Abstract: 

This presentation discusses a collaborative, community-based research approach grounded in Indigenous storytelling, developed by Indigenous storyteller Minket Lepcha, with whom I collaborated between 2021 and 2025. Centered on the project Discovering Sacred Land, this initiative was co-created with the Mutanchi Rongkup community in the Sikkim and Darjeeling Himalayas (India). In this presentation, I will contextualize our experiences within current theoretical frameworks, including land as pedagogy, practices of care, and the broader decolonial context.

The project brought together 40 Indigenous youth and 17 Knowledge Keepers, comprising artists, conservationists, academics, and traditional Knowledge Holders, through 13 interactive online sessions. These sessions facilitated self-reflective engagement with ancestral land-based knowledge, rooted in interwoven understandings of sacredness, community, and ecology. The primary aim was to support Indigenous youth in reconnecting with and reclaiming a relationships to their ancestral land and their land-based knowledge within a contemporary framework.

Following the online sessions, youth participants met with Elders of their choice, gathered stories, and expressed them through creative mediums of their choosing, including comics, tapestries, animation videos, photo essays, and poetry. This process was supported by mentors drawn from the group of Knowledge Keepers and continued through WhatsApp exchanges and in-person workshops.

A central focus of this approach was the creation of a safe spaces – through awareness of intent, practices of care, inclusive language, and community-building – enabling youth to explore and articulate new ways of understanding themselves, their community, and their land-based connections.

In this presentation, I will contextualise our experiences within current theoretical approaches, such as land as pedagogy, care, and the decolonial context.