For months, they have been living in fear. The people of Banteji, a small tribal village amid the rolling green mountains deep in India’s Odisha state, have lived here for generations. Yet now most only return home for essentials and spend the night sleeping in the jungle. The police raids and violence, they say, could come again at any time.
Like so many of India’s tribal communities, known as Adivasis, the people here in the district of Rayagada live in extreme poverty, with little access to education and healthcare. The jungle and hills that surround them also sustain them, as they have done for hundreds of years, providing food, livelihoods, medicines, materials to build their homes and places to graze their animals. These mountains are also their gods.
