Mnemonic Communities of Displaced Indigenous People: Northeast Indian Narratives of Cultural Memory

Abstract

The displaced indigenous people in Northeast India belong to multiple ethnic groups scattered across the region. Most communities have a shared traumatic experience as the base of their collective remembering. Even though their relocation trauma resonates with others among the displaced, it does not surpass their strong ethnic predilection. Social processes of remembering to establish the community by drawing and redrawing the boundaries of different periods or eras in its historical trajectory. Cultural memory plays a significant role in revisiting and reforming the historical trajectory, especially in a space where cultural artefacts possess strong roots. Contemporary literature from the Northeast traces the trajectory of its history with the help of the available knowledge system and the lived-through experiences of ordinary Indigenous people. The study focuses on Easterine Kire’s A Respectable Woman (2019) and Mamang Dai’s The Black Hill (2014) as narratives of cultural memory in reconstructing the mnemonic communities of the indigenous population in Northeast India, helping them in the process of identification by confronting the hegemonic conflicting memories.