ITANAGAR, 14 Jan: An international workshop on ‘Training and resources for indigenous community linguists (TRICL)’ is being held at Rajiv Gandhi University (RGU) from 13-18 January. It is being hosted by the Arunachal Institute for Tribal Studies(AITS).
The workshop is being co-organised by AITS Director Professor Jumyir Basar and by Assistant Professors Zilpha Modi and Wanglit Mongchan, in collaboration with the Centre for Cultural-Linguistic Diversity (CCLD) co-directors Dr Mark W Post and Dr Yankee Modi from the University of Sydney in Australia, Dr Kellen Parker Van Dam from the University of Passau in Germany, Professor Stephen Morey of LaTrobe University in Australia, Dr Eline Visser of Stockholm University in Sweden, Tashi Tshewang of the Bhutan Oral Literature Project, and Thomas Smith from the University of Indiana USA.
This is the second time that the AITS is hosting this unique international and inter-cultural collaborative TRICL workshop, the first time being in 2024.
According to CCLD co-directors Yankee Modi and Mark W Post, the focus of TRICL is to train members of indigenous language communities across the Himalayan region to document aspects of their own languages and cultures before they disappear. In his opening remarks, Dr Post mentioned that more than 300 indigenous languages had been lost in USA and Australia in the past 100 years, which has caused great and lasting damage to indigenous peoples and their communities, increasing suicide rates and school dropout rates and leading to loss of identity and other social harms.
On the other hand, maintaining indigenous languages and cultures leads to great benefits to social and cultural heritage, cognitive development, community resilience and scientific knowledge.
Assistant Prof Modi and Prof Basar also highlighted the critical role being played by the AITS’ Centre for Endangered Languages and other RGU staff and students who are working to document many languages and cultures of Arunachal Pradesh.
To attend the TRICL 2025, indigenous participants have travelled for many days from remote areas of Nepal and Bhutan, as well as from Nagaland, Sikkim, Assam and Arunachal, joining a like-minded community of indigenous researchers who are taking a personal initiative to document their own languages and cultures to preserve their knowledge for future generations.
According to Dr Yankee Modi, “Of course the assistance of government and universities is very important, but it is not enough and we cannot sit quietly and wait for something to happen. If we as indigenous people want our knowledge to be preserved, we must take the initiative and lead this work by ourselves. The focus of CCLD is to provide the training, resources and support that indigenous researchers need to do this.”
Dr Mark Post and Dr Yankee Modi thanked the AITS for their warm hospitality and tireless efforts to facilitate organisation involving so many international and local scholars and participants, at the same time noting the great difficulties many have had in obtaining permission to visit Arunachal.
Dr. Post said, “The PAP and ILP systems have an important purpose; however, I urge that permissions be relaxed for bona fide foreign scholars to conduct research in Arunachal Pradesh. In today’s world, international and Indian scholars have the basically same interests and aims, as well as shared challenges that we must confront together, and we can gain great mutual benefit from direct communication and collaboration. On the other hand, we gain nothing from barriers to communication that were imposed many decades ago for reasons that are no longer relevant.”
The CCLD and the AITS have already discussed plans to hold a third TRICL workshop in Doimukh in 2026, and are inviting interested and genuinely committed members of Arunachali indigenous communities to be in touch if they should wish to participate. Above all, they highlight the extraordinary cultural and linguistic diversity that exists in Arunachal, which they describe as the nerve centre of cultural-linguistic diversity in the entire continent of Asia.
Dr Yankee Modi said, “I have always felt the importance of my own language and culture as a Milang person, but after living and working overseas I have come to understand its global significance as well. And that is true for all indigenous communities of Arunachal Pradesh. These are some of the oldest and most resilient indigenous cultures in the world;however, the difficult task that we now face is to sustain them into the modern era. This is the main aim of our workshop, and the main goal of collaboration between the CCLD and the AITS.”
