Weaving culture: Indigenous women of Northeast India as agents of tradition and identity

The relationship between weaving, textiles and culture holds profound significance in many societies across the world. The woven material transmits much information about the culture that created it. Since weaving and knitting are activities considered to be the exclusive domain of women in most cultures across the world, women as weavers can be seen as agents of culture and identity. Literary representations have also treated weaving as a medium of women's self-expression. Weaving as a cultural tradition becomes a vital force that establishes women's contribution to the perpetuation of culture. In the context of the Northeast Indian cultures, weaving textiles is integral to the production of culture and the woven textile is a distinctive identity marker of each indigenous group of the region. The woven textiles of indigenous peoples of Northeast India (NEI) embody unique ideas of a culture and act as a means of connecting with the past. Rather than seeing women as passive agents, this paper tries to locate women as agents of cultures. While textiles can be read as sites of memory, which may translate into cultural meanings, the paper also examines how these meanings can be reinvented and shaped depending on the change in conceptual frameworks. The paper shall focus primarily on the textile weaving of indigenous women of Northeast India.