Blood, Birth, and Belief: Female Hygiene, Family Planning, and Ecocultural Ethics among the Indigenous Communities of Northeast India

Abstract: Female hygiene and family planning have long been entwined with the ecological and cultural ethics of indigenous societies in Northeast India. The eco-cultural framework of tribes such as the Nyishi, Ao, and Apatani reveals that bodily processes are not divorced from nature but are embedded within cosmological orders, ritual purity, and environmental interdependence. This paper examines indigenous perceptions of menstruation, childbirth, and reproductive health through an ecocritical perspective, arguing that women’s bodies are integral to the ecological continuum. Modern interventions in hygiene and contraception often overlook these cultural logics, creating friction between biomedical rationality and community-based ecological ethics. Through ethnographic evidence and theoretical insights from ecofeminism and cultural ecology, the study explores how indigenous women negotiate the sacred, the sanitary, and the sustainable within patriarchal yet eco-sensitive societies.

Keywords: Female Hygiene; Family Planning; Indigenous Culture; Ecocriticism; Northeast India