Sunday, May 24, 2026 - Radio Intifada Show: Sovereignty Beyond Borders This week, on Radio Intifada, we consider what sovereignty means beyond the borders communities are relegated to, from Iran to the Himalayas. We’re bringing you a conversation between a Kurdish filmmaker and an Ahwazi human rights researcher. Together, we’ll consider what sovereignty and anti-imperialism means for ethnic minorities in Iran as the US-Israel war against the country goes into its 4th month. Then, we interview Indigenous Kinnauri filmmaker Nihaarika Negi about her short film, Tenfa, which had its world premiere last month at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. Misha Choudhry and Nihaarika talk about the relationship between oral traditions and Indigeneity in the South Asian context and more.

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1. Hello and welcome. This is Radio Antofada coming to you from Los Angeles on KPFK, a production of
2. Suwanna Region Radio, a weekly review of politics and culture from Kolkata to Casablanca. I'm Rana
3. Sharif. Radio Antofada will temporarily be moved to a KPFK podcast, but will soon return to KPFK's
4. airwaves. Until then, be sure to check out our weekly shows at kpfk.org. This week on Radio
5. Antofada, we consider what sovereignty means beyond the borders communities are relegated to,
6. from Iran to the Himalayas.
7. We're bringing you a conversation between a Kurdish filmmaker
8. and an Ahwazi human rights researcher.
9. Together, we'll consider what sovereignty and anti-imperialism mean
10. for ethnic minorities in Iran
11. as a U.S.-Israeli war against the country goes into its fourth month.
12. Then, we interview indigenous Kina Nawari filmmaker Niharika Nagy
13. about her short film, Tenfa,
14. which had its world premiere last month
15. in the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles.
16. My co-host Misha Chaudhry and Neha Arika talk about the relationship between oral traditions
17. and indigeneity in the South Asian context and more. But first, I'm turning it over to Misha
18. for a discussion about how to understand Kurdish and Ahwazi struggles within the broader context
19. of anti-imperialist struggle. Over to you, Misha. Thank you, Rana. I'm Misha Chaudhry and today I'm
20. joined by Hamoun Dolitshahi and Jude Al-Awazi to talk about Kurdish and Awazi struggles in Iran.
21. Khamoun Doladshahi is a Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker and founder and CEO of Zagros Film LLC, a Los Angeles-based studio dedicated to creating, developing, and funding bold new stories for both film and television.
22. Born in the Kurdish city of Kermanshah, Iran, Khamoun came to the United States as a refugee in 2010.
23. His work explores identity, migration, and the nuances of cultural navigation in the diaspora.
24. Jude Alwazi is an Awazi human rights researcher focused on raising awareness about the cultural, political, and human rights issues facing the Awazi Arabs.
25. She seeks to preserve Awazi identity and amplify the most marginalized Awazi voices.
26. Thank you so much for being here, Hamoun and Jude.
27. Thank you for having us.
28. Yes, thank you for having us.
29. So for our listeners who are new to learning about Kurdish and Awazi struggles in Iran,
30. I'd love for both of you to start with just a brief overview of who Kurdish and Awazi peoples are and what their relationship to Iran is.
31. The Ahawazi Arabs that are now within the superimposed boundary of what we call Iran are the indigenous people of the southwest region.
32. We have been in this land prior to what is termed as the Arab or Islamic invasion.
33. And there's historical record, both in the textbooks and in the archaeology that indicates such.
34. So it's very much this line that's pushed that, oh, the Ahawazis are invaders.
35. They came with the Arab invasion when Islam was expanding.
36. And you can hear a lot of similarities between how the Iranian regime under both the Pahlavis and the IRI talk about Ahwazi.
37. It very similar to the way Israelis speak of Palestinians that they invaders they outsiders This is not their land they so lucky that we given them you know space here So we been on that land
38. and certainly we do know there also have been Arab, there was an Arab migration to that region
39. as well during the Islamic expansion. So both of those are true. However, the area was always
40. inhabited by indigenous Arabs. And there is a quote by a very esteemed Iranian historian,
41. Iraj Afshar, that said the Ahwazi Arabs are the indigenous inhabitants of Ahwaz since the
42. Ahmeneid period, 2,500 years ago, with two kingdoms. And this was all in this region.
43. So the issue we're facing is that both during the Pahlavi dynasty and the IRI is that both of those governments sought to erase us, utilizing settler colonialist policies.
44. And there's documents online to prove this.
45. And we refuse to be erased.
46. you know the this is who we are this is our culture um we've been on this land and we refuse
47. to be erased beautiful truth um thank you for that historical context about the hawazi people
48. i think we have a lot in common um the way i introduce the koors are is koors are the largest
49. population of people without the country but largest ethnicity of the country there are 40
50. million people and right now they live across the borders of Iran, Turkey, Syria and Iraq.
