In the hills of Phek district, nestled within Nagaland’s verdant landscapes, the ethos of community reverberates through every village. The numerous youth and women societies, and tribal and students’ unions in these villages of the Northeast-Indian state paint a picture of social cohesion. So it made sense that for 51-year-old Seno Tsuhah, a social activist from the Chakhesang tribe, sustainable development always began with initiatives that furthered a community’s well-being.

Born in the early 1970s, Seno Tsuhah grew up in Chizami village perched amid the hills of the district, less than 100 kilometres from the capital of Kohima. At the time, an armed conflict was being intensely fought between the Indian government and Naga groups, who have been demanding sovereignty for decades. Tsuhah later became a member of the youth society and the women’s society in her village and was actively involved in various initiatives including women’s health care. Then in 1996, she started engaging with the North East Network (NEN), a regional women’s rights organisation, through the Chizami Women’s Society. She would go on to spearhead several projects supported by NEN, including starting a seed bank collecting several varieties of Indigenous seeds and Chizami Weaves, an initiative aimed at promoting local weaving and giving women weavers livelihood opportunities.

Through these initiatives, Tsuhah and the others eventually realised that to improve the lives of the women in the community, it was essential to focus on ecology and Indigenous resources. Tsuhah, who also manages a school, started advocating for ecological farming practices for women farmers. This included the move to traditional varieties of millet, a cereal crop, to cope with changing climate conditions in Nagaland.

In 2008, she was awarded the Stree Shakti Puraskar, an award by the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development for doing “outstanding work” in the realm of women’s health. She also received the Governor’s Commendation Certificate for Social Work in January 2017, the Peace Channel Award (conferred on individuals in Nagaland) and the Balipara Foundation Naturenomics Award in 2020.

To know more about her journey, Mongabay spoke with Tsuhah over a video call. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Mongabay: What was Chizami like when you were growing up?

Seno Tsuhah: I was born in the early 1970s. Since I can recall, the community in Chizami has been tightly connected and is very cohesive. I grew up living with my parents and with my grandparents around. We would have fun with our family, neighbours and friends; going to the forest and foraging, picking up berries and climbing trees. That was also a time when the conflict was active. So we were also living in fear.

Almost all the Naga villages were gripped with fear. My parents had very painful memories. Chizami was burnt down in 1964. That was the time when women were grouped and put under house arrest and men were taken away. When the whole village was burnt, it was painful. My mother saw a young person being shot and bleeding to death. They couldn’t help because they had to run away from that. My parents passed on those memories to us and we lived in fear, especially from men in uniform.

Otherwise, it was a fun-filled childhood. We were fortunate that our parents sent us to school and gave us a formal education. My parents, especially my mother, had never been to school. So, on her side of the family, my brothers and I were the first generation of children going to school.

Mongabay: How did the experience of violence affect the community in Chizami at the time?

Seno Tsuhah: There was a fear psychosis, people had lost their livelihoods and had gone through psychological trauma. Everything was affected in the Indo-Naga conflict and there was a loss of trust because of the fear psychosis.

But, we have an egalitarian, solidarity-based community and always came together to help each other, especially in times of crisis – whether it is a conflict where we were subjected to the very painful experience of our village being burnt together or during happier times.

Mongabay: How did you start getting involved in community-centric initiatives?

Seno Tsuhah: When a girl is born in my village, they become a bonafide member of Chizami Women’s Society. I was a part of it, but started actively working with CWS in 1997. In the initial days, the Women’s Society focused on addressing social issues in the community. One initiative, as I recall, taken by several of our senior members, was to control alcohol use in the village. By the time I joined, CWS had started working on peace-building, and relief work and helping women, who had been subjected to violence.

Then, as a student, I became a part of the students’ union, which looked after the students’ welfare. We would discuss issues and call for action. We organised a cleanliness drive, seminars on career guidance, events and campaigns.

Mongabay: Was there a point you decided that you wanted to become more involved in these initiatives and even spearhead them one day?

Seno Tsuhah: I always wanted to commit myself to the larger community, I wasn’t just an individual, a student, a young girl going to school, college and church. I always want to be a part of the change. I feel deeply about not just helping myself and my family, but helping others. The contribution of women to the family or the larger community is never acknowledged. I wanted to do something about that and claim the place that we deserve.

