Indigenous Folklore, Mythic Consciousness, and Cultural Memory in Mamang Dai’s The Sky Queen and Once Upon a Moontime

Abstract

Contemporary Indian English literature from the Northeast has emerged as a vital site for the articulation of indigenous epistemologies and cultural memory. Mamang Dai’s writings exemplify this literary shift by foregrounding folklore, oral traditions, and tribal cosmologies rooted in the lived experiences of the Adi community of Arunachal Pradesh. This paper examines The Sky Queen and Once Upon a Moontime through the critical framework of folklore studies to analyse how Dai reconfigures myth, orality, and ecological consciousness within literary discourse. The study argues that Dai’s texts function as counter-archives that resist colonial historiography and cultural homogenization by preserving indigenous worldviews in narrative and poetic forms. Through close textual analysis, this paper demonstrates that Dai’s engagement with folklore is not merely representational but epistemological, offering alternative ways of understanding history, identity, and human–nature relationships. The research positions Dai as a significant contributor to indigenous literary resistance and folklore-based knowledge production in postcolonial India.