Taking into consideration the diverse cultural markers, the State Government in the year 2000 desirous of promoting tourism, conceived the Hornbill Festival to bring together the sixteen diverse tribes of Nagaland to celebrate together, one common festival espousing the spirit of unity in diversity through a weeklong celebration to coincide with the Nagaland Statehood Day on 1st December. The hornbill bird was chosen in collective reverence to the bird held sacred by the tribes and enshrined in the cultural ethos of the Nagas in symbolic signatures to equate status, merit, wealth, as decorative head piece eligible only to the deserving. It was also chosen to create awareness to the fragile status of the hornbill slowing disappearing from its natural habitat.