Landscapes of Power
The cover of Dana Powell’s book, Landscapes of Power, taken from a painting by Diné teacher and muralist James B.
Nimisha Thakur
Nimisha Thakur is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, New York. Her PhD research project focuses on gendered articulations of indigeneity that challenge the racialization of landscapes seen in Hindu nationalist understandings of indigeneity in India. Nimisha centers her work in small river islands of the Brahmaputra river in Assam, northeast India amongst a community called the Mising who call this region home. By focusing on oral traditions amongst Mising women, Nimisha asks the question: How do Mising women’s songs and stories, immersed in placemaking in the Brahmaputra river islands, challenge Hindu nationalist discourses of exclusory citizenship and indigeneity in India?