Indigenous Performing and Visual Arts of the Mising Community of Assam: Tradition and Cultural Identity.

Abstract

The Mising community of Assam constitutes one of the major indigenous communities of the Brahmaputra Valley and possesses a rich cultural heritage expressed through performing arts, visual arts, material culture, festivals, oral traditions, architecture, and traditional knowledge. Historically associated with the riverine environment of the Brahmaputra and its tributaries, the Mising community has developed distinctive cultural practices through continuous interaction with agriculture, ecology, social institutions, and changing historical circumstances. Performing arts such as Gumrag dance, OiNitom songs, traditional music, and festival performances are closely associated with agricultural cycles, community life, courtship, celebration, and collective memory. Visual and material arts, particularly handloom weaving, traditional dress, textile motifs, bamboo and cane crafts, ornaments, woodwork, and stilt architecture, represent important expressions of Mising aesthetic values and indigenous knowledge. These practices are particularly significant because they are not isolated artistic activities; rather, they are embedded within everyday life and function as mechanisms for transmitting cultural values, historical memory, ecological knowledge, gender roles, and collective identity. Mising women have traditionally played a particularly important role in weaving and the preservation of textile knowledge. At the same time, processes of modernisation, urbanisation, migration, formal education, commercialisation, and digitalisation have transformed the conditions under which these traditions are practised. Some traditional forms have declined, while others have been revitalised through festivals, cultural organisations, educational initiatives, and digital media. This article examines the major performing and visual arts of the Mising community and explores their contribution to cultural identity. It argues that Mising arts should not be treated merely as folklore or museum objects but as living indigenous knowledge systems through which the community negotiates continuity, change, and contemporary identity...