How a Biate book turned knowledge co-creation into shared storytelling

On a humid, warm November afternoon in 2025, I had the honour of giving a workshop at the North East Society for Agroecology Support (NESFAS). 

The theme was ‘co-creation of knowledge’ – a term that has recently gained increasing attention in academia. It calls for attention to the role of research participants in producing knowledge.

Whether for academic theorisation or methodological necessity, all research must acknowledge the collaborative nature of data collection. 

But what does such knowledge co-creation look like in practice? While we often highlight the importance and necessity of collaboration in research, how do we collaborate to ensure that knowledge co-creation is both effective and meaningful?

Especially today, when phrases like knowledge co-creation and citizen science are used almost as buzzwords, more careful reflections on what the process of knowledge co-creation actually entails may be necessary. 

Not only must we consider how we co-create knowledge, but also what responsibilities we bear as researchers towards the knowledge we co-create. 

More fundamentally, how do our research participants position themselves in this process? 

To think through these questions, I shared my long-term engagement with the Biate community in Meghalaya – a community often characterised through external views: “They are most backward,” “They are basically the same tribe as X,” “They still live traditionally.” Such narratives perpetuate stereotypes, one-sided perspectives, and ignorance. My role as a researcher – and as someone who initiated my relationship with the Biate community – compelled me to showcase a different narrative, one that emerges from within. 

I first learned about the Biate community in 2023 through a friend from the Jaintia Hills. “Anna, you conduct research in Jaintia. But do you know there is a community, culturally and linguistically quite different from the Pnar, living around the Saipung Reserve Forest? They are called Biate. 

Yet, many people, even from here, still do not know much about this community or have never heard of it. They are somewhat neglected, but they value jhum farming and buffalo paddy cultivation.” 

Here again, the story of neglect and isolation frames how the Biate community was seen. My first stay in Saipung, the largest Biate village in Meghalaya, was brief but vivid. My Pnar driver, unfamiliar with the route, had to ask for directions several times. Google Maps led us astray, and the dented road made the journey slow and jarring. 

By the time we arrived, it was past supper. Exhausted from hours of driving on a rocky surface, I collapsed on the sofa in the Government Guest House, the only accommodation in the village.

Despite my late arrival, a cup of fresh milk tea soon appeared, brought together with smiles and warm handshakes from the village head, church secretary, village seniors, and members of the Biate Cultural Organisation.

We had a lot to talk about – why I had come, what support I needed, my plans for the visit – but none of these seemed to matter. “Thank you so much for coming to our village,” said every single one of them. It was the simplest sentence, but it carried weight. 

In that moment, I was not a researcher arriving to collect data. I was a guest, a visitor whose presence had meaning to them – not because of academic purpose, but because I had come at all. Two years have passed since that first meeting. I now visit Saipung frequently, and villagers no longer see me as a foreign visitor nor as a guest. 

I also no longer stay in the government building outside the main residential area. Instead, I live with my Biate brothers and sisters, share their meals, and take part in their routines – just like any other member of the household. 

Beyond sharing a roof, we also shared challenges: enduring weeks-long blackouts, washing piles of clothes in a nearby stream when water was scarce, and managing without markets or regular medical facilities.

Life there was sometimes difficult, but these shared experiences forged a strong bond of trust and belonging that no one else could have earned. 

Through these co-experienced moments, the Biate community accepted me, trusted me, and allowed me to see the world through their eyes. As our relationship deepened, I began to see different sides of the Biate community. 

The hardships, often emphasised in external narratives, were present – but so too was creative resilience. “There is always a way around it,” my friend in Saipung often said. 

Carrying clothes to the stream and handwashing them in freezing water during winter was certainly not comfortable, but it was also a safe and lively place, where women exchanged stories and opinions freely.

I felt, more than anything, fortunate to have been there with them. Water scarcity, constant blackouts, and limited infrastructure – while real – offered only a partial picture of Biate’s everyday life. 

