Thread: Quiet Colonialism

“We try to not be Thai”: the everyday resistance of ethnic minorities Gabriel Ernst - 21 Oct, 2019




Surrounded by low-hanging clouds, mud and chickens in a village deep in the northern hills, a young woman tells me, “We are not Thai and we try not to be Thai. Sometimes I find myself talking to my family in Thai and I think, ‘No, try to be Lisu’”. Katima is an activist and member of one of Thailand’s myriad ethnic minorities. The Lisu people are spread across Thailand’s northern hills, deep into north-eastern Burma and southern China. They are a stateless people with language, culture, religion and practices that are completely distinct from any of the national states that envelope them.
In The Art of Not Being Governed, anthropologist James C. Scott makes the case that the Lisu (and many of the other ethnic minorities found in upland southeast Asia) are culturally and materially anti-state. Their fluidic language, culture, lack of alphabet and semi-nomadic living practices developed as a response to escape the reach of the states that would have had them as productive subjects who store grain, deliver taxes and provide soldiers. The Lisu and other similar groups were free of these obligations and were able to live under their own community governance. Scott argues that they have tried—consciously or not—to make themselves an unconquerable population


Down the road sits the local government office. Built around 20 years ago, it marked the first formal governing presence in the lives of the local people. “When I was a kid, we used to have no hospitals, no schools, no government,” Katima tells me. Today the office is coated in flags and murals dedicated to the monarchy and nation-state. Those who work in the office are not locals, but Thai people brought in to govern the Lisu population. The same is true of the teachers in the local government schools: Thai civil servants assigned to teach the national curriculum. There has also been a concerted effort to build Buddhist temples in these more remote areas, which serve to supplement and eventually replace the animist spiritual beliefs held and practised by the local people.
This extension of the state is a clear and direct plan originating from 20th-century policies of ‘Thaification’ formulated by the central government. Beginning in 1933, dictator Plaek Phibunsongkhram oversaw a massive nationalist overhaul of the state’s relationship towards ethnic minorities. Notable policies included harshly enforcing the Thai language in the education system, reinforcing the relationship between the monarchy and population, and issuing the 12 Core Values—a kind of nationalist guide to ideal ‘Thai’ behaviour, ways of living and etiquette.


A negotiation

Even today, some Thai officials are scared to go into Lisu villages. There are stories of government officials being detained by angry villagers over land rights conflicts. “It’s definitely happened before,” a resident tells me. “The Lisu people came out with knives and bats and the Thai officials had to negotiate for their release.”
Another young Lisu woman, who wanted to go unnamed, describes government involvement in Lisu life as a negotiation. “We accept some of the things the government offers us, like schools, hospitals, temples. But we are still Lisu … The defiance is at home and in the community, where we will continue to do our customs and live our own way of life. We won’t really assimilate”. Most local people don’t feel the government has any influence over them.
In the north of the country, one of the state’s most effective arms is without a doubt the Royal Project, which was inaugurated in the late 60s as a means to replace opium crops grown in the hills by ethnic minorities with fruits and vegetables. The agricultural products produced for the Project are sold to a state-operated company which distributes them throughout the kingdom, leaving the locals dependent on the state for their material wellbeing.


In the early days, the Project was funded and supported by the United Nations. Besides crop replacement, an added and intentional benefit was the absorption of minorities into the activities of the Thai state, with the aim of keeping them from being drawn into the drug trade or from joining the communist insurgencies which were flaring up across Southeast Asia at the time.
Today Royal Project stations, which can be found throughout the hills, technically serve the purpose of agricultural research and development. They also act as laybys for domestic Thai tourists from urban areas—embassies of a kind to help central Thai people feel acquainted with the faraway hills. The outposts are a continuous source of soft power for the central government to ingratiate officials with the local population and absorb their activities into the nation-state.


Anti-state fight/flight

The same anti-state culture is exhibited by the Maniq people in the deep south of the country. The Maniq are nomadic hunter-gatherers who live in the heavily forested national parks near the Thai-Malay border. Like the Lisu, they have their own language, culture and no alphabet. But unlike the Lisu, the Maniq refuse to even negotiate, rejecting literally all aspects of modernity in favour of a far more traditional existence. Even today they live without electricity, permanent housing or any of the trappings of modern life. They find food from hunting with slingshots and poison-tipped blow darts, or by foraging in the forest.
Maniq groups typically consist of around 30 individuals. They live nomadically and communally with no concept of private property and without hierarchy. Their total population, confined solely to these hills, is estimated at only around 200.
Historically, the Maniq people have suffered tremendously at the hands of outsiders. There are two key words in Maniq language, which one quickly learns when spending time with them: ‘Maniq’ (‘us’) and ‘Hamiq’ (‘them’). “You are either of the forest or of the town. Maniq or Hamiq,” Speaker Kai tells me. (The role of Speaker in Maniq society is literally that of a communicator—a speaker for the group. As there is no hierarchy in the community, the Speaker is by no means a leader. Rather they listen to the many voices of the group and communicate the consensus with outsiders.)


