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Quite apart from distinct
groups themselves, the Thai Yai from Burma, Thai Lue from Yunnan
and Thai Song Dam from Vietnam, the country also contains communities
of Haw Chinese, Cambodians, Indians, Lao, Mon, Malays, Vietnamese,
and a wide range of hill tribes.
Among the tribes,
eleven distinct groups totaling some 750,000 people have settled
in Thailand. Ethnically and linguistically separate from all other
groups as well as from each other, they fall into two broad categories.
The first of these contains five hill tribes that are indigenous
to Thailand. The Karen, Lawa, Khamu, H'tin, and Mlabri peoples
all normally live in mountain valleys or on hills below 1,000
meters. Most of them grow irrigated rice and live in permanent,
well-defined communities that fit well with the environment.
The second category of six tribes - the Hmong, Yao, Lahu, Lisu,
Akha, and Padaung - all migrated to Thailand within this century.
They typically practice slash-and-burn agriculture and opium poppy
cultivation on high forested slopes above 1,000 meters. They are
semi-nomadic, their villages constantly shifting from site to
site as forest soils are depleted, or for other reasons.
Due partly to their
different lifestyles - each tribe has its own distinct cultural,
socio-economic and environmental niche -all these communities
intersperse peacefully among each other and with the rest of Thailand's
rich social tapestry.
The pipe-smoking Karen
are by far the most numerous and well-established of all Thai
hill tribes. Originating in Myanmar, over 300,000 of them live
scattered across 15 western and northern provinces. These wealthy
matrilineal communities speak a Sino-Tibetan language and practice
sustainable irrigated agriculture on valley slopes. Depending
on the group, they are Buddhist, Christian, or animist.
The other indigenous
tribes, in contrast, are the fading remnants of once proud peoples,
the plight of the Lawa being most poignant. These people established
one of the first great civilizations on Thai soil at Lop Buri
(Lawa City) more than a thousand years ago. Today, less than 20,000
of them subsist in the mountain ranges between Chiang Mai and
Mae Hong Son.
Belonging to the same Mon Khmer linguistic group as the Lawa,
the Khamu are today only 10,000 strong, the H'tin only 35,000,
and the Mlabri (Spirits of the Yellow Leaves) a desperate 182.
Both the Khamu and H'tin are valley farmers. All these peoples
now live mainly in Nan.
From China come the
Mien and Hmong. Both are animist and polygamous. The Hmong are
by far the most prominent. They maintain their culture through
sagas and pandau (literally, flower cloth or story cloth) that
depict their history in graphic embroidery. The women wear black
jackets, indigo skirts, and massive displays of silver jewellery.
The Mien are the most
sophisticated of hill tribes, with a long tradition of Chinese
ideograph writing, Taoism-tinged animism, and ancestor veneration.
They are highly skilled at embroidery and silversmithing. The
women wear broad black turbans and red fur boas.
The Yao, meanwhile,
though also opium growers, are the intellectuals of the community.
Strongly influenced by Chinese culture, the 40,000 Yao alone maintain
written records of their history and culture.
Of the remaining immigrants,
the Lisu with 30,000 people and Lahu, 75,000 share the same Tibetan
ancestry and are strongly animist. They thus all hold ceremonies
to awaken the soul of the rice to ensure good harvests or propitiate
the spirits of field and home to ensure happiness. The Lahu are
also known to the Thai as "Muser" or hunters as they have traditionally
excelled at this skill. While originally animists, many have recently
converted to Christianity. Lahu women wear narrow skirts with
black and red jackets. Lisu women wear long, multi-colored tunics
over trousers, and tasseled black turbans.
The poorest of the
hill tribe people are the 50,000 Akha, who live on mountain tops
at 1,400 meters. Shy and timid by nature, they are the most recent
migrants to Thailand from Tibet and have generally resisted assimilation
into the Thai mainstream. They practice shifting cultivation of
corn, upland rice, temperate vegetables, and opium, which is reserved
for the elderly of the community. The women wear elaborate headgear
of beads and silver balls and coins. Between planting and harvest,
in August and September, the Akha perform an interesting swing
ceremony linked to ancestor worship and spirit offerings.
Finally, the Padong,
the already world-famous long-necked women of Mae Hong Son, are
the most recent immigrants to Thailand. They are refugees from
neighbouring Myanmar.
Mon of Ko Kret
Isolated from the
bright lights and bustle of metropolitan Bangkok by a swift-flowing
branch of the Chao Phraya River is the tiny island of Ko Kret,
near Nonthaburi. On it live a community of craftsmen famous for
their distinctive style of pottery which dates back many centuries.
Ko Kret pots are known for their fine, red-black glazed surface
and intricate design.
Descendants of the
Mon people, they fled to Thailand after the Mon capital of
Hongsawadi was overrun by the Burmese at the end of the
Ayutthaya period. Although Mon women no longer keep their hair
long, the four-square-kilometre island retains a distinctively
Mon flavor. The venerable chedi of Ko Kret's main temple, War
Poramaiyikawat, is said to be a copy of the fabulous Shwedagon
in Rangoon.
