Asserting Naga cultural identity and challenging colonialism in Easterine Kire’s Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered

Abstract

Focusing on the Indigenous identity of the Angami Naga people of Northeast India, this article investigates Easterine Kire’s first Naga novel written in English, Sky is My Father: A Naga Village Remembered to explore how Naga people suffer from land dispossession and cultural dispossession during the time of colonialism. Through the lens of colonial discourse, this study examines the scenario of colonialism in Nagaland to describe how the British colonial encroachment creates the legendary Battle of Khonoma, fought between the British Government and the village of Khonoma. Taking insights from postcolonial theorists like Bill Ashcroft, Franz Fanon, and others, this article further discusses how the native people not only bear the white man’s burden but also attempt to dismantle the compartmentalized colonial system through their reaction to the colonial encroachment to their land and cultural colonialism of Christianity.