This paper discusses interethnic dynamics in a multi-ethnic Khmu and Akha village in the uplands of Phongsali Province, far-north Laos. It offers an intimate vignette on how local Khmu people’s patronizing disposition towards their Akha neighbors – and Sino-Tibetan highlanders more broadly – has been shaped by Laos’ recent history of war, revolution, and development. In particular, it shows how essentializing images of Akha as backward bumpkins in need of civilizing tutelage have provided local Khmu with a foil and platform for their pursuit of a culturally specific sense of modernity. In so doing, this paper refocuses the analysis of interethnic relations in Laos away from state-centered, lowland-upland, majority-minority frameworks, and towards localized, micro-regional and, most significantly, intra-upland dynamics. Concomitant to this refocus, this paper offers novel insights into the localized impact of Laos’ watershed civil war and its lingering aftermath. It also speaks to broader issues, including the applicability of the scholarly trope of “internal Orientalism” across scales, as well as the ethics and politics of researching inter-ethnic relations in a society still marked by the trauma of war.
I thank Nathan Badenoch, Charles P. Zuckerman, Oliver Tappe, Rosalie Stolz, and Michele Ford for helpful comments on earlier drafts. I thank the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre for supporting the writing of this paper with a Writing Fellowship. Last but first, I deeply thank the people of Sanjing. All mistakes are mine.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Local names are pseudonyms.
2 “Tai-Lao” refers to the national majority Lao and seven smaller Tai-speaking groups.
21 These rumors quickly dissipated. As I write this, none of Sanjing’s Akha have moved elsewhere.
22 Cf. High Citation2008; High et al. Citation2009; Petit Citation2020; Bouté Citation2017, 2021. As I discuss below, the fact that Sanjing’s Khmu and Akha remain upland peasants impacts interethnic relations in Sanjing today.
23 High Citation2021; 86 cf. Pholsena Citation2006; Pholsena and Tappe Citation2013 Pholsena and Promphakping Citation2021; Dwyer Citation2012; London Citation2012. To be sure, Laos’ civil war cannot be reduced to interethnic conflict. In many places, Khmu fought for US-backed royalists, just as Akha fought with the leftist PL. What I describe in this paper is a micro-regional dynamic that likely owes as much to how things are remembered as to what actually happened during the war.
38 Khmu lore abounds with self-deprecating tales of losing literacy, knowledge, and lowland kingdoms to the more clever and cunning Tai-Lao. See Lutz Citation2021a, 103–108; Proschan Citation2001. To be sure, Sanjing’s Khmu do not articulate an overarching discourse of Indigeneity, not least because Indigeneity is an unrecognized – and controversial – category in contemporary Laos.
44 In all likelihood, Sanjing Khmu were involved in both the colonial-era and royalist administration of their area. See Lutz Citation2021, 88–95, 202–208. The allegiances of Phukor’s Akha likely owed more to circumstantial factors than ideological commitment.
45 Cf. Tappe and Badenoch Citation2021, 4. In other parts of northern Laos, Khmu have disowned the label Lao Terng (Nathan Badenoch, pers. Commun.).
46 Evans Citation1998, 2000, 285; Pholsena Citation2006, 58ff; 2020 1872–1873; 1880. But see High Citation2021 on the continuing salience of socialism.
49 In Sanjing, wrist-tying has replaced the erstwhile practice of strengthening souls/life-force by smearing sacrificial blood on kneecaps. Cf. Sprenger Citation2009.
76 Take, for instance, the RLG air raid on Sanjing during the war. As I have noted, Sanjing Khmu accuse Phukor-based “Lao Soung enemies” of calling in the raid. Those old enough to remember, however, hastened to add that it was all a tragic mistake. Just days before the raid, a group of Phukor Akha had attempted to enter the valley to barter for salt (by all accounts, a common occurrence during the war). Vexed at being turned back by the PL soldiers manning a checkpoint just downhill from Sanjing, the Akha asked their local militia head to call in an airstrike. Most unfortunately, the pilots mistook Sanjing for that checkpoint.
77 Asked if the spirit healing ritual he was performing for Dosaa’s ailing wife () was “according to Khmu or Akha custom,” brother Rao replied with revealing nonchalance, “both!” Such eclecticism may perhaps even allude to a shared cultural substratum. Cf. Mus, Mabbett, and Chandler Citation2010 [Citation1933]; Holt Citation2009; High Citation2022.
78 Recall Phetsamone’s statement that “when it comes to local/territorial spirits, we yield to the Lao Terng.”
80 Again echoing Orientalist discourse, Khmu conceptions about the Akha proved remarkably resilient to fact-checking. During a courtesy visit to a funeral in Phukor, Sanjing Khmu and I learned that the deceased would not lie in state for ten days as people claimed, but would in fact be buried the following day. Confronted with this information, Wan shrugged his shoulders, noting “we’re still worried.”
82 Tappe Citation2013b. To be sure, Sanjing’s Khmu also strive to fix and align their personal histories with the official history of the war (recall that Sit himself is the son of a royalist official). See Lutz Citation2021a, 115–143, 203–208; Cf. Pholsena Citation2006, 143–144; Petit Citation2020, 1884. Such eschewals suggest that while ostensibly subalterns are usually portrayed as using local memories to challenge dominant versions of the past, they may also conspire to do the opposite and use dominant versions of the past to subdue inconveniently multivocal memories. Cf. Tappe Citation2013a.
85 Ambivalent images of Chinese hydropower, in particular, are becoming increasingly salient in local Khmu engagements with Lao PDR modernity. See Lutz Citation2022; 118–124.
87 To be sure, distinct Khmu and Akha identities will remain salient for decades to come – even if in modernized, folklorized and/or Lao-icized forms. The ostensible Khmu-ization/Lao-izaton of Sanjing’s Akha is a topic beyond the scope of this paper. I hope to address this issue in future work. Cf. Évrard Citation2019; Petit Citation2020, 33ff.
88 Customarily, Phukor’s Akha have married off their daughters without money changing hands.
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This paper was written as part of a Writing Fellowship at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre, University of Sydney, Australia.
Notes on contributors
Paul-David Lutz
Dr. Paul-David Lutz recently completed his doctorate in anthropology at the University of Sydney. He is currently an honorary associate and sessional teacher at the University of Sydney’s School of Social and Political Sciences, and a writing fellow at the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre. Prior to his graduate studies, Paul-David worked for several years on rural development projects in the uplands of Laos and Vietnam.
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