Heat, home, and belonging: Reconsidering the hearth in Sumi cultural practice

Dr. Alino Sumi and Dr. Salome Zhimomi presented a paper on ‘Heat, Home, and Belonging: Reconsidering the Hearth in Sumi Cultural Practice’ at the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference in the University of Melbourne from 26-28th November 2025. Their paper focused particularly on Sumi Nagas and their kitchen hearth in the highlands of Nagaland. The discussion explored the daily lives of the Sumi households and how the lighting of the kitchen fire is significant as the first act of the day. They explained that for the Sumis, like many other Naga tribals, the hearth is more than a cooking space or a habitual practice of everyday life. As one talks about Sumi kitchen hearth, it means the fireplace at the center of Sumi traditional house – the place to cook, to smoke, to share the warmth, the food, the drink and stories with kith and kin. For Sumi Nagas, the kitchen hearth is a generative site of warmth, storytelling, kinship, intergenerational knowledge, and daily affairs.
The presentation demonstrated how the heat in Sumi kitchen hearth is viewed from its native point of view. The presentation reflected upon the traditional structure of the Sumi kitchen hearth, which was supported by visual slides. With awareness of socio-economic changes in Nagaland, Alino and Salome narrate on how transformations have taken place in the Sumi hearth. This was explained in ways in which modern form of non-indigenous devices is now being used for cooking in Sumi kitchens, and how the original kitchen hearth is now displaced and most of the time is ornamental. The adoption of modern cooking devices also reveals the type of heat different from the Sumi kitchen hearth – technically an unintentional diffusion of heat. Alino and Salome further pointed out that these transformations are due to urbanization, technological shifts, increase in wealth, the difficulty in fetching firewood and some basic economic factors. According to them, modern housing and technologies not only displaced traditional fire-making practices but there is now a tendency of losing Sumi ways of building intimate social relationships, sharing of knowledge, and a sense of belonging.
As Alino and Salome explored anthropological ideas and the works of some foundational sociologists, they both concluded that the heat of Sumi kitchen hearth cannot be viewed as an energy for cooking alone or a habitual practice of lighting fire. But it is something intrinsically connected to a sense of home and a sense of belonging. While referring to their extensive anthropological fieldworks, ethnographic insights and lived experiences, Alino and Salome noted that heat of Sumi kitchen hearth is symbolic representation of cultural relationships, emotional connection and contestations of material power. These notions, however, are epistemologically justifiable in terms of evidence and knowledge in the life of the Sumi indigenous world. For Sumis, like many other indigenous people, cultural adaptations may be simple or complex. One characteristic of culture is dynamic, and it is always changing. New objects are frequently added to material culture, and they affect non-material culture as well. Culture is a complex whole which means culture is about knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs and many other capabilities
and habits acquired by humans as a member of society. Alino and Salome, therefore, suggest that the heat in Sumi kitchen hearth symbolizes a holistic meaning of Sumi culture and essentially connects Sumi with broader spectrum of heat outside the periphery of their households.
Having analyzed the symbolic representation of the heat of Sumi kitchen hearth and being well-aware of Cultural relativism, Alino and Salome further questions how the heat in Sumi hearth relates to other Naga tribals or can be contrasted to the heat of another indigenous kitchen hearth. With an understanding of Sumi cultural situations, Alino and Salome have started exploring Sumi perception of heat outside their own kitchen hearth relative to the increasing heat of the world – like climate change and global warming. As technology, renewable and nuclear energy, and environmental conditions continue to change, the question arises: how long will the warmth of the Sumi kitchen hearth remain a place of comfort within this microcosm of Nagaland?” Will it continue to be a subject of everyday experience, and traditional space for social relationships, a memory holding space and a cultural hub of morals and ethics? The heat not only illuminates the kitchen hearth, but it is symbolically innate because it internalizes a sense of home and belonging no matter where you are.
Authors:
Dr. Alino Sumi and
Dr. Salome Zhimomi
Dr. Alino Sumi is an Indigenous anthropologist from Nagaland whose work explores Indigenous knowledge, heritage, and wellbeing. Currently an adjunct lecturer at Flinders University, she is a member of the NSF’s Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science. Her research focuses on Indigenous Naga knowledge systems, and she has consulted on Indigenous studies projects.
A historian by training, Dr. Salome Zhimomi, holds an Honors degree from Loretto College, Darjeeling, and two master’s degree from Northeastern Hill University, Shillong, including an MPhil. Zhimomi was awarded a full PhD scholarship in Anthropology at Australian National University. Her expertise lies in religion and politics; and ethnographic study of Lazami village. As an independent scholar and a Sumi Naga residing in Australia, Zhimomi brings lived experience with complex disabilities.