What I observed and experienced was not marginality, but the ways people continually manoeuvred towards the futures they envisaged. I realised that this, too, is the story of who they are. These small daily practices tell a story of contemporary Biate-ness: not confined to the past, nor reduced to an external tale of neglect. 

The shared realisation of the need to narrate everyday life led to the birth of the Kîrzâi Project – an initiative to show how the community lives today and how they envisage the future, where their reflections and perspectives take centre stage. 

As part of this project, Biate schoolchildren were invited to collect stories about their environment from parents, neighbours, and elders. From folktales to short narratives, they were free to gather any story, on one condition: it had to be original and undocumented. 

The second phase was a drawing workshop, exploring how the children imagined the environment through the stories they had collected. During the drawing workshop, the room was filled with a low hum of concentration, occasional laughter, and the scent of paints, with pop music coming out of a large speaker in the background.

Children bent over sheets of large paper, all of them trying to fill the entire space with paint. One painted a mountain under a blue sky with their houses on the side. 

Another drew a couple walking through a forest. Their drawings were not simply illustrations – they were interpretations, ways of thinking through the story they listened to. 

With climate change, intensive logging, and pollution from nearby coke factories, their environment was also changing alongside external factors. From time to time, people in Saipung voiced their concern that they would one day run out of firewood – essential for their beloved hearth, the ritap, where stories are exchanged. 

Now, the gathered stories and paintings have become the first-ever Biate children’s book. Looking back, this book stands as a symbol of my relationship with the Biate community – a testament to mutual trust and collaboration. 

It shows that collaboration is not merely about taking on a task together, but about recognising each other’s positionalities, understanding subjective interpretations of what matters, and sharing responsibility for what we collectively imagine. 

The process of co-creation enabled through the Kîrzâi Project extended beyond collaboration between the Biate community (as research participants) and me (as researcher).

The circle of trust, relationality, and responsibility expanded within the community itself. As schoolchildren engaged with elders, new collaborations formed, and existing relationships deepened. 

Through this process, ‘research participants’ become equal contributors to knowledge production. I learned that storytelling, whether oral, literary, or visual, lies at the core of knowledge creation.

But more importantly, long-term engagement forms the foundation of collaboration. Returning to Saipung for feedback, creating opportunities to reflect together, and exploring what we know, desire, and strive for – these were all crucial for sharing and sustaining co-created knowledge. 

With deep gratitude to the Biate community, I remain responsible for finding more ways to narrate – together – stories that resist simplification, romanticisation, and exoticisation.

As I hold the nearly published first-ever Biate picture book, I am reminded that knowledge co-creation is ultimately about relationships with those who make our research possible. 

After my presentation, NESFAS Founder Bah Phrang Roy remarked, “We should explore more ways to learn and reproduce the often-forgotten stories of communities, especially to enhance our collaborative skills in a world that only maximises our own selfish desires.” The how of knowledge co-creation is limitless. 

As we build our relationships with research collaborators, we also become responsible for nurturing them. Storytelling, drawing, and bookmaking – perhaps, the future of knowledge co-creation depends, above all, on our imagination and creativity. 

The forthcoming Biate picture book Khâmnu Khah A Vâr Im? (Is She Wise?) will be officially launched at the Shillong Literary Festival 2025.

The publication of this book has been supported by the Delta on the Move Foundation and the Sauramandala Foundation. Sauramandala Foundation is running a fundraising campaign to support the printing and distribution of Khâmnu Khah A Vâr Im? (Is She Wise?). 

We would like to bring the book back to the Biate community and celebrate its launch ceremony at the annual Nul-Ding Kût festival in January 2026. 

You can support us by visiting our YouTube channel and watching our campaign video and sharing it so our story can reach more people. Alongside the video, you will find a link to our campaign page.

Thank you for reading and sharing our story.

The author is Lecturer, Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Leiden University, The Netherlands.