Archives of Current Research International

Indigenous knowledge systems frequently organise ecological understanding through relationships among land, living beings, social institutions, and cultural practice. This narrative review examines Lepcha animism as a culturally embedded knowledge system and evaluates, with explicit evidentiary caution, its relevance to contemporary sustainability debates. A structured narrative search was conducted in July 2026 through scholarly web search, PubMed, journal and publisher databases, and academic repositories using combinations of terms related to Lepcha knowledge, sacred landscapes, Sikkim ethnobiology, animism, biocultural conservation, disaster-risk reduction, and environmental education. Peer-reviewed scholarship was prioritised; classic ethnographies were retained for historical and cosmological description, while official and community documentation was used only for contemporary heritage and ritual details. The synthesis indicates that Lepcha traditions link sacred geography, ritual specialists, oral narratives, seasonal ceremonies, and customary ethics within a relational understanding of human-environment interaction. Empirical studies from Sikkim further demonstrate that local knowledge can contain verifiable information relevant to medicinal plants, bird identification, and resource preferences. These findings support the value of Indigenous knowledge for place-based conservation and education, but they do not establish that ritual or sacredness automatically produces conservation, agricultural sustainability, or disaster resilience. The review therefore distinguishes documented cultural meanings from plausible social-ecological mechanisms and from measured environmental outcomes. Lepcha knowledge is best understood as a dynamic biocultural system whose sustainability relevance depends on community authority, context, continued transmission, and appropriate dialogue with scientific knowledge rather than on romanticised assumptions about Indigenous practice.