The most obvious connection
that the islanders have managed to retain with the past is their
ability to use their traditional skills - making pottery in the
same way as their ancestors - to earn a living. Fortunately, the
nature of the clay in the Ko Kret area is very suitable for this
art.
There are around 20
pottery factories on the island. Even today, the factory owner
still holds a traditional ceremony during the firing of the pottery.
This pays respect to the kiln to ensure that the firing goes well
and the pots are not damaged.
When the pots are
ready, they are handled in one of two ways. One lot is stored
in warehouses to await sale and delivery. These warehouses are
generally built with tall, ridged roofs some 20 meters high. The
roofs, which slope nearly all the way to the ground, are designed
to help protect against breezes which might cause unfired pottery
to dry out and crack. The second lot of pots the islanders put
into their boats to sell along the banks of the Chao Phraya, just
as their ancestors did 200 years ago.
The pottery produced
on Ko Kret is of two kinds: simple and ornate. The ordinary household
pots and jars tend to be either plain or decorated with the most
basic of designs. The decorative pots are usually smaller, with
an emphasis on shape and intricate design. For obvious reasons,
they are very time-consuming to produce. Working form experience,
however, the potters never need to measure their work. All judgments
of size and proportion are made very precisely by sight and touch.
Inspiration for patterns
used by the craftsmen comes mostly from natural sources, all typically
Mon: the lotus petal, intertwined vines, various flower shapes,
leaves, animal shapes. Some decorations echo the forms of other
crafts: necklace shapes, garlands, open-work, and so on.
Phu Thai of Renu Nakhon
The Phu Thai are a
Thai tribe separate from the mainstream Siamese and Laos. The
tribe's culture ands traditions are still evident in their small
village to the south of Nakhon Phanom. It may be seen in the welcoming
faces of the locals, the phasin tube skirts, the fragrant dok
champa blossoms, and the dance steps of the ram Phu Thai.
This last is a folk
dance performed during Phu Thai festivals to celebrate their unique
heritage. For this dance the women wear dark blue phasin and blouses
with sleeves rimmed in red. The men dress in dark blue pants suits.
They dance barefoot. The most important factor when performing
the ram is that the men must take care to avoid any bodily contact
with the women. The ram movements are imitations of the various
birds, among them the crow and the duck.
The Phu Thai also
practice the bai sri custom which is a welcoming ceremony common
in other parts of the Northeast as well as Laos. It involves a
shaman tying loops of sacred thread, know as sai sin, around a
person's wrists during a complicated ceremony involving offerings
of blessed water or nam mon, fruit, flowers, whiskey, and a variety
of other items.
The Phu Thai have
a strong belief in the powers of black magic. They call in witch
doctors to cure even the most common ailments such as a fever.
In such an instance, the witch doctor performs a phithi yao
which involves the use of bai tong (banana leaves), eggs, and
joss sticks.
Along with many other
villages in north-eastern Thailand, Renu Nakhon is famous for
its textiles, including the characteristic cotton teen chok or
teen sin. These are colorfully embroidered strips of material
roughly six inches wide used as a decorative hem for the phasin.
They may be found in abundance outside the village temple, Wat
Prathat Renu, especially during the Songkran Festival.
Sea Gypsies
The western coast
of Thailand's southern isthmus is peopled by small groups of wanderers
who say they come from a mythical land called Gunung Jerai. Known
locally as sea gypsies or Chao Le and to themselves as the Moken
Palau or Urak Lawoi, they either roam the swallow waters of the
Andaman Sea or have settled nearby shores in Phangnga, Phuket,
Krabi, and Satun provinces.
They are descended
by their own account from the oldest peoples of the Earth, but
cursed through their own contrariness to poverty and hunger. Each
group has its own version of the tale which is handed down in
their own spoken language.
Their myths tell also
of pirate attacks and abductions. Theirs is a grim world. Yet
it has a haunting beauty when they launch a ceremonial boat twice
each year to carry the souls of their departed and all evil back
to their homeland. Should you see a group of young men shouldering
one of these ornate boats down a southern beach, a vessel that
is far more intricate and carefully made than their own workmanlike
canoes, you will be at the heart of the Urak Lawoi lifestyle.
When they launch their sorrows on to the water like this, they
are of course pre-figuring the universal rite of washing away
sins.
Should you see
their ceremonies, look also for an elder, often a woman, who
leads the singing that accompanies the launch. It is these rites
that remember the dead and cleanse the living for the next six
months.
The gypsies appear
to be gradually coming ashore and settling down in simple bamboo
and rattan stilted huts built at the water's edge. The sound of
the sea must be constantly with them, as essential to them as
air.
And where is Gunung Jerai? No one really knows. But it might ,
at least in present folk memory, be Kedah Peak, in Malaysia to
the south. Almost 4,000 feet high and believed in local legend
to be sacred, the mountain is not far from Lanta Island. This
is the place most Urak Lawoi elders now identify as their homeland.
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