Indigenous knowledge key to quality education — Dr. Theyiesinuo Keditsu

MOKOKCHUNG — The Fazl Ali College (FAC) Annual Lecture, an initiative of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), unfolded on the theme ‘Quality education for indigenous research & nation building’ at the college's conference hall in Chuchuyimpang village, Mokokchung district, on November 3.

The lecture drew luminaries from various institutions, including FAC, Mokokchung College of Teachers' Education, Nagaland University, Clark Theological College, and Jubilee Memorial College.

It highlighted a provocative call to rethink education through a decolonial prism, urging Nagaland’s institutions to reclaim indigenous epistemologies amid the neoliberal tide.

Dr. Theyiesinuo Keditsu, poet, academic and advocate for indigenous cultural conservation, who currently teaches at Kohima College, delivered the inaugural address.

Keditsu opened her topic by dissecting “quality education” — a word that has joined the special lexicon of words, lumped with vague buzzwords like "women empowerment," "development," "Nagaland for Christ," and "political solution."

She probed the meaning of quality education and questioned whether institutions could become welcoming spaces or if they would remain inaccessible to their members.

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Despite challenges such as crumbling infrastructure, bureaucratic inertia, and resource scarcity, she pointed out that Nagaland's public colleges continue to thrive, functioning as vibrant spaces where the idea of the nation is rebuilt daily.

Keditsu framed "quality" as both an aspiration and a mirage, highlighting the challenges of the four-year undergraduate programme, where teachers are expected to innovate despite administrative shortcomings.

In a "thrice-colonised" Nagaland —British rule, the Church and Indian state — and now absorbed into a fourth colonisation of neoliberal markets and digital algorithms, she said "quality" demands scrutiny "by whose standards?" and charted a path forward through a decolonial triad — ontology (being), epistemology (knowing), methodology (doing) as a framework to rethink education.

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On decolonial ontology, the academic contended that the colonial education erected a hierarchy of being with the European "Man" as humanity's yardstick.  She however, said the indigenous ontology locates being in relationship — with land, kin, and the more-than-human word. Education, she suggested, must transform institutions devised to uproot students into spaces of re-rooting, where belonging and relation define learning.

She emphasised the need to decolonise epistemology by challenging Western hierarchies that prioritise written, abstract knowledge and the English language. Citing Walter Mignolo, she advocated for "epistemic disobedience" and argued that research shouldn't rely on oppressors to initiate decolonisation. Instead, she urged indigenous teachers and students to take charge of their own knowledge journey, reclaiming community knowledge, oral traditions, and lived experiences as valid theories.

On NEP 2020, Keditsu praised its nods to rootedness, multilingualism, and interdisciplinarity, but also warned of its paradoxes. “A centralised state cannot easily decentralise epistemic power,” she asserted.

She urged the academician to be vigilant of homogenisation saying, “Indian knowledge systems" may mask upper-caste epistemes as national heritage.

Highlighting the difficulty of mother-tongue instruction in multilingual classrooms as per the NEP, she encouraged teachers to read policy “against the grain” to inhabit and reinterpret it creatively.

Analogising Nagaland's "oppositionless democracy" as a classic oxymoron, Keditsu observed educational institutions as one of the last bastions where dissent and dialogue survive.

She also proposed an indigenous research ethos grounded in three commitments — contextual curricula- decolonial teacher training-community partnership and local-language scholarship. 

Additionally, Dr. Keditsu remarked that “quality must emerge from indigenous ground, where knowledge is relational, research reciprocal, and nation-building plural.”

She further called for reordering the seminar’s title to “Indigenous education for quality research and nation-building.” This reversal, she argued, shifts the centre of gravity and aligns with Fazl Ali College’s vision.