51. Kurds are descendants of Madhah or Medes and they have been indigenous to those mountains
52. for you know thousands of years and similar to other minorities they have been forcefully
53. kind of the identity has been erased in Iran, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and the whole national,
54. the whole kind of nation states and the creation of nation states and the treaties between Iran
55. and Turkey and eventually Britain. And I think it's France is what created these new borders
56. that has led to a rise of nationalism,
57. a rise of one language, one nation
58. within these regions that led to the genocide
59. and the forced assimilation of many minorities.
60. And especially also, you know,
61. Baluch, Ahwazi, Kurds,
62. and, you know, especially as Kurds,
63. we have, you know, Saddam Hussein
64. chemically attacked Kurds in Iraq,
65. and we have the forcibly genocide of Kurds in Dersim, the Alevi Kurds in Dersim in Turkey.
66. And we have also the mass execution of Kurds in Iran
67. and also the attacks of Syrian governments on Kurdish culture and society and people in Syria.
68. So it's like we are in a very interesting situation when we have these nation states all trying to erase us.
69. But also we have existed before the nation states and our people have been able to still hold on to their identity, their culture, their language and resist in many different ways with different groups all across these borders.
70. Something I want to mention I think that there was a period of time that these Kurds started arming themselves and resisting militarily Very interestingly enough the first Kurdish armed resistance
71. which was KKK created by Abdullah Ocalan,
72. was trained by the Palestinian, I think it was the PLO, in Lebanon,
73. because Kurds at the time didn't have infrastructures of training themselves.
74. And there was a, there's a lot of division between Kurds and Palestinians now,
75. unfortunately, because of Turkey's, you know, policies and, you know, I mean, various reasons,
76. various divisions that has caused by this imperialist forces. But historically, we are
77. in solidarity in the most deepest way, because the same treaty that created Israel, it also is
78. what created the nation states that allowed for the erasure of courts and the first group of
79. courts that started resisting these were in direct communication and solidarity with the Palestinian
80. groups and they were trained by them and I think as someone who has studied this I'm always trying
81. to uplift this moment of history because we have had a lot of moments that have pushed us away
82. But this beautiful moment shows that there's so much solidarity between our communities and so much commonalities.
83. And at the end of the day, that our resistance is really intertwined and connected.
84. Kurds, Baloch, Ahwazi, Palestinians, we have to acknowledge that our resistance is very directly connected to nation states.
85. and our solidarity has to be strategized in a way that focuses on moving beyond nation-states.
86. I think that's such a valid point you bring up about the nation-states
87. because I think there's a criticism that goes around that I've heard about both the Ahwazi community
88. and the Kurd community, and I've even heard it levied against the Palestinians,
89. that, oh, you never had a country, oh, you were never a nation.
90. Well, you know what? The nation state is a new concept and we preceded that concept. And it doesn't mean that your identity is not valid if you were not lucky enough to carve out your own nation state. But there are plenty of documents proving that we were self-sovereign and we had our own leaders and our own structures.
91. and you know i like to point in terms of the ahwazis when they tell us well no you were
92. never sovereign and that's incorrect for starters uh al-ahwaz was a kingdom during the mushashai
93. dynasty uh that was ruling between 1436 to 1724 prior to 1925 we had our own setup with sheikh
94. The Treaty of Zuhayb in 1639 defined the Persian Empire's boundaries as the Zagros Mountains, and El Ahwaz is west of the Zagros Mountains.
95. So people love to point to a country, and you are not a country.
96. But when we look at the emergence of the nation states, it was built on the erasure of the indigenous peoples of the lands.
97. I think to add to that, the way I think about our struggle is that we internationally have come to this understanding that borders are very violent forces, that they separate people, they discriminate against people and they create economic inequalities based on the power of each nation state or each country that really benefits the imperial forces.
98. So for me it the acknowledgement that these nation states these borders are patriarchal and imperial structures of living that have failed that are all failing
99. So the Kurds, to give a little bit of historical background, first Ocalan was like, okay, we
100. want our own country.
101. And they started attacking Turkey and they started resisting.
102. And then over time, they came to this, the PKK and, you know, that movement came to this understanding that you cannot solve violence with violence.
103. They're extremely strong, they're extremely organized, they're able to make huge impact.
104. And the reason that Kurds speak Kurdish right now or have certain rights is really because of organizations like that, that fought and kept our culture and gave people something to fight for.
