The art, architecture and oral traditions of tribal villages are great indigenous vernacular expressions of the diverse culture of India. Cultural property of indigenous peoples is perforce largely intangible like spoken languages, signs and symbols, unwritten customs and traditions, folk songs and music, ethno-biology and medicinal prescriptions, prayers and invocations, and visual metaphors. In short all ritualistic, artistic, sacred and profane expressions of their life. These are distinctly reflected in their paintings, carvings, pottery, terracotta, ironwork, basketry, needlework and weaving. It is their environment that creates living religio-cultural traditions such as the great Sorhai harvest art and the Khovar marriage art of Jharkhand State, etc. The relationship of indigenous peoples to their land is also unique. Their landscape is covered with traditional sacred sites, mounds, pathways, burial grounds, festive spaces - all historically significant in tribal mythology. This art directly traces motifs Io the region's Meso-Chalcolithic rock art, and uses no Hindu religious motifs.

Khovar and Sorhai art has travelled to many parts of the world, and has been exhibited extensively in Australia and Europe. It has endeared itself to viewers in overseas museums and galleries. In addition to a recent film, a unique project has been launched in Germany to produce a book in German, English, French and Spanish on Sorhai and Khovar art describing the environmental, sociocultural and human predicament in Hazaribagh-Chatra region of Jharkhand State, carrying selected mural, paper and rock art paintings and different tribal traditions. Jharkhand is one of the last great Adivasi homelands. It is also the scene of the worst industrial development from the turn of the 19th century. The greatest threat today is the Upper Karanpura Coalfield Project started in 1985, with 70 more open cast mines having received environmental clearance recently. At stake are 200 tribal villages. Already the villages have been overrun by square urban housing clashing against gently sloping tiles roofs, the consonance between structure and decoration lost amidst concrete and cement.

The 5lh Session of the Commission on Human Rights Working Group on the Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People, was held in Geneva in 1999. The Indigenous Caucus set out their position. "There can be no doubt that we are people with distinct historical, political and cultural identities........Indigenous peopleare unquestionably people in every legal, political, social, cultural and ethnological meaning of the term. It would be discriminatory, illogical and unscientific to identify us in the United Nations Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as anything less than 'peoples. However the principles underlying the Draft Declaration have been challenged by Australia, Japan, UK and USA. Even in India which recognizes tribals as aboriginals, the first peoples. These countries see their demands as a challenge to their own sovereignty over national resources. Indigenous society is thus at the mercy of the dominant culture, and infringement of indigenous law is nut an offence. No serious effort has been made to date to allow the indigenous peoples to develop "along the lines of their own genius" as advocated by India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.