Neither Kha, Tai, nor Lao: Language, Myth, Histories, and the Position of the Phong in Houaphan (original) (raw)
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Mountain People in the Muang: Creation and Governance of a Tai Polity in Northern Laos
Southeast Asian Studies, 2013
This paper traces the history of Luang Namtha, an intermontane valley basin in northern Laos, based on the narratives of non-Tai ethnic groups that collectively constitute a majority in the region. The narratives demonstrate the possibility of alternative histories of muang polities, which are a core part of our understanding g of Tai social and political organization. These narratives describe a central role for mountain people in the muang, including the formation, population, and development of what appears to be a Tai polity. This analysis suggests the need to open up our understanding of " traditional " Tai political spaces to accommodate an expanded historical agency for upland groups conventionally circumscribed within their own upland setting. This paper argues that the first step towards a more nuanced understanding of muang is recognizing them as cosmopolitan areas in which many sources g of power, innovation, and transformation intersect. The Lanten, Sida, and Bit people living in the foothills surrounding the town of Luang Namtha in northern Laos tell of how the valley was empty when their forefathers migrated to the area at the end of the nineteenth century. Some even assert that they were the ones who established the current valley settlement and have played a central role in its governance. These claims go against our assumptions about the expected historical development of a small urban center in northern Laos. Indeed, as the plane clears the mountains and descends into the valley, one sees a town surrounded by wet rice fields that cover an area of 100 square kilometers and two Buddhist stupas on the hills overlooking the city. The village next to the airport has an old Buddhist temple, and the
Xāt Lao: Imagining the Lao nation through race, history, and language
The Routledge Handbook of Nationalism in East and Southeast Asia , 2023
The notion of Xāt Lao engrossed the minds of the Lao elite at the very moment they envisioned the Lao nation. In this line of thinking, there existed Lao people divided up and living under the rule of Thai, French, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Burmese and Chinese states. They inhabited lands formerly ruled by Lan Xang (1353–1707), the Lao kingdom which disintegrated for centuries after 1707. While scholars have seen it in spatial terms, this Greater Laos was based on modern notions of a Lao race. In pre-colonial Laos, ethnicity was relatively plastic, but after over half a century of French colonial rule (1893–1945), itself predicated on racial hierarchy, Lao elites no longer perceived ethnicity as changeable. They saw instead the world divided up among mutually antagonistic races locked in a struggle for survival for land and resources. This eventually crystallized into the virulently nationalist idea of a Lao race that shaped the first post-colonial Lao state amid the Cold War as both the Royal Lao Government (RLG) (1945–1975) and the Pathet Lao fought to free the country from foreign forces. This chapter examines the influence of race on Lao nationalism. Contrary to existing scholarship, Laos did not suffer from a lack of nationalism, but from an overabundance of it, to the point that armed groups emerged fighting to rescue the nation. This chapter explores competing forms of nationalism – exclusionary and inclusive – and why the exclusionary form, centering on a Lao race, won out.
The Hmong Come to Southern Laos: Local Responses and the Creation of Racialized Boundaries
Hmong Studies Journal, 2010
There is a long history of Hmong migrations from the north to south. Most recently, Hmong have begun emerging in the southern-most parts of Laos, including Champasak and Attapeu Provinces, places where they never lived before, and some Hmong have tried to move south from Bolikhamxay to Khammouane Province. Southern Laos would appear to represent a new southern 'frontier‘ for the Hmong. This article looks at the interactions between the Hmong who have attempted to migrate into southern Laos and the Lao and Mon-Khmer language-speaking peoples they have encountered. Some Hmong movements into southern Laos have been accepted, while others have not. Crucially, negative racialized stereotypes about the Hmong being aligned with anti-government resistance groups, and being inherently destructive of the environment—as unfair as they may be— have influenced the prejudiced responses in southern Laos to the arrival of the Hmong. Others simply see the Hmong as being difficult to get along with and administer (still another unfair stereotype). The cultural practices and habits of some Hmong arrivals have confused and upset some Mon Khmer language-speaking peoples in southern Laos. The movement of the Hmong from the north to the south, and the reactions of others to them, are important for understanding the ways Hmong are geographically positioning themselves, and how others are attempting to construct spaces and associated boundaries designed to restrict them. Thus, the focus of this article is on the reactions of others to the Hmong, and the way particular racialized boundaries have been developed.
Vanishing Nomads: Languages and Peoples of Nakai, Laos, and Adjacent Areas
Handbook of the Changing World Language Map, 2019
A large plateau that sits at the top of the Ak Escarpment in the present-day provinces of Khammouane and Borikhamxay (Nakai and Khamkeut districts, respectively) interrupts the terrain of Central Laos. Beginning at the eastern edge of the plateau, lush deciduous and evergreen forests covering some 4,000 km 2 slope gradually upward to the crest of the Annamite mountain chain which forms the border between Laos and Vietnam. Numerous recently discovered mammals are found here, together with a number of languages and cultures previously unknown to linguists and anthropologists until but a short time ago. This paper describes the ethnolinguistic diversity of those groups commonly referred to as hunter-gatherers or nomadic foragers, belonging to the Vietic branch of Austroasiatic, their relevance for the proto-history of Southeast Asia, and their chances
The Ethnonym "Lao" and its Origins: Linguistic and Historical Implications
Journal of Lao Language, Vol 1, 2019
The ethnonym "Lao" is ancient and geographically widespread. Often scholars have assumed that the differing locations and ethnic referents of the term are random and not traceable to any specific group or ethnicity. In this paper, the various forms of the ethnonym are examined in a comparative and historical linguistic frame in order to show that the origins of the term derive from a common ancestor.
Journal of Lao Studies, 2015
Organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) and the Center for Lao Studies (CLS), based in San Francisco, California, the conference-the only regularly organized international Lao studies conference in the world-followed three previous, successful multidisciplinary and international Lao studies conferences. The first was organized at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in DeKalb, Illinois, USA in 2005, 3 the second convened at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona, USA in 2007, 4 and the third was held at Khon Kaen University (KKU) in Khon Kaen, Thailand in 2010.
Speaking Like a Ghost: Registers of Intimacy and Incompatibility in the Forests of Northern Laos
Journal of the Siam Society, 2022
The Ksingmul people of the northern Laos-Vietnam border area have been known within local Tai social systems as Puak, a derogatory term that evokes images of forest-eating termites. Occupying the lowest rung in the Tai social hierarchy, what is known of the Ksingmul has been dominated by the idea of Tai-ization — a process of cultural loss and assimilation. But overt markers of physical culture and economic status mask the persistence of traditional beliefs, moral entanglements and alternative historical perspectives that can be accessed only through the Ksingmul language. In this article, I analyze a story called “Person and Nya Wai Become Friends”, which tells of a competition of trickery between a human and a wild spirit. In the telling of this story, the narrator marks the words of the spirit with a prefix that marks the “abnormal speech” of a non-human. He uses the marking to index the moral stance of the person and the wild spirit, as they first become friends, and the human subsequently betrays the special bond of friendship. The wild spirit Nya Wai “speaks like a human” when he is trying to gain mercy from Person when he is caught stealing from Person’s bird traps, while Person starts to “speak like a ghost” as he hatches his plot to get revenge on Nya Wai by tricking him into castrating himself. This is one of the linguistic devices used by the narrator to perform human-spirit relations in the telling of the story. Such performances are firmly located within the multiethnic landscape of the uplands, where power structures are negotiated, constructed and subverted through language use.