklak District, Nagaland, conducted by the Earthkeepers team based at The Highland Institute, Kohima, in April 2023. The Earthkeepers Project is an environmental humanities initiative funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada, and the team comprises three Canada-IDRC Myanmar Research Fellows and one coordinator. Broadly, the Fellows are mandated to carry out climate-change-related research along the Indo-Myanmar border from the Indian side. Specifically, the team is collecting indigenous ecological knowledge and farmers’ perceptions of climate change. In this report, we describe our Noklak study area and the Khiamniungan community residing there, give short notes on the villages visited, and briefly record our observations on the local people’s climate change perceptions and the challenges facing a community divided by an international border.