The Highland Institute

14/09/2026

Hearty congratulations to Highland Institute staff member Khrieletuonuo Yhome for publishing her first book, a volume of poetry entitled "Longings". We are all extremely proud of you and hope that this book will be the first of many!

01/09/2026

A big congratulations to the Summer School Cohort of 2026! 🎊🎓✨

What a wonderful summer it has been with you all! We learned from each other, exchanged ideas, challenged our thinking, laughed together and created so many wonderful memories along the way.

We are incredibly proud of each and every one of you and wish you all the very best for the journey ahead. Keep learning, growing, questioning, and shining! 🌟

30/08/2026

Final Research Proposal Presentations by our amazing Summer School Cohort. What wonderful time of brainstorming, feedbacks, and enriching conversations as they brought their research journeys to this stage!

13/08/2026

We were delighted to have Assistant Professor Sahana Ghosh from the National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology and Anthropology with us for the Summer School. Thank you for sharing your insights and making the session so engaging!

20/07/2026

Summer School is in full swing! ☀️ So wonderful to have cohorts from so many different disciplines under one roof, sparking lively discussions, fresh ideas, and meaningful conversations every day. Here's to a summer of learning and collaboration!

10/06/2026

Thirteen Years

Founded on 10 June 2013.

With gratitude to our students, colleagues, partners, and friends.

The Highland Institute
10 June 2026

05/06/2026

https://www.morungexpress.com/from-nagaland-to-the-world-how-indigenous-knowledge-is-shaping-climate-action-ecological-justice

As the climate crisis accelerates, collective responsibility is no longer optional, it is essential. The Earth is sending clear signals that demand immediate action. The question is no longer if change will come, but how humanity guides it and how fast.

01/06/2026

Kecharhe Alun – Kachingvai: the announcement of death

In 2017, when the Highland Institute was still known as The Kohima Institute, we began documenting one of the great oral epics of Highland Asia: the Karbi Kecharhe Alun in Karbi Anglong, Assam.

This short video presents the opening kachingvai sequence — the “announcement of death” — from the Kecharhe Alun, a Karbi funerary epic traditionally performed by a charhepi, a female dirge singer. The full epic can extend for more than thirty hours and is usually performed across several days in connection with death rituals.

The Kecharhe Alun is not simply a lament. It is a ritual, poetic, and cosmological guide. Through song, the charhepi helps lead the soul of the deceased toward the village of the ancestors. Along the way, the epic evokes rivers, mountains, forests, paths, spirits, animals, kinship relations, and remembered landscapes. It is at once poetry, ritual action, oral history, ecological memory, and a map of the Karbi moral universe.

This recording was part of a long collaborative project led by Dr Ds Teron and Dr Michael Heneise, together with Karbi scholars, translators, poets, and cultural workers. The aim was not only to record the performance, but also to transcribe, translate, transliterate, and preserve the epic with the seriousness it deserves.

When we first shared this video on YouTube in 2017, many viewers responded to its haunting beauty. But beyond its musical power, this recording is also a reminder of how fragile oral traditions can be. A voice carries a world — and when such voices disappear, entire landscapes of memory can become harder to hear.

We share this again with gratitude and respect for the charhepi, for the Karbi community, and for all those who have worked to keep the Kecharhe Alun alive.

A song of death. A path for the soul. A living archive of Karbi memory.

Kecharhe Alun opening sequence

30/05/2026

A song of youth and ageing in Zapami village, Phek district, Nagaland.

Recorded by the Highland Institute several years ago, this short video features a Naga elder singing a song remembered by many viewers for its beauty, tenderness, and haunting simplicity.

When we first shared it on YouTube, people responded deeply. Some called it a beautiful folk song; others thanked “grandpa” for keeping the song alive. One viewer wrote that the singer had since passed away, making this recording even more precious as a small archive of voice, memory, and cultural inheritance.

Songs like this carry fragments of village life, personal experience, language, humour, longing, and the passing of generations. They remind us that oral traditions are not abstract “heritage” — they live in particular voices, particular bodies, particular places.

We share this again with respect and gratitude.

If anyone from Zapami or the wider community can help identify the singer, the song, or the meaning of the lyrics, we would be very glad to learn more and preserve the context properly.

A voice remembered. A song carried forward.

A Naga elder sings of his youth and ageing, in Zapami village, Phek district, Nagaland, India

28/05/2026

This short video was captured in Mezoma village during the Hornbill Festival in December 2022, when a traditional stone pulling ceremony was held to commemorate the 142nd anniversary of the Anglo-Naga Vitho, the peace agreement remembered as having been concluded at Mezoma on 27 March 1880.

The monolith pulled that day measured around 14 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 1.9 feet thick, weighing an estimated 7–8 tons. Using traditional bamboo ropes, participants hauled the stone through the village with chanting, coordinated effort, and remarkable physical endurance.

Among many Naga communities, stones are not simply monuments. They are historical witnesses. Monoliths may commemorate treaties, achievements, feasts, jubilees, reconciliation, and other important collective events. They become part of the village landscape, holding memory in material form.

The Mezoma ceremony brought together history, ritual, village solidarity, and public remembrance. It was accompanied by traditional chanting, morung visits, village walks, and a communal feast — reminding us that heritage is not only preserved in museums or archives, but also through bodies, voices, landscapes, and shared labour.

Stone pulling is therefore not simply a spectacle. It is a living archive: a way of carrying memory forward, together.