105. but at the same time they came to this conclusion that they said hey we cannot solve violence with
106. violence and basically nation states and country is not what brings us freedom and they focused on
107. creating systems of governance that is led by people and it's inherently woman-centric
108. and that goes to the idea of woman-like freedom which became very popular internationally a few
109. years ago when there was a revolution in Iran, but it has been a part of Kurdish ideology and
110. the ideology of Kurds actually in Turkey, for lack of, you know, obviously, you know, we could
111. say the names of the regions, but just for people to understand and conceptualize it, what the PKK
112. was, that was an understanding and a political movement by Kurds where they said, okay, listen,
113. And all these systems, they come from patriarchy.
114. They come from the effort of these governments to create dominance.
115. And dominance comes from this understanding of patriarchy.
116. And we want to dig deep and understand where this comes from.
117. And the understanding was like, okay, like we used to have societies, especially before the Abrahamic religion, we had societies that were led by women and woman-centric.
118. and over time those societies or those communities were based on not who was the most powerful but
119. was based on certain values like a woman were seen as holy because they created life
120. and women were deeply connected to nature and understanding that nature and the system is a
121. big part of how we should live and how we should understand and ourselves and our societies and
122. And again, these people who were the leaders of these communities were based on who was the most giving.
123. It wasn't on who was the most dominant, who was the most powerful.
124. It was who was the most giving.
125. And the person who was most giving naturally became the leader of that community.
126. So it's a very interesting and different dynamic to think about.
127. And then men at a time started using their powers to gather.
128. And this, again, really goes to capitalism, which is so beautiful to think about, like how deep this is.
129. They started gathering and it was about surplus.
130. And by gathering, they started creating these power dynamics to enslave women and make women's labor free.
131. So the reason Kurds say women like freedom, they say that historically, when that started happening, that system of patriarchy and system that took away women's rights and took away women's labor as being valuable, it started coming into religion.
132. It started coming to society.
133. It started coming to economy.
134. It started coming into systems of governance.
135. So in order for any society to be free,
136. you have to free the person or the people
137. who are the most oppressed in the community
138. and the people who are the most oppressed
139. in any community are women.
140. That's why the theory is woman, life, freedom.
141. The second thing is a lot of chants go around
142. and people really, again,
143. All my freedom was stolen from the courts, and they never truly went and understand what's the depth of this theory.
144. But when they say life, it's because they got to a place where they understood you cannot solve violence with violence.
145. And that comes from an understanding that if you're all, as humans, one, and there is a oneness within us in some sort of a spiritual way,
146. if you hurt another human being, you're hurting yourself.
147. Think of it as if you have two hands.
148. If the two hands of me are fighting each other without being aware that they're part of my body,
149. They're hurting themselves, right?
150. So that goes to this ideology of woman life.
151. It's not death.
152. It's not death to the dictator or death to this or death to that, which, you know, is used in many different protests.
153. It's life.
154. Because in order to go to freedom in their ideology is to create life, is to create peace.
155. And it doesn't come from a place of violence.
156. So that theory of Kurdish resistance came into creating an ideology of confederal democracy or democratic confederalism, which is the idea of self-governance that was created by the leaders of the PKK movement.
157. and it's now practiced to a degree in Rojava, in the Kurdish part of Syria.
158. And it was the key factor in Kurds surviving Assad's regime, in Kurds surviving ISIS,
159. because this system allowed them to create solidarity with other minorities.
160. And again, none of these things are perfect. Obviously, every group makes mistakes.
161. But the system in itself, I think, was a very beneficial system
162. because it allowed for Kurds to create solidarity with Arabs, with other minority communities,
163. and it's based on a system of direct democracy.
164. And this direct democracy allowed for these minorities to empower themselves,
165. create systems to defend themselves from, you know, let's say ISIS and Assad regime,
166. and build government systems that directly communicated to people and their needs.
167. I think that ideology and that system is something so unique and it's been practiced in different ways in different parts of the indigenous groups who knew that they have to give up this idea of nation states, who knew that nation states is a violent force that is failing.
168. And I hope that with acknowledging that, we could drill intersectional movements within all these ethnic minorities that defeat this monster of imperialism in nation states and patriarchy.
169. That was such an interesting explanation, and I love that you explained the tie-in with patriarchy.
170. and I want to mention prior to the nation states I feel like we did live like this because
171. I'm frequently in the documents and the declassified military documents and some
172. things that I've noticed that were described in the documents was how for example the Kurds and
173. the Arabs had a cavalry at one point defending our joint borders or just the different ways that
174. the people of the land while being distinct collaborated with each other and helped protect
175. each other and we don't see that now because there are active efforts to try to divide
176. divide us all absolutely absolutely that's such a great point and we could you know speak about that
177. for hours again because yeah literally divide and conquer yes what thing divides you more than
178. borders. This idea
179. of borders that now is instilled
180. in everybody's mind as the
181. natural order.
