Observations on Race
As such a lover of all things cultural and historical, it was only a matter of time before I found an opportunity to search out a few tribal villages. It’s such a sensitive subject in Southeast Asia. Few outside of the region know of the century long crisis for those involved. I, like many other Americans, can be naive and sometimes simply ignorant to the plights of others in this ever changing world.
But, what I discovered in Southeast Asia, In a world where ethnicity can often be hard to determine. Racism is far more rampant and aggressive than anything I’ve ever witnessed or experienced in North America. And not seen in North America on this scale since before I was born. That may be difficult for some to believe, but I assure you that what you are about to read is fact as best as I can offer it.
A Short History Of The Forgotten Tribes Of Southeast Asia
I will break this section up into a few different subcategories. It is quite a bit of information and I don’t want to miss anything, nor do I want to fill this article with so much information it loses readability. But this is important, and it must be told. And so we will begin our journey in the land I have spent most of my time in while in Southeast Asia, Vietnam.
The Cham
My interest in the Cham came when I explored a few ancient Champa sights in south central Vietnam. The Cham people are of an ancient Austronesian line. Austronesians are now and historically spread from Madagascar in the west to New Zealand in the south east and Hawaii in the north east. Though they were all around it, they never established any lasting populations on the Australian continent.
The Cham history is absolutely fascinating. The only Austronesian peoples to ever establish any substantial settlements in mainland iron age Asia. Establishing themselves sometime in the second century in what is modern day southern Vietnam. The Cham were skilled seafarers and merchants. Founding, sometime in the seventh century, the now famous trading port of Hoi An in central Vietnam.
Through extensive trading and merchant power in the region, the Cham grew to control trade routes from Japan to Europe. With increased trade through the middle east. It was within a generation of the profit Muhammad’s death that Islam reached the Cham. It was clear to me some 900 years later, as I walked an ancient Cham sight near Quy Nhon, that it was influenced, at least in part, by Islam.
The Dai Viet and the Cham
It was an interesting tale as Buddhism and Hinduism had reached Southeast Asia and mainland Asia centuries before through Indian trade routes. In the early parts of the tenth century Islam was finding it’s way into Asia through the very same means. As Muslim conquerors began to take over trade routes in the Indian Ocean and parts of the Mediterranean, so to came Allah.
With a strange Semitic religion infiltrating to the south and the Dai Viet peoples feeling ever incurred upon by their Chinese neighbors to the north. It was only a matter of time before the situation would come to war. And so the Dai Viet plunged south into Cham territory in 1471. The war was brief and the Cham were obliterated by the hardened Vietnamese who had honed their skills over centuries of fighting the Chinese incursions.
Within a generation the Cham had been pushed into isolated villages in the jungle mountains of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. After the destruction of Champa, Cambodia offered refuge to the fleeing Muslim Chams, but Vietnam was relentless. By 1720 the Vietnamese annexed the Cambodian areas the Cham had settled in and had dissolved their state completely by the mid nineteenth Century.
19th century Jihad
At the dissolution of the only land they had left, the Muslim Cham leader Katip Sumat declared Jihad against the Vietnamese in 1833. The Vietnamese were ruthless in their crushing of the rebellion. Force feeding their Muslim captives lizard and pig meat and their Hindu captives beef. The Vietnamese quelling of the uprising was swift and complete.
After the fall of the uprising the Cham people would scatter to the wind. Some settled in the border territories of Cambodia, others on isolated Chinese Islands becoming the Utsuls. Though a very distinct ethnic minority, their separate nature from Chinese culture is unrecognized by China today. Another attempt to assimilate and evaporate the former empire and its tribal descendants. Others are still in whatever refuge they could find. Some managed to escape to the Islands in Indonesia and the few that remained in the territories of modern Vietnam would be absorbed into Vietnamese culture to never be a threat again.
The Indonesian Connection
In what is a strange piece of history. Indonesia came to Islam by way of the Cham a mere three decades before the Chams destruction. The Muslim Cham Queen Dwarawati, married the King Kertawijaya of the Majapahit Empire (modern day Indonesia) sometime in the mid fifteenth century. No doubt an attempt to solidify trade and kingdom alliances at the time. It was through her influence and supervision that Islam would become the dominant religion for the region. The Muslim culture of the Cham may have been extinguished in Southeast Asia, but It survived peripherally in Indonesia.
Modern Terms
Today the Cham people are all but extinct. In a civilization that once numbered well into the millions and dominated a vast region, the pure ethnic group of the Cham is guessed to be today at just under eight hundred thousand. With the largest population in Cambodia sitting at around six hundred thousand. It is the largest of their populations left and the only reason Cambodia is not 100% Buddhist.
For the Cham the damage is done. In what may be a bit of historical irony, the Vietnamese government of today has a benefit to acknowledge the Cham people of Southeast Asia. The oldest claim to disputed territories between China and Vietnam in the South China Sea is in fact with the Cham people. Vietnamese officials’ concern for bringing human rights violations of the Cham in recent years to light, and what can only be described as pure hate for the Cham, prevents them from exercising this claim.
The Chams claim to these disputed territories has been well documented by historians and the U.N. even recognizes it. Vietnam does not recognize the Cham within their lands or their history. I asked about the isolated pockets of the Cham in the mountains of Vietnam. I was told that only communist party members were allowed in the region without permits, and it was probably best that I forget about it. Though it’s hard not to be curious or want to find out more, I understood the message.
Hill Tribes Of Thailand
In Thailand, the situation was less pervasive and much more out in the open. There are as many horrible circumstances for why entire populations find themselves displaced as there are populations of displaced people. Thailand has a vast collection of these scattered people.