The key to the Maniq’s survival so far has been their flight reflex. They’ve spent thousands of years literally running away from settled society, and are well known for being extremely wary of outsiders. But today that nomadic lifestyle, particularly as it concerns conceptions of private property, inevitably results in constant clashes with the Thai legal system. Their lack of formal identification runs parallel to Thailand’s great state bureaucracy. Meanwhile their seclusion and isolation leaves them ripe for exploitation from illegal loggers and poachers. Plantations and farmlands have also been squeezing the Maniq’s living area for centuries, shrinking it at an astronomical rate.
James C. Scott made the case that the geographic conditions of Southeast Asia historically made state building no easy task. Evidence of this historical lack of state reach is still clear in the lowlands of Thailand, where almost every region—even the provinces immediately outside of Bangkok—have a distinct dialect or even language. For example, many rural people in provinces such as Surin (450 kilometres from Bangkok in the flatlands of eastern Thailand) speak upwards of four languages: Khmer, Lao, Surin and the most recent addition, Thai. The people of Surin also have religious practices and cultural points of reference which are not found in mainstream Thai culture.


Such communities live as proof of a Thailand before it was ‘Thaified’—a place rich in diversity and bound by communal strength in local identities. But these communities are rapidly fading under the ever-growing reach of a state able to replace local identities with a national one. Yet opposition still exists in different guises, particularly in the hills, from the Lisu in the North to the Maniq of the South.
Speaker Kai pointedly says of the Thai government, “They want us to settle down, grow food, go to their schools, be like them. We can’t live like that”. The Thai state has made efforts to control the Maniq including issuing ID cards, which quickly disappear. A forced resettlement project, where they were made to live in permanent housing on a kind of reservation in Phattalung province, was apparently seen as an act of charity by the state. The experiment didn’t last long as the Maniq ran away and escaped back into nomadic jungle life. “We don’t want charity or help. I just want my kids to grow up like I did. I want them to be Maniq, to live as Maniq,” Speaker Kai tells me. “We just want some land to live off of and to be left alone”.

This is pure anti-state ideology: a refusal to take part in any kind of settled civilisation with powers that supersede their own control. Still, above the Maniq’s temporary forest shacks fly two flags: one Thai national flag and one Thai royal flag. They were erected by the Maniq as a show of good faith to the local Thai plantation owners and national park rangers who have been harassing them for decades. Pessimism about their future is inevitable as the veins of settlers stretch ever deeper over the hills and into the forest. Speaker Kai’s message to the outside world rings out: “We want to be left alone”.



~ https://www.newmandala.org/we-try-to...ic-minorities/

Originally Posted by HuangLao

“We want to be left alone”.

Cannot an agreed area be assigned to them and protected from Thai and foreigners intrusions?

Originally Posted by OhOh

Cannot an agreed area be assigned to them and protected from Thai and foreigners intrusions?

Yeah, it could be like, er, er, Kashmir! Or, er, er, Kurdistan!





Oh, hang on.

I think that most countries (if not all) have issues with nomadic people...Tuareg in North Africa, gypsies in western countries...authorities either reject them as non-citizen/foreigners or want them to change their lifestyle (settle, speak the main language, drop their customs).
This applies also to non-nomadic sub-group ...for the sake of the country unity, the local dialects are toned down through schools and public services where they are forbidden. It explains partly the trouble in the deep south of Thailand and some western countries' issues with their local minorities.

From what I've seen, the situations improve when the local dialects are also taught at school 1nd can be used in administration (which means the central power hires locals instead of sending people there)

Originally Posted by OhOh

Cannot an agreed area be assigned to them and protected from Thai and foreigners intrusions?

I believe this has been attempted, in one form or another, through a few instances in the past. Mostly with failure, as the agreeable parties were not on the same page.
The central state authority will always win out as such applies to indigenous integration, as it's been witnessed to historically the world over.