182. It an arbitrary violent system that creates competition between communities that have so much in common that it could build together that could live together freely But because of this economic
183. system that is based on exploitation and benefiting the rich and benefiting the imperialist forces,
184. these borders make a country rich and a country poor just based on who has the more power to
185. create treaties that benefits them. While before that, as you mentioned, people were living
186. together. And I think there's this whole idea of like, you know, this nation states brought this
187. idea of being governed from a central place, a centralized place of government. And the way I
188. think about this is that when you think of a statehood, a statehood and democracy are in
189. direct opposition. Democracy is for people to have the right to make decisions about their own lives.
190. A state is a system that holds power and is supposed to give certain rights and certain
191. services to the people. But because when it's centralized, it will never have the capability
192. to prioritize the citizens and give them their rights
193. because it's always flawed systematically
194. and is not able to give everyone their rights.
195. So what it does is actually to protect itself, to survive,
196. it has to actually diminish democracy.
197. It has to take away the rights of people
198. because people with democracy keep advocating for themselves.
199. And a system that cannot, like, for example, in Iran,
200. Tehran can never understand the issues of people in Ahwaz
201. in Kurdistan or in
202. Shiraz. So what it does is it
203. prioritizes the Shias, the
204. Fars, and it kind of
205. says
206. it's always based on majority.
207. Okay, we give the service to majority
208. and the minority have to deal with it and they have to
209. fight for it. And
210. the system inherently
211. leads to
212. authoritarianism. And that's what you see
213. in any, name a country
214. that had a system
215. of centralized government and still has democracy. I argue there is none. If you think of Egypt,
216. you think of Iran, if you think of Iraq, you think of Syria, they all lead to authoritarianism
217. because the state in itself eventually has to reduce democracy and go towards authoritarianism
218. and people will, you know, over time just lose their rights and become oppressed more and more
219. by this estate. I'm so struck by just how resistance to Persian settler colonialism
220. is being framed in this moment as this war between the US and Israel and Iran is going into its
221. fourth month now. Resistance to violence against Kurdish and Olazi communities is framed as being
222. in alignment with Zionism. Oh my goodness, you hit the nail on the head right there.
223. The resistance to Persian settler colonialism is being framed as somehow inherently Zionist and anti, you know, anti-Palestinian liberation, which is the furthest from the truth.
224. As Hamon mentioned, the Kurds, you know, we're working closely with the Palestinians, the Ahwazis and the Palestinians have a history together.
225. Ahwazis are inherently so pro-Palestinian, you know, Yasir Arafat had come to Ahwaz and
226. proclaimed at some point, you know, whatever we think about Arafat, but he came to Ahwaz
227. at some point and you know proclaimed this is Arabistan Because you know Ahwaz has been known by various names although the people have remained the same And it this narrative that people are eating up
228. that Iran somehow is the savior for Palestine and cares so deeply about Palestine. But I argue that
229. Iran uses Palestine as leverage. And if Iran did not have the Palestinian issue, it would not have
230. a leg to stand on. If we look at, because for me, the IRI is really in its treatment of the
231. minority communities in Iran, it's very similar to the Pahlavi regime. And the Pahlavi regime,
232. as we know, and there's, you know, the documents are out there. They worked with the IDF on how to
233. suppress the Ahawazi Arab community. So the Ahawazis and the Palestinians were victims of
234. these IDF tactics of oppression. I like to ask the question, okay, what exactly is Iran doing
235. to support the Palestinians, because that's the notion out there. And I haven't really
236. gotten a convincing answer. Well, how would you both respond to this idea or this narrative that
237. in fact, no other nation state has stood up for the Palestinian people other than Iran?
238. I think it's exactly the same way that Trump is standing up for the people of Iran.
239. like what is the logic that Trump is standing for people of Iran is the exact same logic that
240. Iran is standing for the people of Palestine right because these as Jude said these are
241. scapegoats people really like try to use people's just and truth resistance as a way to legitimize
242. themselves to kill oppress their own people I honestly feel like the biggest problem we have
243. in our communities and in our region,
244. but also internationally,
245. is that we haven't found the head of the snake.
246. And what I mean by that is that we always look at,
247. oh, these people are the enemy.
248. These people are the enemy.
249. These people are the enemy.
250. He's like Kurds and Turks and Turks and Armenians.
251. And like, there's all legitimate issues, right?
252. But because we are so divided politically, systematically,
253. we are always being conquered.
254. We are always losing.
255. and when I say we
256. it means the people, all people
257. all people
258. because as Kurds say that freedom of
259. and many people say that freedom of
260. one person is
261. related to freedom of all people
262. so the fight for freedom
263. if it's in Kurdistan
264. is directly for the people
265. of Kurdistan but also it's for all people of the world
266. because we are negating
267. the systems that create
268. the structures that oppress us, right?
269. So I think that until we really acknowledge that we have to honestly have a divorce,
270. we're all married to this idea of nation state, that nation state is what's going to free us all.
