Yievinyii Naga
A quiet loss is unfolding in our classrooms. Students can explain world wars and distant geographies, yet struggle to narrate their own tribe’s origin story, the meaning of shawl motifs, or the purpose of the morung. This is not a failure of children; it is a gap in what we choose to call “education.” In learning about the world, many are forgetting themselves.
Before formal schools, the morung served as our first university. It taught discipline, respect, courage, craft, farming wisdom, storytelling, and community responsibility. Young people learned who they were before they learned what the world was. Today, many classrooms offer books without belonging and lessons without cultural anchors.
When children grow up detached from their roots, admiration for everything foreign quietly replaces pride in the familiar. Culture begins to feel outdated. Identity fades not with noise, but within syllabi and exam routines. Yet our shawls are history in thread, our songs are archives in melody, our festivals are living textbooks, and our elders are walking libraries. None of this is peripheral to education; it is foundational.
If this drift continues, the next generation may know brands better than tribes, speak fluent English but not their folktales, pass exams yet fail to inherit identity. Naga culture risks becoming a staged performance for festivals rather than a set of daily values guiding life.
The answer is not to reject modern learning but to balance it with ancestral wisdom. Schools can invite elders for storytelling sessions, teach the symbolism of shawls and crafts, integrate morung values into moral education, organize village immersions, and assign projects documenting tribal histories. Culture should be treated as knowledge, not extracurricular activity.
We are likely the last generation that still carries grandparents’ stories in living memory. If we do not pass them on, they may end with us, leaving future children to read about Nagas as if from a distant past. Let students learn about the world, but first let them learn about home. True education gives wings without cutting roots. Nagaland needs children who not only pass exams, but carry forward a civilization.
Hiekha + NagaNext Educational Initiatives: two young educators reimagining education with roots in Naga heritage and eyes on the future.