Collectively known by the Thai government as “Hill Tribes” or Chao Khao in Thai. They are believed to be about a million people in total. Though their populations exist in other countries including Myanmar, China, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, their relegation to second class citizens and inhabiting very unstable areas like Myanmar keeps their numbers often inaccurate and speculative.
Usually fleeing war torn regions like Myanmar (Burma), China in the early twentieth century, Vietnam in the mid twentieth century and other unstable areas in the region. They are often unwanted and unasked for. The relative stability of Thailand over the last couple of centuries have made it a haven for such displaced people in Southeast Asia. Again, it doesn’t mean Thailand has accepted them with open arms.
Second Class Citizens
It’s hard to say if the hill tribes isolation and meager existence is due to the Thai government or their own desire to remain an independent people. One thing is clear however, they are underserved, often malnourished and lacking in access to education and public works. Always forced to live in areas without tenable land. The hill tribes have created their own micro economy. Existing off meager wages often acquired through the exploitation and desperation of their own people.
If you see a picture of someone hanging out with Karen Long Neck women and walking through a village of tribal people working with looms or crafting goods, it’s probably a show. The tribes have established showcase villages which you can spot by an entrance fee. They put on a show for the throngs of visitors the tour companies bring to buy goods and purchase photo ops. At least for me it created a very uncomfortable situation. It was hard not to buy things, as you could see the desperation. Yet they put on a show that was seemingly of a thriving, happy vilage. The real village it seems is often hidden and not part of the tours.
A Cup Of Coffee
I asked my guide if he knew of a place that was a bit more pure or real. Did anything like this exist? What I found was very different from what I was expecting. Tightly packed against the sloping mountains of Thailand we found a small Karen village. The main tribal group of the long necks, this village had no happy children running around. No open markets bustling with customers buying homemade goods. No woman laden in the iconic gold neck rings. Only poverty and desperation.
It was a shanty town. A dog laid unconcerned of my presence in the main path as an old lady sat to the side staring into the distance. The village had a coffee shop which I was inclined to try. It was unbelievable. We were high enough up in elevation that coffee could grow. The lady that made us a cup, which cost 20 baht, grew her own plants, harvested and roasted her own beans. She didn’t get too many outside visitors and the 20 baht for a cup would go a long way in this village.
Difficult to explain
She showed me here coffee plants and some fresh beans beside some beans she had just roasted. It was probably the freshest cup of coffee I will ever have. I was only 5 feet from the plant that bore the bean which produced the cup I was now drinking.
Her equipment was very basic and everything was reusable save for the paper cups. I assumed it was so that she could sell cups of coffee to go. She had a small strainer, but instead of a metal mesh, it had a long tightly woven net. She used this to strain the small grains she had ground by hand in a small mortar and pestle. At the front of her shop she had beautifully packaged village made ceramics, full of home grown beans and kits for brewing coffee for sell.
I couldn’t help but think how much of her earnings went to purchasing the plastic and labels for her coffee kits. Or the paper cups I was drinking out of for that matter. It was a very humbling experience. I only regret that I couldn’t have purchased more to help the tiny insignificant yet significant village deep in the forests of Thailand.
The Market
After a cup of coffee we visited a standard Hill tribe market that was hugged up to the road out of Doi Inthanon. The market, which doubled as it’s minders village, was very simple and devoted to selling. Everything from dried fruit, homemade whiskey, vegetables, hand woven garments, it was a roadside Bazar.
Great grandmothers sifted through broken rice, Grandmothers tended the stalls and mothers minded their children. Every generation was represented as there was nowhere for the children to attend school. The men were off earning meager wages in migrant work. A people trapped in a cyclical world of the forgotten. They would teach their children the ways of the market and migrant work, and on it would go. There was no escape, no future, no life, no humanity.
A meager living
The market was literally carved out of the rock at its back so there was enough room between it and the road. No land suitable for cultivation. I can only imagine that they were buying much of their goods from actual markets and doing what they could to preserve or alter them to sell at a meager profit. Buying huge bags of discarded mixed bulk rice from the floors of the mills, the great grandmothers would separate the grains by type to bag and sell.
It was a scene of both desperation and normalcy. They often were unaware of the hopelessness of their situation. Keep working and hope the tourists keep coming. It was truly an environment where self exploitation was all one had to survive in this world of villages with no country.
Images from the roadside market
A few Statistics
The UN currently recognizes seven tribes in Thailand displaced from centuries of war and genocide. There are fifty four ethnic groups in Vietnam recognized by the Vietnamese government. The Cham is one of them. The main Vietnamese ethnic group is the Kinh ethnicity. The Kinh and it’s related ethnic groups comprise in some estimations eight of the fifty four groups and 95.7% of the total population. Leaving 4.3% of the population divided among forty six ethnic groups.
Currently there are one hundred and thirty five parent and divested ethnic groups in Myanmar (Burma). There is believed to be at least eight other ethnic groups not recognized by the Myanmar government. There are sixty four distinct mother languages in Myanmar alone. Additionally there are sixty two derivative languages stemming from those mother languages.
There are currently one hundred and six distinct parent ethnic groups in all of Southeast Asia, and an additional eighty six divested and distinct ethnic groups stemming from the one hundred and six parent ethnic groups. A total of one hundred and ninety two ethnic groups in all of Southeast Asia. There are only eleven United Nations recognized countries in Southeast Asia.
Extras
Click Here for more post in Thailand
Click Here for an article about French photographer Rehahn and his efforts to document the dying tribes of Vietnam