271. If you had a nation state strong enough, nobody could beat us up, right?
272. Nobody could do this.
273. But you could see like China, Turkey, like any country, name it.
274. Nation states do not bring freedom.
275. There is no statehood that brings freedom.
276. Freedom comes from people having rights to make decisions about their own lives.
277. And we have to, as a society, as a community, as an international community, like every
278. structure based on nation states has failed Look at the UN It like they a bunch of clowns I sorry but they like a bunch of clowns They not doing anything Nothing matters anymore People are just realizing all these systems are very ineffective So now with this understanding
279. we have to first divorce this idea that nation-states are what gives us freedom,
280. understand that nation-statehood is the base of oppression, and build intersectionality beyond
281. borders to fight the structures of patriarchy and nation states and nationalism in that sense
282. all together because that's the only way we could we could defeat israel united states and iran and
283. turkey there is so many of them there's so many systems of violence and the only way is for people
284. to wake up and understand okay our freedom is tied together a lot of turkish people are in
285. solidarity with Palestine, but are completely, you know, ignorant to the oppression they have caused
286. to Kurds, to Armenians. And the same thing, many Kurdish people are, you know, very aware of the
287. oppression they're experiencing by Turkey, by Syria, by Iran, by Iraq. And because of that pain,
288. and because of the focus on that pain, they're just like, okay, everybody's an enemy, and anybody
289. who says kurdistan is our friend and and israel comes and says we support kurdistan and many
290. people in kurdistan like oh okay yes i support us i'm like can we please focus this has been done
291. by saddam by israel by united states they just say we support you in language but at the end
292. they want to take your land they want to take your oil they want to take your rights so so i think
293. like we are in that place i think we are in that place where all the people in the world are like
294. okay this is not working what's next and we have to name it we have to acknowledge it and we have
295. to build intersectionally for democracy in an in my opinion in a non-violent way so i think like a
296. lot of these movements will have to come to a theoretical understanding and create a lens
297. that disempowers these systems that are so powerful,
298. not by attacking them,
299. but by really kind of like taking power away from them.
300. I think to answer the question of what that whole concept of,
301. okay, Iran is the only one standing up for Palestine.
302. As Hamon mentioned, okay, well, language, yeah.
303. Language-wise, they're saying we care about Palestine.
304. We're standing up for Palestine.
305. Yet they've taken no Palestinian refugees. Yet three Palestinian leaders have been killed on Iranian soil. Yet they've built no hospitals in Palestine. And yet we look at what they've done in Syria to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp.
306. They funded the near total destruction of that Palestinian refugee camp.
307. And the UN described it as the deepest circle of hell that was characterized by systemic starvation and mass displacement of its residents.
308. We can look at the Khamenei family and what they own.
309. And this is verifiable.
310. You can go on.
311. So the Khamenei family has a 13-home portfolio, and that was financed by a loan from a firm
312. founded by Israeli-born brothers.
313. Fun fact, some units overlook the Israeli embassy.
314. I call them the un-Islamic Republic.
315. I don't really like to call them the Islamic Republic because I think they've in large part contributed to the distortion of the true meaning of Islam.
316. But they bought munitions from Israel during the eight year Iran-Iraq war.
317. You know, as they were chanting publicly death to Israel, lip service is both cheap and easy.
318. They were closing deals with Israel behind closed doors.
319. And estimates of Israeli arms sales to Khomeini's regime range from 500 million to over 2 billion annually.
320. And if you look up the Iran-Contra scandal, this was very well documented.
321. And I happen to know people who personally were in the war unboxing the munitions coming from Israel.
322. And they said that initially they thought the language was Armenian that was written on the boxes.
323. And then they found out it was Hebrew.
324. So you can't tell me, you cannot convince me in any parallel timeline even that Iran truly cares for Palestine.
325. They are doing exactly what Israel is doing to Palestinians.
326. Iran is doing to the Ahwazis, to the Kurds, to the Baloch.
327. so no i don't buy it this has been such a wonderful conversation i've learned so much
328. from listening to both of you we are out of time but before we go can you both share where
329. listeners can learn more about your individual work or kurdish and ahwazi struggles more broadly
330. so i don't have a page where people can go to but i can refer you to a really good page on ahwaz
331. that provides a lot of documents and a lot of the research that I've shared.
332. And it's on Instagram and it's called Ahuaz underscore collective.
333. So Ahuaz is spelled A-H-W-A-Z underscore collective, C-O-L-L-E-C-T-I-V-E.
334. And I happen to know this individual running the page
335. also liaisons with people inside on the ground.
336. and has firsthand, a lot of this is firsthand information
337. in addition to the research and the documentation.
