ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides a point of convergence for artist's individual trajectories of interest in 'performance as articulation of human rights'. It proposes from this perspective that has been based on artist's experience of dealing with the arts as well as social issues. The book explores a variety of experiments in 'voicing' the concerns and the pathos of the indigenous. It discusses oral traditions of imaginative expression, making of a dictionary as 'cultural protest', the music traditions, cultural festivals, dance, and theatre among the indigenous. The indigenous communities all over the world, and most pertinently in those parts of the world that were colonies formerly, have been facing an existential uncertainty precipitated by a great ecological and cultural debacle. The cultural landscapes of these communities and the ecological cocoons within which they have shaped their worldviews are rapidly being wiped out.
