Cultivating memory: Plant humanities and indigenous ecologies in Easterine Kire’s Sky Is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered

Easterine Kire’s Sky Is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered presents Khonoma, an Angami Naga village, as a community whose cultural life is closely shaped by its relationship with the natural world. Agriculture, forests, animals, rituals and seasonal rhythms are not merely elements of the village setting but integral to its everyday existence. This paper examines the novel through the perspectives of Plant Humanities, Indigenous Ecological knowledge, Multispecies relationships and Cultural Memory. It argues that cultivation and the community’s engagement with vegetal life contribute to the preservation of inherited knowledge and cultural identity. The discussion focuses on rice cultivation, seed-sowing rituals, granaries, forests and the villagers’ relationships with animals and spirits. It also considers how colonial violence disrupts not only the physical landscape but the agrarian practices that sustain community life. By reading Khonoma as an ecological and cultural archive, the paper explores how Kire connects land, cultivation, memory and Indigenous ways of understanding the living world.