Weaving Place and Identity: Textile Ecology, Gender, and Material Culture Among the Hill Karbi of Assam

Abstract

Traditional textiles among Indigenous communities are not merely aesthetic artifacts but material practices through which relationships between body, place, ecology, and social memory are continuously produced. This article examines the weaving traditions and dress practices of the Hill Karbi of Assam, Northeast India, situating textiles within a framework of material culture, gendered labor, and ecological knowledge. Based on intensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two Karbi villages in East Karbi Anglong district, the study explores how women’s weaving practices transform local fibers, dyes, and motifs into embodied expressions of identity and belonging. Garments such as the pini, pekok, and arleng achoi are analyzed as textile forms that encode cosmological values, gendered authority, and environmental relations through floral, faunal, and geometric designs. Drawing on theories of materiality, dwelling, and place, the article argues that Karbi weaving constitutes a form of lived geography in which landscapes are translated into cloth through skilled bodily practice. Far from signaling cultural decline, contemporary adaptations—such as the use of synthetic dyes and hybrid designs—demonstrate the resilience and creative renewal of Karbi textile traditions. The article positions Karbi weaving as a dynamic textile ecology in which landscape, gendered labor, and indigenous knowledge are continually rewoven into the fabric of everyday life.