Articles
Catholic Education, Indigenous Primacy, and the Courage of This Moment
Opinion | Articles | James Pochury | 13-Feb-2026
A reflection for the Church in Northeast India
The recent unease surrounding curricular changes in a Catholic school in Dimapur — particularly the introduction of AI-related initiatives — has stirred discussion across our region. Some parents have felt unprepared. Some students are unsettled. Media attention has widened the conversation.
It would be convenient to treat this as a localised disagreement about timing and consultation. It is more than that.
It is a window into a deeper question confronting the Church in Northeast India:
What kind of human beings are we forming in an age defined by artificial intelligence, ecological strain, and civilisational acceleration?
Economist Jeffrey Sachs has repeatedly cautioned that societies unable to engage transformative technologies risk long-term marginalisation. Artificial intelligence is no longer theoretical. It is reorganising knowledge, professions, and power structures. Entire sectors are being reshaped at speeds few anticipated.
Our youth will inhabit this world. Catholic education cannot pretend otherwise.
Yet technological competence alone is not the measure of formation. The deeper question is anthropological and ecclesial: What vision of the human person are we nurturing?
Under Pope Francis, the universal Church has spoken with unusual clarity about ecology, justice, and the vocation of Indigenous Peoples.
In Laudato si’, we were reminded that the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are one cry. In Laudate Deum, the urgency of ecological conversion was intensified. Through the Synod on Synodality, the Church has been invited into deeper listening and shared discernment.
In multiple global settings, Pope Francis has affirmed that Indigenous communities are not peripheral actors in history. They are protagonists. They carry relational wisdom formed through centuries of living with land, memory, and community.
Globally, Indigenous Peoples constitute a small fraction of humanity, yet their territories safeguard the overwhelming share of remaining biodiversity. This is not a sentimental observation. It is an empirical fact.
A preferential attention to Indigenous Peoples, therefore, is not identity politics. It is ecological realism.
For the Church in Northeast India, this recognition carries particular weight. Our faithful are overwhelmingly Indigenous in heritage. Our communal patterns, languages, and moral imagination are shaped by peoples whose relationship to land predates modern institutions. We are not a transplant church. We are an Indigenous Church.
That identity is not a slogan. It is a responsibility. Here, a quiet examination presents itself. Have our educational, pastoral, and institutional structures fully embodied this recognition?
Across Asia, the Church often proceeds with prudence. In India, the language of indigeneity intersects with political sensitivities. The Church must be seen as serving all communities, not aligning with one against another. In a region marked by ethnic complexity, unity must be guarded carefully.
Such prudence is understandable. Yet history teaches that discernment delayed can quietly become opportunity lost.
Integral ecology is not an optional theme among many. It is a lens through which the Church is being invited to re-examine formation, governance, and mission. If Indigenous wisdom is central to ecological renewal globally, then in a region where Indigenous identity remains living and vibrant, this invitation becomes more immediate.
The Spirit often moves gently — but it does move.
The present debate over AI therefore becomes emblematic.
If Catholic schools adopt technological initiatives solely to remain competitive within national systems, we risk absorbing a technocratic logic that narrows the horizon of education. We may form students proficient in digital systems yet uncertain of who they are.
If, however, we hesitate to prepare our youth for technological realities, we risk confining them to structural marginalisation in an increasingly automated world.
Neither path reflects the fullness of Catholic discernment. The deeper call is integration.
What would it mean to form students who can navigate artificial intelligence while remaining rooted in ancestral wisdom? To cultivate digital literacy within a framework of ecological responsibility? To produce leaders capable of engaging global systems without relinquishing relational belonging?
Yet within this broader conversation lies a quieter, more fragile reality.
Across the hills and villages of our region, rural Indigenous youth stand at a delicate threshold. Many are the first generation to move between ancestral worlds and digital modernity with equal exposure. They are pulled by aspiration, opportunity, and mobility. At the same time, they remain the last living bridge to inherited cosmologies, land-based knowledge, and communal memory.
If this generation does not come to terms — deeply and honestly — with the question Who am I? before being overtaken by the urgency of What must I become?, that bridge may not hold.
When identity becomes secondary to ambition, culture gradually shifts from lived reality to curated display. Festivals risk becoming performance rather than expression. Heritage risks becoming tourism rather than worldview. The symbols remain, but the interior coherence fades
We will only be as strong as this most fragile link.
If rural Indigenous youth lose confidence in the depth of their inheritance, no educational reform or ecclesial declaration will recover what has quietly eroded. But if they are formed to see their identity not as an obstacle but as a gift — not as nostalgia but as a living resource — then technological competence and cultural integrity can coexist without contradiction.
For this reason, the present moment is not merely about curriculum. It is about formation at the deepest level. It is about ensuring that modernisation does not sever memory and that ambition does not eclipse belonging.
The Northeast Church occupies a rare intersection. Indigenous identity remains alive. Ecclesial structures are established. Youth populations are significant. Ecological consciousness is not abstract but daily experience.
Few regions hold this convergence. If we respond thoughtfully, the Church in Northeast India could quietly model what integral ecology looks like in lived practice — not as rhetoric, but as synthesis.
If we respond cautiously without clarity, we may replicate models shaped elsewhere, hoping stability will suffice.
The controversy in Dimapur will pass. Policies will be adjusted. Emotions will settle.
But the deeper question will remain.
Will the Church in this region inhabit fully its identity as an Indigenous Church in a time of ecological and technological upheaval?
Or will we move carefully enough that the moment passes us by?
The future will not wait. But neither are we asked to react impulsively. We are asked to discern with courage.
If Indigenous identity in this region is a gift entrusted to the Church, then nurturing its agency within our educational and pastoral structures is not partiality. It is faithful guardianship.
Turning points rarely announce themselves loudly. They often appear as local tensions that reveal deeper transitions.
This may be one of those moments. May we have the clarity to recognise it — and the courage to respond.
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