338. And I want to thank you, Misha, for inviting me on this podcast.
339. And I want to thank Hamon also for enlightening us about Women, Life, Freedom.
340. I really enjoyed listening to that explanation.
341. And thank you to the listeners.
342. Thank you so much.
343. Thank you, Jude.
344. And thank you.
345. Yes, absolutely.
346. Thank you, Misha, for inviting us.
347. this was a beautiful conversation
348. I think the group that
349. does a good job of
350. talking about the Kurdish
351. struggle is Hengaw
352. H-E-N-G-A-W
353. and they do a pretty good job
354. with reporting issues about the Kurdish
355. issues and my
356. Instagram is actually very funny
357. it's Hamon Iran which I think a lot of people
358. will not like but
359. it is Hamon Iran
360. and what we are doing actually currently
361. we have created a new organization called DOD, D-A-A-D,
362. which is Direct Action Advocacy for Democracy.
363. And the goal is to educate our people on these issues.
364. And we believe that the biggest issue we have in our community
365. is that people are supporting the monarchy.
366. And in Israel or systems like that, there's a lack of education.
367. So our direct advocacy basically strategy is to educate our own people with events with um know and eventually podcasts and everything like that So we don have you know our social media presence is very minimal
368. We just created our page and the group is just a few months old.
369. But it will be Dodd, D-A-D-D, on Instagram.
370. I think our Instagram is Dodd4Iran.
371. I would love for people who are interested, actually,
372. to contact us or you know you could take a contact me on instagram because we're really hoping to
373. grow this group i look forward to following both of your work hamun dolachahi and jude al-awazi
374. thank you so much for joining us thank you have a good day bye-bye this is radio indifada i'm
375. misha chowdhury and today we are joined by interdisciplinary filmmaker and artist
376. Niharika Negi to discuss her short film, Tenfa. Niharika is a part Indigenous, award-winning
377. interdisciplinary artist and early Nalai talent whose work is supported by Sundance Women in Film,
378. Film Independent, and UK Arts Council. By merging film, theatre, and new media with contemporary
379. performance, folktale, and magical realism, she makes work that allows us to celebrate our
380. imaginative potential for healing and change. Welcome to the show, Niharika. Thank you so much
381. for being here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So I had the pleasure of watching your short
382. film, Tenfa, at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles a few weeks ago, and I have not stopped
383. thinking about it since then. Can you give our listeners a short description of the film?
384. Yeah, thank you so much. I'm glad to know that it resonated with you. Tenfa is, it's a Kenori
385. word that means a gift given by your elders in the form of medicinal plants or herbs.
386. And the film itself is a 30-minute shot about three generations of Kenori women who go up
387. the mountain in the Himalayas in search of an indigenous herb that can save a young mother's
388. life with only a folk song as their compass.
389. and it's a it's a film really in a way about climate change and cultural erosion but through
390. a sort of fabulistic and magical realist lens and I've made it in collaboration with my family and
391. the community in Kenor which is an indigenous region in the Himalayas. The characters in your
392. film they have to spend a lot of time with Gennady as a language but also as as folk songs
393. and the ways that song and language give people space to sit with generational knowledge and i'm
394. curious about whether and how you encountered canadi language media growing up yeah i mean i
395. guess that's a that's a great question because that's why i went ahead and made this film it's
396. because uh a canary well the region of canor has many different languages inside of it and our film
397. kind of uses about two of them and they have many different dialects so there is a great
398. linguistic diversity but all of the language is oral so it's entirely passed down over generations
399. and I sort of really grew up outside of Kinor because my father you know for as we say reasons
400. of progress and modernity left the village when he was very young and he was sent to
401. school in Shimla and then he really grew up outside in what you'd call mainland India.
402. So we growing up didn really have any real connection to the language because my father didn speak the language But we did have family members you know who stayed there but they would always
403. communicate with us in Hindi. So it wasn't a language that I was familiar with growing up.
404. And there was really no media or anything that represented the language in a cultural context.
405. And even to date, there isn't any. There are now younger filmmakers in Kenore who are making films in the Kenori language or trying to tell their stories in the Kenori language. But outside of that, the language of the culture has really not been represented in mainstream culture in any form. So it was very much a vacuum in that sense.
406. Yeah, this reminds me of how you've mentioned that the way that you made this film, you made it very much in conversation and collaboration with your family and your larger community. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
407. I come really from a contemporary performance and theatre-making background.
408. A lot of my approach and practice is centred around participatory work and being able to collaborate with people or communities or groups in a way that honours their voices and really centres their creative contribution to the work as well.
