Trees as Village Protectors, Guru Rinpoche’s Wayfinders and Adopted Family Members

Abstract

Forests occupy a large amount of territory in the contemporary state of Sikkim. However, their ubiquitousness should not be interpreted as a signal that Sikkimese communities are inherently environmentally friendly. Historically trees have been exploited as fuel for human use; but they have also fueled forms of interspecies relationality and sustained ecosystems, health for multiple species, folklore, history and ritual life. Just as trees have different parts—the roots, the trunk, the branches, and the foliage—so do Sikkimese relationships with trees. In this paper, I will draw on Buddhist ritual literature, oral sources related to traditional forest management, and state-level forest management materials to examine the complexity of tree traditions in conversation with other global examples of tree veneration traditions. In Sikkim, human-tree relationality evades politicization and state control in the Anthropocene, and offers an alternative local environmental ethics.