Promotion and Preservation of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and the Traditional Environmental Knowledge of Garo Communities in Bangladesh

Introduction And Backgound

Jointly with other indigenous groups residing in Bangladesh, also known as the Garos are deemed to be an ethnic group deriving from Tibet (Gain, 1995). The estimated Garo population is about 0.1 to 0.13 million people (Burling 1997; Drong, 2004 & Islam 2008, cited in Muhammed et al, 2011) spread across India and Bangladesh. Garo people of Bangladesh call themselves ‘Mandi’. As stated by Bal (2007), around 100,000 of Garo people who live in Bangladesh are residing mostly in the northernmost part of the Mymensingh district within a few kilometres of the Indian border. Smaller settlements of Garo people are also found in other parts of Bangladesh such as in the Modhupur forest near Durgapur, Bhaluka, and Haluaghat, and other small groups live in Sunamganj, Sylhet and Joydebpur (Sangma, 2010) while other groups live in Dhaka. The Garos have intrinsic knowledge about nature and biodiversity, and the social, economic, cultural and religious rituals of these people are involved in a circle of the ecosystems. Garos thus depend on the varied environments for their food, economic, cultural, social and spiritual existence. Having an extravagant association with the surrounding nature has facilitated Garo communities to know different plants, herbs and the use of these plants as foods, and they also know the technique of how to protect and conserve these plants. In this context, this chapter aims to discover and document Garo people’s traditional environmental knowledge such as climate indicators, traditional medicine and housing techniques and explore their role during seasonal activities and in preserving relevant portions of the traditional knowledge system.

Traditional Knowledge And Values Of Garo People

Garo people have a matrilineal family system where property owners and transferring authority are inherited by women (Biswas et al, 2015), and as noted by Majumdar (1978), these people were shifting cultivators, conceiving and practising jhum – shifting agriculture. In the pre-colonial period, women in Garo matrilineal communities played a major role in jhum production. Women’s responsibility was to collect the forest resources while men looked after the land and household (Sangma, 1998). The youngest daughter of the family inherited the property, a form of ultimogeniture (Bal, 2007). The husband of the youngest daughter had custody of the land but no authority to dispose of the land without the consent of his wife and it was also his responsibility to look after his wife’s parents until their death (Bal, 2007). Garo people are one of the two matrilineal societies in Bangladesh whose traditional practice includes the inheritance of property through the female line. Being organised in a matrilineal society, Garo children take their mother’s title and belong to her kinship group (Sangma, 2010).