409. and this film really came about from just starting these kinds of conversations with
410. my family in the community since 2022 I've been going back to Kinnor and just sort of spending
411. time in Sungra which is my hometown and where a lot of the film is shot as well and just having
412. conversations with the members of my family and you know the extended community I started to ask
413. a lot of questions in terms of where do we come from or what are the mythologies of this village
414. or region because each village in Kinnaur also has a Devta culture so every village has their own
415. god which is supposed to be a living ancestor in a sense and a lot of festivals and lives and songs
416. revolve around the god or the goddess of that particular village and each of them have their
417. own kind of creation myths or stories and they are family members of other gods and other villages
418. that they go to meet so it's just a really uh deep and rich uh cultural history and I began by
419. really asking a lot of questions about the origins of this and trying to understand that and and also
420. just being very aware of the fact that Kinnore that I remembered when I first went there when
421. I was 12 and now when I was going in my 30s there was a marked difference in the landscape and just
422. how much construction was going on in this remote area and also in our route going up to the region
423. it really felt a lot like being in in Bombay because of the bulldozers and the dust and the
424. drilling and I think I was really struck by how much the landscape was changing and how rapidly
425. so we sort of started to have more conversations around like making of potentially a documentary
426. that was centered around climate change and we had community partners like Mahesh Nagy who was
427. also a line producer on the film and is an activist and Zetels which is a group that is
428. really focusing on archiving the knowledge in the region So we went with them to a lot of the impact areas across the valley where either deforestation or forest fires or landslides have deeply affected the region and
429. found ourselves in this village that you have to trek about one and a half hours down a path that
430. is maybe like two inches wide to get to. And that village had been abandoned by landslides because
431. of dam construction. And it was just really interesting because when I went back to my
432. village after that visit, I spoke to my aunt who was a midwife in Kinnor most of her life.
433. And she said that she used to work in that village. So she would make that check every day
434. in order to provide maternal health care. And it was really the story that came together that
435. moment because the film is in a sense about this midwife who goes to this village that's been
436. abandoned by landslides so the film really has been about listening to the stories of the lands
437. and the people and trying to see what is I guess my personal connection into that space and how
438. could I perhaps weave this together into a narrative that was collectively owned by all of us
439. perhaps or at least that was the attempt. Wow yeah that's absolutely beautiful. In your bio you refer
440. to yourself as part indigenous and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you
441. understand in indigeneity within the context of subcontinent and within the context of talking
442. about um canard and then also what what is it like bringing a story like this to south asians
443. in the diaspora yeah i mean i'm part indigenous in the sense that i'm canary on my father's side
444. and my mother comes from punjab which is a you know fairly dominant culture in in in india you
445. know maybe this tracks back to what I was saying earlier in terms of that we were not really raised
446. to have any connection with the indigenous side of the identity and I think in part it also has
447. to do with just shame in general because India has such a complicated intersectional system of
448. caste and regions and you know hierarchies within that and Kenoris are a Shadul tribe so we're
449. protected by the government reservation. But there was just this sense when we were growing up where
450. we were told to not tell people that you're Indigenous and it's better to identify with the
451. other side of your heritage, which is Punjabi and more dominant. Really, I think this journey of
452. making the film has also been an act of being able to reclaim that part of my identity and understand
453. what it really means to be indigenous and to be from that particular region in the Himalayas and
454. what's the history and the context of that and really perhaps reckon with what is at risk of
455. being lost when you don't have this connection with your own culture and heritage so I think
456. you know that's really been the journey of making this film and what I found in the process and
457. which is not surprising because of these thought processes around being Indigenous in India,
458. is that most people are not familiar with this concept.
459. And within India, a lot of people don't know that there are Indigenous people in the country
460. or that there are Indigenous groups in the Himalayas, for instance, because it's a very diverse city.
461. and wide region. It kind of like, just I think, extends outwards, because even in kind of a
462. Western or a diaspora context, there isn't this understanding that there can be Indigenous people
463. in India or in South Asia. So I think the film really was about trying to centre that narrative
464. through a film that takes you on the journey with its characters, and these characters are
465. indigenous but we're not essentially seeing them in contrast to a dominant culture their existence
466. is not being validated being in opposition to something else they're full and complete in and
467. of themselves and the story is really about them and their resilience and you know these incredible
468. everything acts of heroism that they perform on a daily basis so I think that was kind of the
469. the journey of the film and what we experienced in sharing the film at IFLA, which was, I think,
470. a really incredible platform and a stage to do it, was that a lot of people connected with the idea
471. of the loss of language and how there is an inherent ancestral wisdom in everybody's native
472. languages. And, you know, and what does it mean to really go back to that and try to reclaim
473. that wisdom for ourselves so we can really be more complete people existing in this world yeah
474. absolutely so the heart of the film is really a folk song that the three women or two two women
475. one girl use to find the the medicinal plant that they need can you talk a little bit about the the
476. process of finding that song, recording it, filming it, all of the above? Yeah, you know, we came across
477. this during the research trip that we made to make this documentary idea on climate change,
478. where we were also doing theatre workshops. And this was in collaboration with my producing
479. partners, Starhopper Studio. While doing those workshops, we, you know, had people sing a song
480. from their childhood.
