The Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh have cracked the wellness code

The community of Apatani, its large goalkeeper, maintained this holiness thanks to an attentive network of rituals, legends, well-being traditions, community ties to everything and a slow lifestyle. “We are aware of each square inch of our land and each space of Ziro Valley serves its use,” explains Dr. Subu Tasso Kampu, the first doctor of the Apatani community who is also president of the Apatani Women Association Ziro (Awaz). “We cultivate fish and rice in the same water and the bundles in land raised between the fields are used to cultivate millet and other crops.” Each decision, ritual and festival serves a practical objective in the Apatani cultural landscape, recognized for an “exceptional universal value” by UNESCO in 2014: to live as simply and properly as possible.

“Our meals are mainly boiled dishes with a minimum of spices. We use Tandeyo, a substitute for native alkaline salt that distances acidity and goiter, a thyroid condition widespread in the Himalayas, ”explains Kampu. Tameyo can never tend under #Guthealth, but his power is deeply in depth, transmitted by tradition, not on social media. For the outside world, however, the Apatani community has been largely on nose caps and tattoos of the community of former community. One of the legends widely mentioned on the reasons why Apatani women wore wooden nose caps is that they wanted to seem less attractive to escape the kidnapping of neighboring communities. Face tattoos – a vertical line from the forehead to the nose and five lines on the chin – were a visual marker of the community and reinforced group cohesion.

“You will no longer see the plugs of nose and no longer faces tattoos because they were prohibited decades ago,” explains Taku Chatung, social activist and former president of the Association of young Apatani, an organization that has put pressure on the said ban while hindering members of the community in securing education and employment outside the state. Whatever the changing social dynamics, the Apatani world is a study in order. As we climb higher, in front of the fenced kitchen gardens, in front of the sacred Pinson named after the women who planted them, the last layer is 1,500 feet above the valley.

G.Petermann