Decolonizing methods: Akha articulations of indigeneity in the Upper Mekong Region

Abstract

The concept of indigeneity is highly problematic in Asia, where a heightened degree of spatial mobility and ethnic fluidity challenge conventional understandings of Indigenous peoples (IPs) as rooted, stable, and unchanging from time immemorial. As some scholars have argued, however, this conception of indigeneity ignores the fact that many IPs have had multiple experiences of displacement due to their colonization by outsiders. Here, the authors discuss one such group – the Akha minority residing throughout the Upper Mekong Region – that in spite of multiple historical experiences of displacement, marginalization, and, more recently, colonization has maintained an intimate connection with their ancestral homeland. Akha have maintained this connection by way of their ‘intimate place-making cosmographies’, whereby non-Akha space is reconfigured as a microcosmic totality of the larger Akha cosmos. These practices have allowed for Akha to sustain and vitalize their distinct identity as Akha in the face of various external pressures from non-Akha others.

Keywords:

• indigeneity
• place
• ethnic minorities
• Akha
• decolonizing methods

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their excellent comments and suggestions for revision. They also thank all of the participants in the ‘Workshop on Indigeneity in Southeast Asia’, hosted by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison between March 20 and 21, 2015, for their intellectual stimulation and constructive criticism on a much earlier version of this article. They further acknowledge the support and guidance of the following individuals and communities at various stages of this project: Aqbawrhaq Saeduqguq, Aqbawrbaeq Saeduqguq, along with the entire traditionalist Akha community of Lawcavq Pu in north Thailand, as well as Dr Ian Baird, Dr Panadda Boonyasaranai, Dr Kwanchewan Buadaeng, Dr Prasit Leepreecha, Dr Mukdawan Sakboon, Dr Deborah Tooker, and Dr Chayan Vaddhanaphuti.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See Kingsbury, “The applicability of the international legal concept of ‘indigenous peoples’ in Asia”; and Toyota, “Subjects of the Nation without Citizenship,” 130–133.

2. See Keyes, “The Karen in Thai History”; Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma; Lehman, “Who are the Karen, and if so, why?”; Moerman, “Ethnic Identification in a Complex Civilization”; Toyota, “Cross border mobility and social networks”; and Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed.

3. See Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia; and Baird, “The construction of ‘indigenous peoples’ in Cambodia.”

4. See Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia.

5. See Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia; Baird, “The construction of ‘indigenous peoples’ in Cambodia”; Theriault, “The micropolitics of Indigenous environmental movements in the Philippines”; Bertrand, “ ‘Indigenous peoples rights’ as a strategy of ethnic accommodation.”

6. See Prasit, “Multiculturalism from below”; Morton, “Indigenous Assertions of Distinction and Compatibility”; and Snaing, “Indigenous Rights Coalition in Burma Plans UPR Submission.”

7. Baird, “Translocal assemblages,” 55.

8. Gray, “The Indigenous movement in Asia,” 37.

9. Clifford, “Varieties of Indigenous Experience.”

10 According to China’s Sixth National Census, there were some 274,734 Akha in China in 2010 (out of a total of 1.63 million Hani). According to Mr Min Nyo, the director of the Myanmar Association of Traditionalist Akha (MATA), there were some 250,000 Akha in Myanmar/Burma as of 2013. According to the 2005 Lao PDR national census, there were some 90,698 Akha in Laos as of 2005. According to Mr Athu Pochae, the director of the Akha Association for Education and Culture in Thailand (AFECT), there were some 80,000 Akha in Thailand as of 2013. Finally, Akha comprise an unknown percentage of the larger Ha Nhi nationality in Vietnam, estimated to include between 26,000 and 40,000 people (Mr Yang Youyi, personal communication, 2008; Huang, From Nuomaamei to Ailao Mountain, 50). In 2002, moreover, Wang was informed by Akha villagers and officials in Phongsaly, Laos, that there were a number of Akha villages in Lai Chau province of Vietnam along the border with Laos (See Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 20, 25–26; and Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 30).

11. In modern China, the Hani minzu or ‘ethnonationality’ includes more than 20 self-denominated subgroups, including the Akha (Jiang, A Summary of Historical Records on Hani Nationality, 6). Each of these subgroups speak southern Loloish languages belonging to the Lolo-Burmese branch of the Tibeto-Burman group and Sino-Tibetan language family (Thurgood and LaPolla, The Sino-Tibetan Languages, 8). The total regional population of Hani and Akha includes over 2 million people. Akha, who reside primarily in the Lancang-Mekong River region, comprise roughly one-third of the total population. The remaining two-thirds of non-Akha Hani subgroups reside primarily in the Red River region (Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 25–26)

12. On ‘internal colonialism’ more generally, see Hechter, Internal Colonialism.

13. Morton first heard the term ‘cosmography’ – referring to a synthesis of cosmology and geography – being used by art historian Truman Lowe during a seminar on contemporary Native American Art at the Chazen Art Museum of the University of Wisconsin-Madison in March 2014.

14 Smith, “Shamanism in the Shaker Religion,” 122; cf. Wallace, “Revitalization movements”; in Buckley, “The Shaker Church,” 266.

15. Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 32.

16. For example, Wang writes, ‘In China, various communist campaigns such as “the Great Cultural Revolution” had forced the Akha to abandon many of their cultural traditions. Their traditional belief system was labeled as “superstition” and Akha were forced to abandon it. Under the influence of an enforced belief in atheism, Akha began to perceive of communist Chinese Han as naevq (pronounced “nae”) or evil spirits whose power surpassed that of all of the natural spirits that Akha traditionally believed in. In order to avoid any harmful punishment from these new naevq, Akha came to believe that they had to listen to and obey the commands of Chinese Han officials. Akha were not even allowed to wear their traditional (dress as it was) viewed as an impediment to agricultural production’ (Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 75–76; also see Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 35).

17. Tooker, Inside and Outside; Tooker, “Putting the Mandala in its Place”; and Tooker, Space and the Production of Cultural Difference, 79–88.

18. On multi-sited research, see Marcus, “Ethnography in/of the World System.” On itinerant ethnography, see Schein, “Hmong/Miao Transnationality,” 276–277. On collaborative ethnography, see Lassiter, The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. On archival research, see Brettell, “Fieldwork in the Archives.’”

19 For further details on this particular documentary project, see Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 77. On indigenous media in general, see Ginsburg, Abu-Lughod, and Larkin, Media Worlds.

20. Geusau, “Akha Internal History,” 141; Cohen and Lyttleton, “The Akha of Northwest Laos,” 118; Lewis, “Basic Themes in Akha Culture,” 208; Sturgeon, Border Landscapes, 14–15.

21. When writing Akha names and terms, we have adopted the most recent Romanized Akha writing system developed by an international network of Akha during a meeting in Jinghong, China, in late 2008/early 2009. In this system, Roman characters not used to denote initial consonants are used as tonal markers placed at the end of syllables and not pronounced. The consonants used for tonal markers in this system include q (long, low tone), r (long, high tone), v (short, mid-tone), vq (short, low-tone), and vr (short, high-tone). For example, in the word Aqkaq (pronounced ‘A-kha’), ‘q’ marks that each syllable in the word is pronounced with a long, low tone.

22. See Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 25–81; and Wang and Huang, “Genealogies, Jadae State and the Formation of the Akha People.”

23. For example, see Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 25–81.

24. Euro-American scholars that have worked with Akha in various parts of the region have generally agreed that Akha have everywhere and always been a “perennial minority” lacking any sense of belonging to a larger Akha community or polity beyond the village level (see Geusau, “Akha Internal History,” 143; Kammerer, “Territorial Imperatives,” 277; Tooker, Inside and Outside, 12, Space and the Production of Cultural Difference, 32). Indeed, these representations, particularly those of Geusau, have more recently been taken up by James Scott in his treatise on ‘Zomia’ (Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 176–177, 221–224).

25. Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, xi, 60.

26. Geusau, “Akha Internal History,” 141.

27. See Lewis, Ethnographic Notes on the Akhas of Burma, 40; Geusau, “Akha Internal History,” 139–140; Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 60–61; Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 247–249.

28. For further details on the efforts of these elite to construct a revisionist history of Akha wherein Akha figure front and center while promoting the scaling-up of Akhaness throughout the Upper Mekong Region, see Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 220–264.

29. Schrock et al., Minority Groups in Thailand, 878.

30. Hanks et al., A Report on the Tribal Peoples in Chiengrai Province North of the Mae Kok River.

31. Tooker, Space and the Production of Cultural Difference, 108, 113.

32. The Panthay Rebellion (1856–1873) was one such event that resulted in the displacement of large numbers of not only Haw Chinese but also Hmong, Yao, Akha and other upland minorities from the southwest border areas of China into neighboring parts of Southeast Asia. See Atwill, The Chinese Sultanate; Wiens, China’s march towards the tropics; Geusau, “Akha/Yunnanese Chinese Symbiosis,” 3; and McKinnon and Michaud, “Introduction,” 10.

33. Grunfeld, Wayfarers of the Thai Forest, 127–132; in Kammerer, Gateway to the Akha World, 74–5.

34. Lewis, “The Hill Peoples of Kengtung State,” 224; Geusau, “Akha/Yunnanese Chinese Symbiosis,” 3.

35. Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 75–76, 169–179.

36. Geusau, “Dialectics of Akhazang”; and Geusau, “Akha Internal History.”

37. McKinnon “Editorial: Convergence or Divergence?,” 102.

38. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 177.

39. Ibid., 177. In his treatise on ‘Zomia’ Scott refers to a series of Akha oral histories, as documented and interpreted by Geusau, in noting the existence of a ‘would-be Akha king’, namely Jawrban, who, upon attempting to consolidate his power and “institute a census (the iconic tax and state-making move!)…was slain by his own people’ (Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 176–177). Scott cites other Akha oral histories explaining the loss of writing in support of his most controversial claim that various ‘Zomians’, such as the Akha, actually abandoned their writing systems so as to render themselves ‘illegible’ and thereby resist incorporation into early lowland polities (Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed, 221–224; Geusau, “Akha Internal History,” 130–131).

40. Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 74–77.

41. See Chayan, “The Thai State and Ethnic Minorities”; Toyota, “Ambivalent Categories”; and Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 58.

42. For a reflexive discussion of this tendency among anthropologists, see West, Ethnographic Sorcery, 1–5.

43. At the time 30 Thai baht was equivalent to roughly 1 US dollar.

44. ‘Law-ja Pu’ (Lawcavq Pu) is the largest and predominantly Akha village in north Thailand. Indeed, among Akha in Thailand, Law-ja is often referred to as the ‘Akha City’ (either ‘Akha Meu’ [Aqkaq Meq] in Akha or ‘Muang Akha’ in Thai). The official Thai state-imposed name of the village is ‘Doi Chaang’ or ‘Elephant Mountain’. The village is situated at an altitude of 1800 m above sea level. It is dominated by Akha of the Loi-mi subgroup with married women adorning their signature headdresses with large, flat silver panels in the rear and a string of golf ball-sized silver balls draped over each side. As of 2013, three main ethnic groups resided within the larger Thai administrative village, namely Akha, Lisu, and Yunnanese-Chinese (‘Jin-haw’). Akha first began to permanently settle in the area of the present-day village over 30 years ago (Tooker, Inside and Outside, 23–36). Since that time the Akha residents have grown to comprise over 80% (554 households) of the total population of 6000 people (730 households) (Li, Neo-traditionalist movements, 1). Of the remaining 176 households in 2013, 156 were Lisu while 20 were Yunnanese-Chinese (Li, Neo-traditionalist movements, 6).

45. For further details on this particular rite as well as the inside-outside binary underlying much of the cultural practices, aesthetics, and ideologies of traditionalist Akha, see Tooker, Inside and Outside; Tooker, Space and the Production of Cultural Difference, 157–214; Kammerer, Gateway to the Akha World, 30–62; and Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 87–88, 152–153.

46. See Li, Neo-Traditionalist Movements, 74–78; Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 100–102; and Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 107–111.

47. Tooker, Space and the Production of Cultural Difference, 66.

48. Lewis, Ethnographic Notes on the Akhas of Burma, 256–257; Geusau, “Dialectics of Akhazang,” 250.

49. Geusau, “Dialectics of Akhazang,” 250; Kammerer, Gateway to the Akha World, 281.

50. See Li, Neo-Traditionalist Movements, 81; Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 105; and Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 112–119.

51. See Morton, From Blood to Fruit, 119.

52. See Li, Village God.

53. See Huang et al., The Traditional Eco-Culture Studies on the Yunnan Hani People, 283–327.

54. Wang, Sacred and Contested Landscapes, 61–62.

55. The Akha of Lawcavq pu, the village in which we observed the rite, belong to another subgroup, the Lomir (pronounced ‘Lo-mi’), led by the Jeqghoeq super-lineage, a brother super-lineage of the Jeqjawr to which King Jawrban of Jadae belonged.

56. Spatially and temporally, Akha recognize two different Jadae, the Upper and Lower.

57. It is unclear as to whether the tree (boeqsoev) is named after the ancestral hero (Tanr-boeqsoev) or vice versa.

58. See Tooker, Inside and Outside; and Tooker, Space and the Production of Cultural Difference, 79–88.

59. See Ferea, “The Living Living and the Living Dead.”

60. Christian Erni of the International Work Group of Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) has noted that, ‘Indigenous representatives participating in various processes at the UN have repeatedly emphasized that a definition of indigenous peoples is not necessary, and insisted on self-identification as part of their right to self-determination. The members of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations also concluded that it is neither realistic nor useful to try and adopt a definition’. As E. Daes points out, ‘the Working Group itself had been a success despite not having adopted any formal definition of “indigenous peoples” (Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia, 17; Daes, “Standard-setting activities.”).’

61. Lasimbang, “Foreword,” 9–10.

62. Clifford, “Varieties of Indigenous Experience,” 217.

63. Ibid., 212–213.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Micah F. Morton

Micah F. Morton is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, Criminology, and Sociology at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, New York, USA. His main research interests are the multiple and shifting intersections of ethnicity, religion, indigeneity, neo-traditionalism, and the environment among Indigenous peoples residing throughout the transregional space of upper mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China.

Jianhua Wang

Jianhua Wang (Aryoeq Nyawrbyeivq) is an assistant professor at the Yunnan Provincial Institute for Ethnic Studies at Yunnan Minzu University in Kunming, P.R. China. His main research interests include the historical, political, and cultural ecology of Indigenous peoples residing in upper mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China, especially the Akha and Hani.

Haiying Li

Haiying Li (Miqsawr Pyawqganr) is an independent scholar affiliated with the Mekong Akha Network for Peace and Sustainability (MAPS) who completed an M.A. in sustainable development at the Regional Center for Social Science and Sustainable Development (RCSD) of Chiang Mai University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her main research interests are religion, ethnicity, and neo-traditionalism among Akha and Hani indigenous groups in upper mainland Southeast Asia and Southwest China.