Indigenous communities worldwide face a critical challenge: preserving their heritage. Heritage isn’t just monuments or artefacts, it’s identity, memory, and diversity. It connects past, present, and future, strengthens communities, and inspires creativity. Losing it means losing a part of ourselves. When Indigenous heritage is lost, the loss isn’t just local. The world loses invaluable knowledge, ways of life, and cultural richness. Heritage Remix highlights these treasures, mixing old traditions with new ideas to help culture live on and grow.

Where history lives, wellness thrives

Cultural heritage connects us to our ancestors and helps us understand who we are. Research suggests living near historic places can improve our health, happiness, and connections with others. Heritage also inspires people to create art and share cultures, helping us respect and understand each other better.

Apatani, my tribe

I come from one of the indigenous tribes in the Northeastern Parts of India called Apatani. My community is very small but a special one.

A world in isolation yet content

We were in isolation from rest of the modern world until the early 1940s, that's when Indian government started their expedition to properly discover us.

Back then, life was slow but full, place was small and green. There wasn’t much to do for fun unlike today, but we still found joy in the little things.

Ziro (1944) by Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf

Embracing modern life, increasing gap between the traditional culture

As globalisation is making our world more homogeneous the gap between the traditional culture and modern life in different parts of the world is growing at a rapid rate and with it people’s memory of their ancestors are disappearing.

Fast forward to today, a lot has changed here at Ziro as well, which is the native place of the Apatanis. I have witnessed many changes in such a short amount of time, from the way we dressed and looked like (Women used to have facial tattoos and nose plugs but it was banned in 1970s, to combat discrimination and stigma faced by the rest of the society) to the instruments we played like the wind instrument known as Ellu (it is made out of rice-plant's stem). Also change in religion from our animistic beliefs and also acceptance to technology.

Rituals are an important part of our tribe,
it brings us together

For my tribe, ritual is a way of bringing different families, villages come together to deal with issues, but now with the changes in the society that we have experienced, be it due to religion, modernisation, we are slowing growing apart.

Growing up rooted yet feeling lost from culture and home

In communities that have traded their roots for modernisation many no longer recognise who they are once they leave their home and have no way to reconnect, since ancestral knowledge often isn’t recorded especially in marginalised communities.

Same is the case for us in the Apatani diaspora. We remember sitting with our last tattooed grandparents, watching them prepare ritual offerings, listening to stories in our mother tongue, admiring the hand-carved bamboo mugs they drank from, or helping in the rice fields.

When we move away for education or work, those tangible links to home, those people, places, ceremonies, and even the language begins to slip into nostalgia rather than continuity. The reminders that kept us rooted slowly fade and we no longer know who we are or where to look for answers.

These conversations and my personal experiences led me to ponder...

How might we help Apatani disapora reweave traditional rituals and artifacts for today’s lifestyles so the rituals, artifacts and their language thrive for future generations?

Introducing Heritage Remix

It is a contemporary ritual inspired by the Apatani Myokó festival, using technology to bring Apatani diaspora group together, so we could learn about our history, use it to provoke conversation and promote it. It aims to strengthens community ties, and keeps cultural memory alive, no matter how far one is from home.

This is my interpretation of the ritual. The emotional core is the same, but the mechanics are updated to be more accessible to my audience.

Instead of happening every year like the Myokó festival, it happens every month on the 19th where the interactive vessel gently vibrates and upon lifting it, it reveals a message reminding that the ritual day is approaching and also our ancestor Aba’s spirit coming to bless us.

(Myoko is a festival, which is celebrated for harmony between the spiritual and human world)

On the 20th, an ancestral voice invites the participant to share a meal with a friend.

Placing their vessels on the platform acknowledges the presence of two souls and links them.

Then it starts telling stories of the past that can be paused with each sip.

Once the drinks are emptied and the story finished, a blessing invites quiet reflection.

Inspirations from the past

I drew many inspirations from original artefacts and picked some elements from each.

The wooden base represents the community platform for gathering like the 'Lapan', which is a sacred and central platform used by the Apatani tribe which serve as a gathering place for social rituals, village meetings, and ceremonies.

Just like the preparatory phase where members of the community reminds each other about Myoko preparation, which starts way back from October, in this version on very 19th of the month, the vessel gently vibrates and reveals message to reminds. Message represents people communicating and vibration represents the movement of the community men, where they march with 'Tapr' leaf after successful monkey hunting as a signal of key transition to preparatory phase.

The white light color represents those days when the ancestral spirit comes at the Nago (small hut) under the moonlight.

Ambience of drinking moment to create the bonding experience.

Ancestral voice representing as our ancestor Abotani, whom we believed was our forefather. A visual representing their formless presence. Text in English to help learn and understand the language.

Pausing of story symbolising that the spirit is present and is drinking along with us and takes a pause when they do.

A question at the end which would invite discussions. The question would change every-time and so would the story.

