Wancho stories, and as I was preparing a proposal for a post-doctoral research project, I decided that I needed to visit Longding district to identify stories for the animation project.
Since it is a restricted area, I got the permission to visit after several months. I went there first in November 2019, visiting several villages with my new Wancho collaborators and recording stories narrated by the elders. Since they spoke in Wancho language, the audio-visual recordings required translation. I have since returned to the Wancho area six times to translate the work and to introduce some of the young people in the village to the processes of creating animation.
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What was the experience like?
I am the first foreign woman to have visited some of the Wancho villages in the upper area of the Patkai Hills bordering Myanmar. The people were, of course, very surprised to see me when I first turned up in 2019. I was lucky to have two wonderful collaborators from the community, Banwang Losu and Jatwang Wangsa. They are both teachers and are fluent in English. That was important because the elders, who are the storytellers and knowledge-keepers in the community, do not speak English.
I was introduced to the Wancho village, Kamhua Noknu, by Banwang and Jatwang. It is a homogeneous Wancho society consisting of more than 250 households (around 2,000 people). I recorded the memories of the elders of Kamhua and five of the surrounding Wancho villages using a digital DSLR camera. The elders were happy that someone had come to document their memories, which are likely to be forgotten soon. Their society is changing fast with the coming of modern education and a more modern way of life.
The terrain is steep and the roads are difficult: I would go up and down the hills with my Wancho friends by foot. Jatwang sat with me for hours to translate the stories, helped by some others. We have recorded and translated 31 stories, transcribed them in English and in the new Wancho script invented recently by Banwang Losu. That means that we have all the material as bilingual text.
Our manuscript, The Stories of Our Ancestors: Myths, Folktales and Memories of the Wancho of Arunachal Pradesh, is to bepublished by Niyogi Books in 2023. We have also subtitled many of the video clips which are now uploaded in a digital online archive at https://catalog.paradisec.org.au/collections/TD4
The folklore of the tribal groups of India is both unique and similar. While many of the themes recur, the details, characters, places etc are specific. Working with the Wanchos has been a bit different mainly because of the remoteness of the area, which, in turn, has preserved the tradition better than in some other regions.
The Wancho people are still traditional, which not only applies to their way of life but also to their values. Mostly unaffected by the economic changes that “modernisation” introduces, their generosity, care, community-bonding and sense of equality are intact. As an outsider, I was alien to them, but they were always protective towards me and looked after me so well.
For example, in every Wancho household, a visitor is invited to have food, unlike tea offered to visitors elsewhere. The Wanchos are deeply connected to their land, and are resourceful, resilient survivors: they know how to live in difficult physical conditions in remote places with limited access to facilities.
The folktales belong to an ancient oral tradition. Have they evolved in in their retelling over the years?
The storytellers remember different versions. Each storyteller remembers a story according to his own understanding, experience and interpretation and will recount it in his own way. They like to discuss and compare the different versions, then nominate the person who knows the story the best to recount it for the recording. The younger people may know some parts of the story, but when it comes to making a recorded version, it is always an elder who is authorised to tell it. While both men and women know the folklore, it is usually the men who are t