*2.2. Storytelling*

Walking, as Tim Ingold et al. put it, is much like talking, and both are quintessential features of what we take to be a human form of life [18] (p. 1). Our scholarly journey is a long walk of seven years with indigenous farmers and practitioners, which entails pensive thinking, conversations, and telling of stories. Indeed, there is a strong oral tradition in indigenous culture. Instead of writing, indigenous people tell stories and pass on their heritage from mouth to mouth. The oral art of story-telling challenges the authority of writing culture and thus, in effect, Euro-Sino-centric understanding of language and representation. Through the never-ending stories, transformed with each retelling, indigenous people rely on the oral ritual to reclaim the lost heritage of their community. In each of the walking workshops, Pagung Tomi opens her story/song with a telling of her ancestors' migratory history in her native language. Each of the tellings becomes not just a repetition of the tale, but a metamorphosis of a past lost, in a present lived, and a future foreseen. Each story gives rise to a strategic disclosure and each enhances self-empowerment and self-creation. Story becomes her testimony which embodies significant cultural and political repercussions. This testimony has involved a potency to communicate odds and gains, risk and management, scarcity and their struggle for survival. When the story flew into her ears from her forebear, it made a picture in her mind she could never forget. As migratory people, history/memory is embodied in the land and traced with stories, with the presence of ancestors and spirits. Pagung's stories testify indigenous presence in this land and delineate how indigenous people adapt and respond to the changes and crises and become resilient. We stress the value of story-telling in a time of danger and crises such as global warming; as Walter Benjamin has put it, the people of this land strive "to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger" [21].
