Gendered Ecologies and Ecofeminist Consciousness in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam

This paper examines the intersection of gender, ecology, and indigenous epistemologies in Mamang Dai's The Legends of Pensam, arguing that the novel articulates a distinctly indigenous ecofeminist consciousness. Set within the ecological and cosmological terrain of Arunachal Pradesh, the text foregrounds women as pivotal custodians of ecological knowledge, ritual practice, and spiritual mediation. By engaging ecofeminist theories alongside indigenous feminist frameworks, the study demonstrates how Dai aligns the feminine with environmental stewardship, relational ethics, and intergenerational transmission of ecological memory. The analysis further contends that the novel critiques the gendered repercussions of ecological disruption, particularly those produced by modernization, militarization, and neocolonial development. Dai's narrative structure, fragmented, mythic, and resonant with oral tradition, mirrors indigenous cosmologies in which human and non-human agencies coexist within a shared ecological continuum. This paper also argues that Dai's work offers a decolonial ecological vision that challenges patriarchal and extractivist paradigms, proposing instead a model of ecological care grounded in indigenous worldviews and gendered ecologies.