The book offers a detailed analysis of the pluriverse of an Indigenous community in the
south-eastern Himalayas. It is a rare deep-dive ethnography of the Mútunci community - more
commonly called by their exonym Lepcha - and the ontologies and strategies activated in
ritualised struggles to reduce marginality and ensure a good life. Based on over a decade of
interactions the author assembles community ritual practices and performances their actors
and power relations as well as the histories and thought-frameworks they are embedded in. She
shows how Mútunci actors live and activate various understandings of self and the world
depending on their respective spatio-temporal positioning. Through the ritual lens the author
analyses vulnerability and survivance and unravels multi-modal processes of constituting
belonging the place community and the Himalayan environment putting the polysemic concept of
Lyángdók Úngdók protectors of land and water at the core of her analysis. Moreover the study
develops a self-reflexive approach that aims to include Indigenous world-making within an
analytical framework beyond dichotomic classifications.
