1 Citation: Fortier, Jana 2003 “Reflections on Raute Identity” Studies in Nepali History & Society 8(2):317-348. REFLECTIONS ON RAUTE IDENTITY An ethnic group exists only when it runs the risk of existing -Michel de Certeau 1997:76 Culture in the Plural Social identity embodies many different dimensions of life and representation. People in Jajarkot District, Nepal, the site of my field research in 1997, know each other through their political persuasions, religious orientations, caste status, oral traditions, and even their sartorial choices. This essay looks at ways in which the Raute, a nomadic Tibetic speaking group of food collectors, create their own sense of social identity and how this differs from the surrounding millions of Nepali speaking food producers. Contemporary Rautes see themselves in a heterarchical social world, one inhabited by humans and other sentient beings - deities, animals-as-relatives, ancestors, certain plants - who live together in forests. Rautes identify themselves as forest nomads whose subsistence is based upon hunting, gathering, and trade. Surrounding farmers identify Rautes as the "last monkey hunters of Nepal," imagining them as archaic and backward people who need "upliftment" into agrarian society. Farmers emphasize social hierarchy, sedentism, thrift, savings, and Hindu social codes. As foragers, Rautes emphasize sharing, egalitarian relations, nomadism, animism, and individual autonomy. Given this contradiction in sociality, the minority population of Rautes express their individual ethnic autonomy at the risk of being forced to assimilate into the underclasses of Nepali society. Throughout this essay, ethnicity and identity are explored as ways of knowing cultural selves. Yet knowledge is a cultural construction itself and as Foucault (1972) noted, divisions of knowledge are actually reflexive categories. Raute identity is thus filtered through my own as well as others’ subjective interests, cultural experiences, and historically situated knowledge. Further, the purpose of this essay is not to reveal Euro- American or even Indo-Nepali ways of knowing Raute cultural identities. Rather, this essay is trying to reveal ways in which Rautes know and express their identity. Thus our goal is to perceive culturally created forms through not only our own cultural lens but most importantly through the cultures we study. To know Raute identity is a goal worth pursuing, yet it is nevertheless a difficult task. Raute politics is based upon heterarchy, a political formation characteristic of foragers in other parts of South Asia (Gardner 1966), and indeed characteristic of foraging modes of subsistence worldwide. In a heterarchy, political power is shared and/or distributed along a continuum of actors. Political decisions cannot be enforced by elders, leaders, religious edicts, or codified legal systems. Instead of such hierarchical systems of sociality, people in foraging societies have to learn to be good orators, using the power of persuasion in order to influence each other. As such, various groups or bands of Rautes form their own decisions about how to represent their political selves to others. For example, a generation ago, a group of Rautes living in far western Nepal were allotted farm land by His Majesty’s Government of Nepal (HMG/N) and began to call themselves Raji. After twenty years, however, most of them had lost their land to others and became landless. This group began to call themselves "Raute" again and petitioned the Nepali Government for more land, saying that they were Rautes willing to become farmers (again). Such flexibility might be seen as unethical to some, but many individuals and groups have had to negotiate their identity under stressful circumstances. "Rauteness" varies not only by economic and historical circumstance, but also by who is doing the knowing. The full-time nomadic band of