Indigenous peoples have different cultures, customs, traditions, and languages. Indigenous people practice their respective cultures while living in plain land with the non-indigenous community. They often wear traditional dresses and use various handmade ornaments and tools, as well as talk in their distinct language in times of communicating in public places. When a non-indigenous community interacts with the indigenous people then they find it interesting and somewhat funny as they do not see such things often and are not habituated to with it as well. Therefore, maximum non-indigenous people use slang language and express bad comments on food habit, lifestyle, and culture of indigenous peoples that hurts them. Sometimes when any indigenous girl goes outside wearing her traditional dress then she had to hear a lot of harsh words. It happens mostly on social media but it is seen offline as well. They do it because of not know indigenous people’s culture and languages.
For the purpose of addressing the current diversity challenge faced by the indigenous community in our society one of the resilient youths named, Probin Tripura is doing both online and offline workshops for addressing the situation. Probin arranged three online exchange sessions with both indigenous and non-indigenous community.
All these webinars have been organized focusing on the issue of bullying against indigenous peoples’ culture, food habits, and language. We have focused on the bullying against indigenous peoples’ culture in the first episode and the panelists have discussed their thoughts and experience about this issue. We have invited four youth from the indigenous and non-indigenous communities. The indigenous panelists have discussed their experience as a victim and they have been bullied many times in their school, college, and university life. They have also discussed the actions that we can take to stop it. We got so many thoughts from them like the reasons behind bullying, the people who do this, and the way how this can be stopped. Indigenous youth are being bullied because of their appearance, lifestyle, dress up, and identity by their Bengali friends and people. The people bully them for a fun and it hurts the victims. Some indigenous youth cannot accept it normally and then some react negatively. But some can accept it positively and try to make them understand that it is not fair with them and also tell them about their different cultures and languages. In some cases, the Bengali students also ask the indigenous students politely about their cultures, food habits, and everything. Indigenous youth are being bullied mostly at the college and university level. The second episode of the webinar series has been conducted specifically focusing on the issue of bullying against indigenous people’s food habits. Indigenous people’s food habits are different from the Bengali or mainstream community. Most of the indigenous people live in a very hilly remote area and therefore traditional foods are not available there. As a result, they have to depend on the foods that are available around them. Sometimes indigenous community people are bullied because of their different food habits. We have invited four youth from indigenous and non-indigenous communities to discuss this issue and also to hear directly from the victims like the indigenous youth. The third episode of the webinar has been organized specifically focusing on the issue of bullying against indigenous people’s language. Indigenous people’s languages are different from the Bengali or mainstream community. The indigenous students come to school, college, or university to study from different places and they can’t speak Bengali properly as it is a second language for them. So, their Bengali pronunciation is also quite different than the Bengali students. They are criticized and bullied because of their pronunciation and speaking problems. We have invited four youth from indigenous and non-indigenous communities to discuss this issue and also to hear directly from the victims like the indigenous youth. So many reasons for the bullying against indigenous people’s culture, food habits, and language came out from the whole webinar series. The findings and thoughts that we have accumulated from all the webinars are listed here-
After completing the two-phase online webinar, Probin now is working on an offline session in different universities. Educational institutions are most important in order to address the current cultural challenge indigenous people are facing while interacting with other students. So Probin believes that, if the current cultural and diversity challenges can be addressed to the university students then it will be more fruitful. Probin however, now relentlessly working in three particular public universities. His resilient initiatives for the sake of creating a peaceful society with the acceptance of diversity of every culture will help to tackle the current cultural challenges faced by the indigenous community in our country.