Abstract What is the position of women in Khasi society? Does the institution of matrilineal kinship offer women any advantages? We pose these questions in relation to the controversial Lineage Amendment Bill (LAB), 2018, passed by the Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council, holding that women that marry non-Khasis will lose their rights and full membership in the community. The bill has been heavily criticized, especially by younger women who assert their right to freely choose whom to marry. Those in favour of the bill present it as a defence of indigenous lands, yet, as we suggest, it has more to do with resource extraction. In this chapter, we point to how matrilineal descent, land ownership, environmental stewardship, and indigenous sovereignty are intertwined. As we suggest, through the refusal to partake in mining, indigenous sovereignty becomes something quite different from the dominant ethno-nationalist assertion where self-determination has been reduced to the right to freely exploit the natural resources of the claimed homeland. Matriliny is a critical feature of this alternative imaginary, building on ongoing relations to and care for the ancestral lands passed on by generations of women.
The valleys of the Brahmaputra and the uplands around the valley meet each other in the foothills of Northeast India. This entry explores, through pre-colonial history and current day situations, the role that the foothills have in the relationship between the hills and the plains. Historically, the foothills were both borders and sites of negotiations between the different kingdoms of the Brahmaputra Valley and the residents of the uplands surrounding the valley, with the duars standing out as feats of diplomacy between the two regions. These negotiations concerned religious identity, control over trading areas and resources, political alliances, ethnicity, identity amongst other aspects of life. In today's Northeast India, the foothills continue to mediate between the hills and plains, albeit in a different political and economic landscape. More importantly, these sub-montane regions have acquired their own specificities, forged out of their roles as mediators and sites of negotiations. It is these specificities that distinguish the foothills from the other regions of the Northeast. This entry seeks to highlight the importance of the 'foothills' and set them apart as an area that deserves to be studied in its own right.
'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='translate(288.889 -214.211)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='translate(108 342.749)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='translate(469.189 342.749)'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)
'%3e%3cpath fill='%23012169' d='M0 0v30h60V0z'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='6' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='4' d='m0 0 60 30m0-30L0 30' clip-path='url(%23b)'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23fff' stroke-width='10' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3cpath stroke='%23C8102E' stroke-width='6' d='M30 0v30M0 15h60'/%3e%3c/g%3e%3c/svg%3e)