481. And we also had like separately just members of my family and women from my family who surprisingly all sing sing a lot of songs that we archived And then when we came back we wanted to translate them to either Hindi or English so we could
482. understand what the content was.
483. And as we kind of embarked on this process of translating those songs, we came across
484. this interesting thing where the people who were translating it or the people who sang
485. the song said they said they don't remember what some of the words mean.
486. They just have learned them.
487. So we had like partial translations of these songs.
488. And I thought it was kind of really interesting, but also something that needed some kind of awareness around that these songs essentially contain the wisdom of the ancestors.
489. And in oral cultures, the songs are a way of encoding history and wisdom that's passed on through generations.
490. But if the older generations that know these songs are also forgetting the old words inside of these songs, I mean, how much are we losing in that process? And how critical is it to be aware of that and maybe to be able to archive or document or try to reclaim some of that knowledge that's disappearing?
491. so this idea really came from these very real things that we were encountering so the so the
492. film really is about in that sense about these three women who have to find this indigenous herb
493. to save this young mother's life but the old places where the herb grew have become barren
494. because of climate change and to find new microclimates where it goes they need to decode
495. this old folk song that no one really remembers the words to.
496. So I think that's how we kind of weave together that aspect of the narrative into the film.
497. And how we made it was really interesting because I think we decided to write a traditional
498. folk song, but create an original one that would work for the film and the context of
499. the narrative.
500. And maybe it was maybe the first time that it was being done in that way in Kinnore.
501. So we you know along with the Savari my producing partner on this we found a Kanori poet a Kanori lyricist and one of them wrote in Hindi another one wrote in Kanori And then we kind of
502. really did all of this over Zoom, where we workshopped the general idea for the song,
503. and then they wrote it, and then we tried to sort of bring it down to 10 lines, because a
504. traditional folk song goes on for four to five hours.
505. So we had to also find a way to restructure the length of these songs for film.
506. And then we had Kinori composers, Satish Negi and Adit Negi,
507. and Manju Deepti and Rajesh Ji were the lyricists,
508. who then set the song to music.
509. When we went down to shoot the film,
510. we realized that the dialect of Kinori also changes across villages.
511. So the dialect that we had it written in was not something that the place we were shooting in was understood.
512. So they didn't understand what was written.
513. So we had to re-translate it into the dialect of that village and then sort of, yeah, put it together.
514. Just kind of listening to you, I'm really struck by how this film, it's not separate from Miss Borel tradition.
515. you're kind of adding on to it through the medium of film and you also have you've worked with only
516. different kinds of forms from film to virtual reality to graphic novel and I'm wondering if
517. you can talk a little bit about what different kinds of form offer you for different kinds of
518. possibilities for storytelling and what was it that made film the vehicle for the story
519. Yeah, I mean, I think I try to approach work from the point of view of what is the best medium to tell a particular story, given the kind of resources you might have at hand.
520. Because when you make, I guess, this sort of work that I make, you really have to think about the funding and other things that are coming from and what is possible inside of these creative limitations, I would say.
521. And that often also allows you to define the right format or medium for a particular story With Tempfa you know I mean we went out trying to make this documentary that I hope that we still make and a theatre project but it it
522. I felt like after making many visits and conversations there, it felt to me that
523. narrative film would be the best version to tell the story because it really has the ability to
524. reach a lot of people over time and to speak to people in different ways that allow us to really
525. I guess embrace our imaginative potential and I felt that it was important for a culture that
526. has since really been documented or been present in mainstream storytelling and in any in any
527. significant capacity to make to make a narrative film that really was about cementing and framing
528. the context of the region and the people in some way.
529. And we also were able to find the funding
530. with Story Culture Company and Midyar Network
531. that also produced and funded the film.
532. So I think that combination worked really well.
533. And yeah, that's how we arrived at this particular idea.
534. That's wonderful.
535. Unfortunately, we are out of time.
536. For people who missed the screening of Tenfa at IFLA,
537. how can they still follow your work?
538. You could follow me on Instagram at NiharikaN,
539. which is N-I-H-A-A-R-I-K-A-N.
540. We're hoping to maybe do more screenings of the film
541. and see if we can return to LA for more community-centered screenings
542. if anyone also feels like this is a project
543. they might want to screen for their community,
544. please do reach out and we'd love to make it happen.
545. Yes, you would be lucky to watch it, people.
546. Alrighty.
547. Well, thank you so much again for being here, Naharika.
548. Yeah, and thank you so much for having me
549. and for this conversation.
550. You are listening to Radio Intifada
551. on independent and listener-sponsored KPFK.
552. I'm your host Misha Chaudhry and today I'm speaking with Naharika Nagy, interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker about her film Tenfa