Myth, Memory and Indigenous Identity in Easterine Kire’s Son of the Thundercloud

Abstract

Easterine Kire’s Son of the Thundercloud (2016) is a significant contribution to contemporary Naga literature that interlinks myth, oral tradition, collective memory, indigenous knowledge, ecological consciousness, and cultural identity. This novel deals with a community suffering from drought, cultural disintegration, and the gradual disappearance of its traditional stories. For this purpose, myth is not represented as an outdated or irrational form of belief; rather, it functions as a repository of cultural memory and indigenous knowledge. The disappearance of storytellers causes a “famine of stories and songs,” suggesting that the loss of oral traditions is as harmful to the community as physical famine. She establishes a close relationship between cultural memory and ecological renewal through the stories of the Son of the Thundercloud, the prophecy concerning his birth, the restoration of the river, and the rejuvenation of the land. The novel also presents an indigenous relational worldview of land and nature in which the earth, river, trees, rocks, and grain participate in a network of kinship and reciprocity. Pele’s journey further represents a process of cultural discovery and identity reconstruction as he encounters preservation of knowledge through myth and oral tradition. This paper examines, how she uses myth as a vehicle of collective memory and how memory enriches the preservation and reconstruction of indigenous identity. It argues that Son of the Thundercloud transforms oral narratives into a literary form of cultural preservation and presents remembering as an important means of cultural survival.