A note of interest: Twas the early, and continuing, Chulalongkorn era policies to siwilai and solidify civic/military governmental structure throughout the upcountry areas - hence, the proper "Changwat", "Amphoe", and "Mueang" regimented systems were born. Most communities didn't have a choice to resist this integration, which naturally spurred on peasant revolts in many forms.

Mirrored global activities of this nature are historically similar.

Look at all the Burmese kids that get abandoned in Thailand by their parents.

IF they are lucky enough to get into a Thai school, they aren't taking fucking Burmese lessons, are they?

Prepare to be assimilated.

^^ my examples are not Thai, AFAIK Thailand implement the policy of teaching only Thai at school (and foreign languages but not the local dialect), and administration use Thai. I can hear some words from northern dialect but certainly not tribes dialects, those few words aren't enough not to consider the administration as local, especially in the most independent/differentiated areas, South and tribes languages are much more different from the Thai than the northern or Isan dialects.

I didn't get the behaviours part sorry, I didn't talk about behaviour.

the whole world will be chinesed in 50 years or so as the seppo propaganda machine is neutralized

best bet is to bastardize their traditions so they will still be recognizable to the faceless borg but with cheeky individualism installed to subvert them

and yes I realize the irony of using z instead of s to appease my spell chucker

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Prepare to be assimilated.

You bet and not just Thailand. First Nation/American Indians in US and Canada have attempted self governance with little success. Thailand for few hundred years.

A self governed zone for these folks simply will not happen.

Originally Posted by Farang Ky Ay

I didn't get the behaviours part sorry, I didn't talk about behaviour.

Apologies

Originally Posted by Farang Ky Ay

my examples are not Thai

Where were the examples from, were they successful?

My intention was to ask if local traditions, customs, freedoms are practised due to many years/centuries of usage. As many are aware, many laws exist in Thailand to which a "blind eye" is turned.

I don't follow the "events" in the south so my knowledge is limited. Do we have any TD members situated there and who post here. Or is the discussion "frowned upon" by those the Thais elect, or our TD masters?

My only experience of northern communities, other than a few Issan visits, was when I visited a school on the Thai/Myanmar (Burma for "arry) border. I was told the school was one of the best at what it was doing.

The Thai "educators" were engrossed in meetings, trying to absorb the different teaching methods both utilised. I was given a Thai student who spoke English and she chaperoned me around for the morning. Her role was to show me the facilities/classes, language, science, agriculture .... being taught and translating my questions, I presume in Thai, to the Thai teacher's and student's answers.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

get abandoned in Thailand by their parents

She also told me that a considerable % of the students lived at the school during term time, where they were housed in dormitories, ate their evening meals and IIRC it was managed by foreigners. I was told they remained at the school during term time because "their homes were too far to travel/poor roads on a daily basis' and they "returned to their homes" during holidays.

I have also talked to one of the local thessaban guys where I live, who appears to manage a number of students in a Home Teaching Program. Visiting and monitoring their progress.

^ I was thinking about Hawai - US where charter school (publicly funde) teach the local dialect, Corsica - France which have bilingual public schools, and Catalonia - Spain where the local dialect is both taught in schools and used by public services ...the later example may sound awkward right now regarding recent news of riots about independence (didn't follow but maybe it's more related to dire economical situation and harsh policies).

AFAIK local traditions are tolerated, they don't overcome the common laws.

Originally Posted by Norton

You bet and not just Thailand. First Nation/American Indians in US and Canada have attempted self governance with little success. Thailand for few hundred years.

A self governed zone for these folks simply will not happen.

You just have to look how the chinkies are trying to "chinkify" Tibet and the Uighur population.

And they are setting an example to every tin pot dictator in their vicinity.

Originally Posted by panama hat

Whereas in New Zealand the Greens in he coalition-government is trying to make the Maōri language compulsory. This, despite it being very unpopular . . . and less than six percent of Maōri speak the language fluently themselves . . . as for land, monetary payments and 'indigenous rights', that's another area where NZ has gone looney - much to the chagrin of the other 84% of the population.

Oddly enough, the really 'important' languages like Chinese are rarely offered. Im my youngest one's school there's the option of French, German and Maōri. Unsurprisingly Maōri wasn't her choice.

I believe this offered and mandatory second-language Maori throughout the educational system came about from an almost political correctness and societal conciliatory act.
Been the integrated norm for a while [decades] and appears to to rather silly in it's approach.
Those who wish to keep the Maori language and traditions revived, are free to do so - and they are, within a concentrated community.

