Thai Hill Tribes Go High-Tech to Preserve Way of Life

What a challenge. To bring a tribe without a written language into the high tech 21st century without losing it's soul.

---BumbleBeeBoogie

THAILAND: Hill Tribes Go High-Tech to Preserve Way of Life
By Marwaan Macan-Markar - IPS 7/15/03

BAN JALE, Thailand, Jul 15 (IPS) - As the sun sets, all the traits of a community light years away from modernity emerge in this northern Thai village. There is, after all, no electricity to illuminate the homes made of bamboo walls and thatched roofs, and to keep out the invading darkness.

But that has not deterred the 60 families living here -- people belonging to the Lahu ethnic community -- from using cyberspace to bring themselves out of the dark ages.

On a recent Saturday night, the young men in this village gathered around a wooden table, in candlelight, to discuss the leap that lies ahead for the village, which is tucked in rugged terrain enveloped by trees on the outskirts of Chiang Rai, a town in the hills of northern Thailand.

Among them were two men, 26-year-old Jamu Jakar and 20-year-old Yasae Jasee, who have a pioneering role in the changes to come - the creation of a virtual museum for the minority ethnic communities that live in Thailand's hills, of which the Lahu are one.

''We need a museum like this to show what our customs and ceremonies are like,'' says Jamu, who together with Yasae have been gathering information from their community about Lahu traditions and rituals. ''Some of the young people don't know the ceremonies, and this knowledge is being lost.''

''The village elders have helped us with details about the significance of Lahu clothing,'' adds Yasae. ''They support the plans for a museum because they want to teach the children the Lahu culture.''

Already, the village has at its entrance a round building with adobe walls and a thatched roof that will offer physical space to display the colourful aspects of culture of Thailand's six major hill tribes, the Akha, Hmong, Karen, Lahu, Lisu and Mien.

''The plan is to have an Internet link in the building,'' says Sombat Boongamanon, head of the Mirror Art Group (MAG), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) based in the northern town of Chiang Rai. ''If people visiting it want to know more about the hill tribes, they can access the virtual museum that is being created.''

''We will depend on solar power at the beginning for this link, till the village gets electricity,'' adds Sombat, whose NGO is using technology, including video, to empower the hill tribes.

The MAG expects the museum in cyberspace and its physical counterpart in the village to be ready for Thai and foreign viewers and visitors in October. But that will only be an initial phase of an initiative that has more ambitious goals.

''One of our objectives is to have an on-line talking dictionary for the Akha,'' says Jonathan Morris, a U.S. volunteer with the MAG.

The Akha is one among the six hill tribes that communicate orally and do not have a written script like the Karen, who have both a spoken and written language.

The hill tribe members working with the MAG have also begun chronicling aspects of this minority culture that have ceased in today's commercialised culture, like hunting and trapping animals. They have also been feeding the computers with details about how wedding ceremonies were observed then and now.

The MAG hopes that the virtual museum will become a draw among the hill tribes as a new generation among them become comfortable with computers and look for links in cyberspace about their roots and culture.

''It is quite a novel approach. This has been tried in other areas with varying results but not here,'' says David Feingold, a U.S. anthropologist who is a specialist on the hill tribes in Thailand and is with the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

But he offers a word of caution. ''I have seen in other places where there is a fascination with the sexy quality of the Internet. So we must wait to gauge how the highland people gain.''

Current estimates of Thailand's hill tribe population are more than 550,000 people, with the Karen having the largest number, followed by the Hmong, Lahu, Akha, Mien and Lisu. Thailand's population is 62 million people.

These hill tribe communities, who have roots going back to Burma, Tibet and South China, stand out in northern Thailand due to the colourful clothes the women wear, the particular languages they speak, their unique customs and the simplicity of their homes made of bamboo.

The Akha women, for instance, grace the postcards sold in northern Thailand with their headdresses made of colourful beads and silver coins, while the Lahu women lend colour with their black-and-red jackets.

But the hill tribes' cultural diversity as not translated into across the board support from Thai society, where many of these tribes are struggling to survive economically and to merge and be accepted within the larger Thai community while at the same preserving their culture.

Hill tribe members, for instance, do not automatically all get Thailand citizenship, leading to the government being accused of discrimination. The government has also denied the hill tribes the use of land to pursue their form of shifting cultivation, seen as a threat to the forest environment.

In Huay Ma Hinfon, a secondary school north of Chiang Rai that has a sizeable presence of hill tribe children among its 770 students, Bangkok's stance towards educating Akha, Lahu and Lisu children is obvious. The emphasis is toward assimilation into the Thai culture.

''In the classroom, all work is done in Thai, and the only place the hill tribe children can use their language is outside the classroom,'' says Phayoong Phetcharat, a Thai language teacher. ''But every Friday, the children can come dressed in the clothes traditionally worn by their tribe.''

Sombat of the MAG warns that these education policies are eating away at the richness of the hill tribe culture, highlighting the need for alternative venues for the hill tribe children to gain awareness and celebrate their way of life.

The museum, he points out, is ''trying to fill this void to help preserve and sustain hill tribe culture''.