Get to know a nearly-extinct tribe from the remotest corners of Nagaland. Phejin Konyak is the great-granddaughter of a tattooed head-hunter, Ahon, who was a prominent member of the Konyak tribe of Nagaland. He was one of the first interpreters to travel with the British ethnographer JH Hutton during his writing of the Diaries of Two Tours in the Naga Hills in 1923. Phejin lives in Shiyong village, where she runs the Konyak Tea Retreat and a farm. She travels to remote villages, interacts with tattooed elders and documents their tattoo patterns, poems and sayings. These have been collected in her book, ‘The Konyaks – The Last of the Tattooed Headhunters’ published by Roli, and are the subject of this Sarmaya Talk.
April 21, 2018