My first four girls, partially raised in NZ - of Tahitian/Marquesan direct ancestry - didn't have to play the game, as they already had their native Polynesian languages in hand - and a distinctive Chinese, French, and English.
Ironic muse played a part, as they were often mistaken for Maori by the unwashed Pakeha [as in: all those Polynesian savage type look alike]

Heh.

Originally Posted by Norton

You bet and not just Thailand. First Nation/American Indians in US and Canada have attempted self governance with little success. Thailand for few hundred years.

A self governed zone for these folks simply will not happen.

As is the reality for numerous indigenous separatists, sadly.
One step forward, two steps back.

Originally Posted by HuangLao

I believe this has been attempted, in one form or another, through a few instances in the past. Mostly with failure, as the agreeable parties were not on the same page.
The central state authority will always win out as such applies to indigenous integration, as it's been witnessed to historically the world over.

A note of interest: Twas the early, and continuing, Chulalongkorn era policies to siwilai and solidify civic/military governmental structure throughout the upcountry areas - hence, the proper "Changwat", "Amphoe", and "Mueang" regimented systems were born. Most communities didn't have a choice to resist this integration, which naturally spurred on peasant revolts in many forms.

Mirrored global activities of this nature are historically similar.

There is no such thing as multiculturalism. Only multiple cultures. In Asia as in the west, cultures are drawn to their own enclaves, often becoming outcast ghettoes, or no go areas for the indiginous peoples.
The magnetic attraction of a culture in to one area is quite normal, so integration is often impossible. It is a global phenomenon.

Originally Posted by OhOh

It appears that the adoption of newer second or third languages, as we see in NZ, are politically decided rather than citizen demand led.

Possibly, but I don't see the political gain to be had by offering French and German, rather I'd put it down to the availability of trained teachers in that field . . . and the over-protective closed-shop teachers union vis-a-vis Asian immigrants.

Originally Posted by HuangLao

I believe this offered and mandatory second-language Maori throughout the educational system came about from an almost political correctness and societal conciliatory act.

Certainly so, but it has gone overboard. In the recent local elections my ballot actually had a box I could tick to vote in the Maōri section, without proof required. As is said; 'one drop of Maōri blood makes you a Maōri.
Weird-ass system

Originally Posted by Switch

In Asia as in the west, cultures are drawn to their own enclaves, often becoming outcast ghettoes, or no go areas for the indiginous peoples.

That depends, I have not encountered this as much in the US, NZ, Oz as I have in Thailand, as an example. I certainly can count on one hand the number of Caucasian friends or acquaintances we have in SG, MY, HK or Japan.

Actually to the topic:
Just airing on TV5:

Les enfants du triangle d'or

Category ocumentaryBroadcast :Monday 04/11, 21:01 Wednesday 06/11, 22:59 Duration :59 (min)Subtitle :ENFRRUVTEpisode :1/1

In the heart of the golden triangle, northern Thailand, the children of drug traffickers take their destiny in hand. Le Sourire de Chiang Khong, a charity based in French-speaking Switzerland, uses innovative educational methods to help them take a different route. The intertwined portraits of Pi Aïe, Danaï and Wipop. Directed by: Claude Schauli (Switzerland, 2015)

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Actually to the topic:

How was the rest not on topic, relating to the title of 'quiet colonialism'? And how is the issue of drug-traffickers' children a matter of 'quiet colonialism' and more germane?

^
Perhaps if you saw it all you would not wonder how it is relating to the OP:

Quiet Colonialism

“We try to not be Thai”: the everyday resistance of ethnic minorities Gabriel Ernst - 21 Oct, 2019

Surrounded by low-hanging clouds, mud and chickens in a village deep in the northern hills, a young woman tells me, “We are not Thai and we try not to be Thai. Sometimes I find myself talking to my family in Thai and I think, ‘No, try to be Lisu’”. Katima is an activist and member of one of Thailand’s myriad ethnic minorities. The Lisu people are spread across Thailand’s northern hills, deep into north-eastern Burma and southern China. They are a stateless people with language, culture, religion and practices that are completely distinct from any of the national states that envelope them.

Originally Posted by panama hat

. In my youngest one's school there's the option of French, German and Maōri. Unsurprisingly Maōri wasn't her choice.

Im surprised they still teach French and German in NZ schools.

Both were taught when I went to High School, but they have been replaced with Chinese and Japanese in Australian schools, as far as I know.

Originally Posted by Klondyke

Perhaps if you saw it all you would not wonder how it is relating to the OP:

Yet you didn't share a link for me to be able to follow and to do so. Perhaps it would have been helpful to actually highlight the relevant section.