Then in 1996, I was sent by the CWS to accompany the elders for training on group formation and community development, which Monisha Behal [a founding member of NEN] had organised in a neighbouring town. The women’s society encouraged and motivated me by saying that they require younger people like me to be a part of this training. And so, I got engaged with the North East Network.

After coming back, the five of us who had participated met with hundreds of women from Chizami and I facilitated a session about what we had learned. That was the first time I was sharing my learnings through group activities. They were very engaged in the discussion and I started thinking that I could do something with these women. That was the juncture that made me relook at myself. From then on, the CWS asked me to be a part of the executive team and I was made the finance secretary in 1996.

[Later] I became a coordinator for the North East Network chapter in Nagaland.

Mongabay: In all of the community building projects you were doing up until that point for the development of women and youth in the community, how much did the environment, ecology and sustainable development feature in the discussions you were having?

Seno Tsuhah: At that point, in the mid-’90s, one of the issues that CWS was focusing on was ways to improve livelihoods. We started looking at kitchen gardens and collective farming. Then, when we started engaging with NEN, which was focusing on women’s reproductive health at the time, we thought of starting the Chizami Women’s Health Centre.

We realised that in order to do those things, we needed to improve the health of the women of our community. We needed to think about and get involved in our agriculture, ecology, indigenous systems and regenerating our resources.

So around that time, we started looking at health, nutrition and traditional, local healing systems that involved different types of herbs. We would take a walk in the forest areas with women to identify the plants and the local resources. These local knowledge systems were becoming less and less visible as people were switching to allopathic medicine. We would also organise a traditional food potluck from time to time. We didn’t know at that time that what we were doing was a part of the slow food culture. In a way, we were trying to document the healing systems, although we did not look at it that way. For us, it was a way of celebrating life and our dishes, which we wanted to revive. It was done spontaneously.

Later, we also got talking about climate change and its effects. We became convinced that indigenous ecological principles should be at the core of our work and started looking at modes of production, land use and consumption from the lens of sustainability and equity.

I have grown up with my parents in the community and neighbourhood and have been a part of the farming life. Hunting and gathering practices have become over-excessive, which is not good for our community. The keystone of our livelihood is agriculture – jhum cultivation (shifting cultivation traditional to northeast India) and collective farming. At the time a lot of policymakers condemned jhum cultivation and blamed it for deforestation. At CWS, we tried looking at the good aspects of jhum cultivation. It is a storehouse of genetic diversity. The whole community participates in this form of shifting cultivation, which ensures equity in terms of land use. On the other hand, plantations are very individualistic, and only one person benefits from this. Additionally, we also started looking at climate-compliant crops like millet. When we were doing a study in 2009, we asked our community, especially the women, what were the foods in the past and in the present, and what they would want to eat in the future. That’s the time when women brought up millets. So, since 2011, we started promoting millet-based agro-biodiversity. The millet is a climate-compliant crop and can withstand heat. It is nutritious and also ensures ecological security. We travelled around, showing video clips about millet farming in different villages. Women, men and children could relate to this. We also tried to influence the government through signature campaigns and even met one of the union ministers.

We also started identifying indigenous seeds [including millet seeds and others] and engaged women and young women to be a part of this. Eventually, CWS with some help from NEN started a seed bank for upto 10 villages in Phek district. It formally opened in 2017-18.

Mongabay: At this time when you were assessing millet consumption, were millets being eaten? Did the interventions of CWS and NEN influence more people to take up millet farming?

Seno Tsuhah: It [millet] had already disappeared from our plates. I remember only having it at home when I was in high school. Only one or two families in our village were still cultivating just for continuity. Millets are the first grains that are harvested in the season, and so they are vulnerable to bird attacks. Many people have now started cultivating them, but they still face bird attacks. In addition to this challenge, a lot of families have given up agricultural lands. One reason is that young people are leaving farming. So, it is only the elders and the parents who are involved. It is becoming an issue in all the villages everywhere.

But now, farmers are adapting new ways of cultivating millets. Usually, we sow millet seeds in March. Now because of the bird attacks, we sow it in August, so that it is harvested in November, similar to the time of paddy harvest.

