With support from K4DM, Saktum Wonti has turned her anthropology background into action, working alongside Earthkeepers in Nagaland to safeguard indigenous knowledge and promote conservation efforts. Through community-led research, youth workshops, and community dialogues, this Naga scholar is helping ensure that both the land and the wisdom rooted in it endure for future generation.
Background: Roots in a Divided Land
Saktum is from the Khiamniungan tribe in Nagaland, whose villages are split by the colonial-era border—with approximately fifty in India, and approximately 150 in Myanmar. In some cases, families live on one side while their ancestral farms are on the other. This imposed boundary has disrupted movement, divided families, and weakened traditions tied to the land.
She studied in Kohima until her bachelor’s degree and began her Master’s in Anthropology during the COVID-19 pandemic. The discipline was still very new to her at the time, “Anthropology opened my eyes to the holistic study of humans.” she recalls. She later joined Earthkeepers as a Canada-Myanmar IDRC Research Fellow, which gave her a chance to reconnect to her ancestral roots and bridge theory with practice. The team’s work is different from the extractive, top-down research she encountered in academia and instead follows a community-led approach. Every project begins with meeting village elders and youth leaders to explain the purpose of the work. Then, once the community agrees to the study, they advise on the interviewees, the location of the interviews, and what is to be shared. This co-production of knowledge, she says, “makes sense for the people as well” and returns ownership to the community.
She simultaneously works on projects like Tasting Tomorrow, which imagines how food traditions might change under future climate conditions. And then, together with Kevide Lcho, a Canada-Myanmar IDRC Research Fellow from the Angami tribe, she filmed a documentary entitled Healing Hands about a traditional healer from the Angami Naga tribe. Her other formative experiences have come from Earthkeepers’ fieldwork and community workshops—where climate change, deforestation, and cultural erosion intersect.
A Forest at Risk: Reguri Village
In November 2024, the Earthkeepers travelled to Reguri Village in Meluri District to gather data on indigenous climate knowledge and farmers’ perceptions of climate change. However, upon their arrival, the Earthkeepers noticed a significant problem: deforestation. Hillsides were stripped bare, trucks full of timber waited to haul loads away, and most families were involved in logging. The intense logging threatens the fragile ecological balance and water security. Moreover, the forests in the area are home to endangered species and a vital part of a wildlife corridor between Assam, India, and Sagaing, Myanmar. Deforestation was a recurring topic in their field studies, and young teachers later sought them out, as they were particularly concerned about the consequences of deforestation but hesitated to raise their voices publicly.
From Logging to Community Conservation: An Unexpected Resolution
During the November 2024 visit, in response to a request from the village schoolteachers, Earthkeepers hosted a small seminar at the Government Middle School about climate change and the threats posed by deforestation. They spoke to around 80 people during a graduation ceremony with children and parents, aiming to deepen the village’s understanding of sustainability and the urgency of preservation.
Unexpectedly, just a month later, the Village Council passed a resolution in December to protect a section of forest from logging and hunting. While many actions lead to decisions, it is possible that Earthkeepers’ informal session influenced this decision. The change was immediate and concrete: the resolution established a community conservation area, banning hunting and tree felling.
Saktum, Kevide, and Tumuzo were asked back again early the following year. In March 2025, they held a seminar engaging primarily elders to share stories of how the forest had changed. In this interactive session, they reported on rivers running lower, fish disappearing, and fewer wildlife sightings—signs of both climate change and intensive logging. Many children, they found, drop out of school as early as eighth grade to work in the lucrative timber trade, with no alternative livelihoods to keep them in education. Because secondary school requires living in town and paying hostel fees, families often cannot afford to send their children, trapping them in a cycle that limits future opportunities and access to financial resources. Reguri’s isolation, coupled with minimal resource and knowledge exchange between villages, has only deepened these challenges. With its parent K4DM Phase II Project coming to an end in December 2025, there was a need for Earthkeepers to alert other institutions and NGOs that could continue the work and offer training on alternative livelihoods such as beekeeping. For Saktum, the experience reinforced the power of calm, non-threatening advocacy in creating openings for change, while also revealing the complexity of sustaining it. However, their efforts show that interventions, when grounded in trust and local interests, can support communities in safeguarding their ecological future.
From Guns to Binoculars: Rethinking the Future of the Forest
In Choklangan Village, Noklak District, Saktum, along with her teammates, Kevide Lcho and Tumuzo Katiry, helped run a full-day environmental workshop for schoolchildren aged between 6-12. Through games, art, and storytelling, the students explored the value of forests, imagined their village in ten years, and debated how to dispose of waste responsibly. Another problematic issue in these communities is hunting. Many of the boys of Choklangan Village were hunters, so in one of the sessions, they were encouraged to reflect upon the following: if you love the environment but there is nothing left to protect, what would you choose—guns or binoculars?
So, in one of the sessions, they narrated two stories: one about a child who loved and cared for the environment, and another about a hunter whose actions harmed it. In the hunter’s world, only a dry and barren land remained, while in the first child’s story, a lush green forest thrived because nature looked after him in return.
At the end, participants were asked to choose between guns and binoculars, and many chose binoculars.
The children’s drawings revealed contrasting visions: some imagined lush green forests, others depicted polluted villages dominated by cars and concrete.
Workshops like these were initiated through informal discussions with a youth group in front of the fire. They foster intergenerational learning and raise awareness based on dialogue, not directives, and invite shared reflection. For Saktum, the Choklangan workshop illustrated an innovative approach on how environmental stewardship can be seeded in the next generation through culturally rooted education.
Biodiversity Festival: Keeping Indigenous Traditions and Knowledge Alive
The Earthkeepers have taken a keen interest in projects like the Biodiversity Festival run by Northeast Network NGO, which aims to safeguard both the land and the wisdom rooted in it. The festival supports women of diverse backgrounds through activities such as seed exchanges from different regions, reviving traditional climate-resilient crops. These exchanges expand the variety of seeds available, preserving plant diversity and enabling farmers to experiment with crops suited to shifting micro-environments.
Beyond agriculture, these efforts are part of a larger fight to protect indigenous knowledge from disappearing, a key pillar of Earthkeepers mission. Many stories of the Nagas have been passed down orally, usually within institutional village houses known as morungs, but these traditions are fading as younger generations learn English before their own languages and study curricula that often omit local history. This shift risks the loss of cultural and critical knowledge. Yet a youth-led awakening is taking root, with young people documenting elders’ stories, ensuring that indigenous wisdom remains a living inheritance.
The aim is to share some of the Nagas’ climate resilience knowledge with other vulnerable regions, including the Himalayas, Arctic, and Amazon. Through ongoing efforts such as the Ekologos International Project, partners are working to gather indigenous knowledge into a shared database, enabling joint learning and collaboration across these regions.
Why This Work Is Different
For Saktum, the significance of Earthkeepers’ work lies not just in the reports they publish, but in the way the organization operates, trains their staff, and knowledge is gathered and shared. By co-producing research that is community-led and co-organizing culturally relevant workshops, they are reversing the long history of extractive research in Nagaland.
In a region where climate change is altering both ecosystems and cultural practices, this approach ensures that adaptation does not mean erasing identity. As agents between research and community, Earthkeepers aim to spark conversations and efforts through innovative teaching, knowledge-sharing, and collaborations for long-term conservation and resilience.