The process

During my research and interviews with people from my community, I discovered something interesting and that was, weakening relation between rituals, artefact and language.

The rituals were performed lesser and lesser, which led to lesser use of artefacts being used on those special moments and along with that language usage be it words or phrases during those rituals were also disappearing.

I discovered about this connection after talking to people from one of my user group whom I call "Everyday community members", those are who are living and have spent significant amount of time at our hometown.

After talking to everyday community members I was curious, about the diaspora group, whom I also call the 'Memory bearers', they are who have had some sort of early memories with our grandparent's way of life.

I wanted to know how much do they know? What's their relation to the community?

And I noticed that there was clearly some gap happening.

After talking to them my desire to reduce the gap grew and my project started accelerating towards bringing those three elements, rituals, artefacts and language together for the diaspora group.

Why do some traditions gets passed on?

I was facing a little difficulty understanding which part of the heritage do I or should I work on. So, I thought to myself that culture is all around us and I was curious about, why do some traditions gets passed on while some forgotten or vanish?

Animals as mentor

To find answer for my lingering question, I went to learn from animals, with whom my community has a deep relationship with in our cultural and spiritual practices.

And what I learnt was that, in social learning on animals, different types of information can be passed on:

• Perishable (“Knowing where”)

• Non-perishable (“Knowing that”)

• Skills (“knowing how”)

• Signal variant (local “dialects” of fixed message)

• Symbols

Out of the 5 different types of information that gets passed on, the core to traditions are skills and symbols. They are the behaviors and signs that define a community and are the richest in meaning when we preserve or adapt them. Whereas in my community's case both of them are disappearing.

I went back to the same statement that 'Culture is all around us, what can we learn from it?'

Challenges around culture are universal

While specific contexts of culture may differ but the underlying issues might be the same in many cases.

So I went on to reached out to another set of interviewee group, "the practitioners" who are the hands-on keepers of their tradition. I reached out to some of them from different parts of the globe. After talking to them I learnt that the common thread across their practice that is still helping their crafts to sustain is to master the “How” and embrace the “Why”.

Co-creating, with the people for the people

Cultural nuances are important. One of the challenge I was facing was what part to take on to work on and at what level? And there was also worry of cultural misappropriation. Even though I am from the community doesn’t mean I can change things however I want.

Also a major internal struggle I was facing was, how to balance the religion aspects, as a lot of out rituals and beliefs are tied to animist and sacrificial practices.

So, I went on to do some brainstorming with people from my community and explored the direction that the people could relate to. A common theme among my initial interviews and brainstorming sessions was the mention of the festival Myokó and how people have managed to adapt to it in someways even after the religion conflict.

One specific part of this month long festival that echoed in the interviews and from which I took inspiration was "Ajin Buñn" where you invite your ancestral friends that you could have made because of your parents and their parents and their parents. You invite them to offer alcohol, meals and forgive and forget any grievances and reconcile as a fresh start.

Inspiration from home

Taking inspirations from artefacts used on the festival back at home I started my prototypes.

I prototyped with questions like:

• How can I evoke nostalgia, what level of realism is needed to feel it? What are the key elements?

• Can a participatory experience make people feel included and involved?

I also tried exploring if just image can trigger curiosity and spark conversations. What elements of the image sparks it? What senses and role is creating the desire to create bond.

Could play making and re-enacting the actions without clear guidance spark curiosity to explore?

A question was, do I want it to be a ‘Remix’ or a ‘Replay’? I decided to take the route of ‘Remix’ as my way of remembering and staying in touch with my roots, and for anyone else who wishes to do the same.

Should it be one for all or all for one?

I was experimenting with form as well. Whether it should be a wearable that when put in any object turns it into a ritualistic object or a vessel itself being the artefact.

The missing piece

Even when everything seemed to fit in the box, something felt missing. Upon testing the prototype I was posed with a question:

"If we think practically, why would someone come back to this again?"

I realised, technology involvement would spark curiosity in them and make a decent one time experience but if I want to make this part of people's lives, something needs to be different.

Source of truth to the rescue

That made me go back to this book called "Myoko and Myoko Hymns" by Gyati Rana and I found out about 'Ayyu', which is competition of singing oral traditions to ensure the transfer and continuity of our oral literature.

This was done on different pars of the rituals during Myokó festival and today it's almost gone and many of us don't know about it and instead Bollywood Hindi songs are played.

I made a small pivot from just any story to story about our past, celebrate our origin along with community gathering and a reflective moment at the end.

Patching things together

Voices from the community

(For audio: right click -> show all controls -> play sound)

Words of encouragements

Reflection

I was wrong to assume younger generation didn’t care about it. Through this project whomever I spoke to, they showed concerns about the current state and showed desire and hope for remedy.

This project helped me learn aspects of my community I didn’t know about before. There are so much meaning and beauty on each steps of the rituals, the way of our lives that I can’t comprehend immediately.

I see my project as just the start of a lifelong journey which could act as a conversation starter for collective effort initiation.