What has been your contribution to these initiatives?

Seno Tsuhah: I contributed to the idea building, organising, connecting with people, telling our stories and getting experts to come to a small village like Chizami, to be a part of this journey of positive thinking and change. I’m more of an innovator, somebody who thinks out of the box, who thinks all kinds of crazy things. I’m fortunate because my co-workers and mentor Monisha Behal at NEN are open to and support these ideas.

Mongabay: One of the biggest projects NEN has been involved in is Chizami Weaves. Can you tell me about the journey with that project? 

Seno Tsuhah: We started Chizami Weaves in February 1998. A few of us, including Monisha and I, started exploring projects we could do together. We decided to do something to improve the livelihoods of local weavers. We roped in a young designer, a friend of Monisha’s. The main objective was to help the women get access to livelihood opportunities and, most importantly, promote the unique textile tradition of the Nagas. Our textiles and our attires are a part of our identity and culture. It has so many social meanings. Every tribe has its own unique attire. As a Chakhesang woman, I mostly wear what we weave. But that is not for sale.

But for today’s generation, it is important that our skills meet the needs of the community, and that we create livelihoods through this. So we started looking at products beyond the traditional mekhalas (skirts worn by Naga women) and shawls, which women weave. This is when Rajiv Gautam, the designer, brought up the ideas of cushion covers, table runners, and table sets. In the first two years, we didn’t even use a measuring tape because traditionally we use our hands and feet to measure the length of cloth. But, we had to change this considering the needs of the market. It took us two years, and from seven weavers we eventually grew to involve around 600 weavers. In 2017, we realised that because this is growing we can’t be with NEN, which doesn’t work for profit. So in October 2017, we registered as another entity, which we named Nenterprise.

Overall all the women are earning and are happy. It has brought a change in their outlook. They have become leaders in their villages. They are not only getting these opportunities to earn, but are proud to be a part of a movement reviving the traditional skills and the Indigenous knowledge system. Chizami Weaves also looks at local knowledge systems around natural dyes, and harvesting local cotton. There are elderly women (more than 60 years of age), who have this knowledge of growing and harvesting natural fibre and can pass this on to the younger weavers, who are just 15 or 16 years old.

Mongabay: It seems like you are always busy with these community-led initiatives. How does your family react to this?

Seno Tsuhah: They used to complain at times. After finishing college [in the capital city, Kohima], I returned and became the breadwinner for my siblings and family. Many years back, my mother scolded me a lot when my colleague and I went to the neighbouring town to make a phone call for work. This was in 1999-2000 and we didn’t have phones. It was already dark and there were no vehicles. We walked 21 kilometres back to my village. We started at 6 p.m. and reached at 11 p.m. That was the time when the conflict was still active and a lot of extortion was happening on the highways. We happened to be walking on the highway.

Other than this, my family has been very supportive. Since last year, I have been looking after a school, which has 93 students in another community. My life is just that – I go to school in the mornings and am there from 9 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. After that, I come home and see my family. Sometimes I disappear for weeks since I have to work from our NEN resource centre. During those days I go back and forth between the Centre and the school. My family does miss me then.

I have now touched 50 and am not as active as I used to be. Earlier, I used to walk 8-9 km (5-5.6 mi) a day, but now have become much slower. I’m also out of the management of NEN since December 2020. I come in whenever I’m free. But I am still able to do things I am passionate about and am still a part of CWS and a contributing member of this village. For instance, after this interview, I will be going to collect firewood for the church.

This slow pace has helped me reflect and become conscious and mindful. I am realising that compassion has a boundary too and there are certain things we won’t be able to do. For me, respect and dignity are very important and others should also be treated with this respect and dignity. So the journey towards justice will never end. It will continue with new challenges and new opportunities. I will be a part of this in small ways, along with my community, the larger women’s network and the indigenous movement, I will keep trying in small ways.

Read more: Two young women in Nagaland are leading a crusade against e-waste

Banner image: Naga activist Seno Tsuhah gives a talk. Image courtesy of Seno Tsuhah.

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Aditi Tandon Senior Production Editor

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ActivismAgroecologyClimate ChangeEnvironmental PoliticsHuman RightsNature-based Climate SolutionsOrganic FarmingNagaland

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