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The following article is from IndiaNewEngland.com [2].

A minister of higher education from the state of Arunachal Pradesh, India, met with a Native American chief during his first visit to the United States in June [2008].

During a talk in Woburn, Mass., Joram Begi, the minister of higher and technical education, said he was surprised to learn about the similarities between Native American customs and the customs of the tribes in Northeast India.

He learned that both groups live in "long houses," he said, after meeting with the chief of the Onondaga Nation in Nedrow, New York.

"We also have the long house," Begi said. "Their ceremonies are also similar to ours. For example, the headgear with feathers we've seen are very similar. Many other beliefs in time of death and birth are very common. We need to systematically study it. It was really a surprise."

Long houses are common in the Arunachal Pradesh state, Begi said, where several families stay in the same house. This traditional house has its roots in a polygamous family structure, where one man could have five wives, with each wife staying in a different room in a long house, said Vijay Swami, from the Research Institute of World's Ancient Traditions Cultures in Arunachal Pradesh, who was traveling with Begi.

But this tradition, Swami said, is fast disappearing.

Begi said he met with the chief to learn about Native American's experience of preserving tribal culture in the face of rapid modernization.

"What I've come to learn personally is that Native Americans really suffered. They lost many things and they're now trying to regroup," he said. "We want to know what mistakes they made, from their mistakes we can learn."

Begi and Swami spoke to about 20 Indian Americans at the Satsang Center on June 2. They introduced the audience to their small Indian state that has one of the longest international borders in India - but a small population.

While Arunachal Pradesh has a border with China, Tibet, Myanmar and Bhutan, and the second largest Buddhist monastery in the world - the area is fragmented by turbulent rivers that provide the only means of transportation.

"Seventy-five percent of villages are not connected by road," Swami said.

This, however, is changing.

The Indian government has announced a plan to build a 1,870-kilometer Trans-Arunachal highway through the state, Swami said.

That is why Begi and Swami are currently involved in establishing the Research Institute for World's Ancient Traditions and Heritage in Aranachal Pradesh - to document indigenous cultures before they are lost to rapid development.

"We feel - if not now, never," Begi said. "It may happen that like Native Americans have lost everything, [we could lose our culture too]."

Source: INDIAnewEngland.com [3]

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