'A Sacred Place': Centering Nagaland's Marginalised Voices And Memories

Growing up, we often played with stones. We would spend hours searching for the ones perfect for our hands, pebbles of just the right shape and size to sit snuggly within the circumference of our small palms, or flat, shapely rocks that could be carefully stacked atop one another over a bubbling stream. To win in these games, we needed to know our stones intimately. So, turning them over in our hands, we would familiarise ourselves with every curve, contour and imperfection until they seemed to mould themselves naturally to our touch. Even stones had their own idiosyncrasies.

In these games, we rarely shared our stones. Everyone had their own carefully curated collection, gathered through time and experience. In this world that we had built, stones were our currency, our possession, and, in a sense, our pride. It is to this world of stones that Dolly Kikon’s third documentary film, A Sacred Place, returns. Centred on the village of Makhel, the film tells a story that is at once particular and universal, a story of one village, but in many ways, the story of countless Naga villages. Through the landscape of Makhel, a site of profound significance in Naga oral tradition and collective memory, the documentary invites viewers to contemplate the relationship between humans and the natural world. In doing so, Kikon explores the values, memories and ways of being that have shaped Naga understandings of the world and humanity’s place within it.

As the film begins, viewers are introduced to the collective memory of Makhel, embedded in the many stones that populate its landscape, some regarded as sacred, others as mischievous, and still others as dangerous or menacing. Through the words of the knowledge-keeper Salew Adani Joseph, the film recounts the story of the brotherhood of Tiger (Okhe Kozhuwo), Spirit (Ora Aha), and Man (Alechamaiwo), a narrative preserved in the cultural memory of many Naga communities, each with its own variation. Across these tellings, however, a central idea endures: Tiger, Spirit and Man are brothers who originate from the same place, situating humans within a broader network of relationships rather than above it. Their departure to their respective realms is commemorated by three stones that continue to stand as reminders of this shared ancestry. Such stories present a world in which humans, animals, spirits and the natural environment are bound together through coexistence and mutual dependence, rather than human dominance over the natural world. Even the falling of a monolith is interpreted as an omen signalling the decline of its corresponding realm, showing how material objects and living beings are understood to share destinies. In fact, so much of the Naga oral tradition departs from this understanding of an interconnected world, shaping stories and beliefs in which kinship, memory, sense of place, of history, even the Naga understanding of selfhood and what it means to be human itself.

One of the most enduring ways in which Kikon reveals how stones hold collective memory is through her portrayal of four significant stone narratives, and the gendered relationships that surround them. She shows how female and male subjectivities are expressed and shaped within this network. The Departure Stone commemorates ancestral migrations, the Measurement Stone signifies the assumption of social responsibility, the Cock’s Comb Stone blesses those who venture forth to establish new settlements, and the Wisdom Stone functions as a place of mediation and reconciliation during conflict.

While the focus of the first part of the documentary is anchored in ancestral memory, the second deals with the way this collective memory finds expression in everyday life. To show this, Kikon presents evocative scenes of children fetching salt water from the ancient springs to exemplify this continuity. These salt springs, we realise, are much more than geological formations but are sites where ecological knowledge, ritual practice, friendship, labour and memory are awakened. Through these images, the film tells us that environmental knowledge is embedded within culture and not cut off from it.

Equally significant is the documentary’s attention to the contemporary lives of Makhel’s residents. Kikon humanises the village by moving beyond cultural artefacts and sacred sites to foreground friendships, conversations, humour and intergenerational learning. The friendship between the boys Saini and Hriiziikho, the recollections of Kaini Lokho, and scenes of young people learning about traditions from elders provide a cinematic portrait of memory in action, showing the film’s artistic sensitivity in capturing the subtleties through which remembrance is enacted.

The film also reveals how indigenous knowledge is intertwined with political histories and collective trauma. Memories of collecting salt water during the height of the Naga movement evoke experiences of military presence, curfews, fear and uncertainty. Personal recollections of soldiers arriving at dawn and taking away community members illuminate how political violence becomes embedded within everyday landscapes. In this regard, the film resonates with Kikon’s long-standing scholarly engagement with the lived experiences of militarisation in Naga society. This intentionality can be seen in the film’s insistence on centering voices and memories that have often remained in the margins.

Perhaps the film’s most poignant moments arrive in its closing scenes, where traditional songs are performed in chant-like cadences against the backdrop of the ‘Lithic Worlds’ exhibition in Makhel. Ancestral tunes reverberate through a contemporary space of cultural representation, negotiating the distance between past and present. A Sacred Place offers a subtle but powerful critique of contemporary development practices by highlighting the fragility of the shale landscapes and the ecological consequences of unchecked human intervention. True to Kikon’s body of work, the film questions development models driven by extraction and profit. In contrast, it presents an indigenous ethic rooted in care, humility and respect for both human and non-human worlds.

This documentary is essential viewing because it uses Makhel as a lens through which we may find ourselves in the intertwined histories of memory, ancestry and place.

Beni Sumer Yanthan is a writer & academic from Nagaland. She won the 2025-26 India-Australia Cultural Exchange Fellowship for First-Nations & Adivasi writers