![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
On 22 May 2014, the Thai military conducted a coup d’état and discarded the previous constitution. In April 2015, a new draft constitution was prepared. Although eventually rejected by the military, it represented an exciting moment for activists, as it recognized the existence of ‘indigenous peoples’ (referred to as chon pheun muang in the draft). This prompted us to conduct interviews in 2015–2016 with people belonging to four different ethnic groups and living mainly in Chiang Mai province, northern Thailand: the Lua, Khon Muang, Hmong, and Lisu, in order to determine their understandings of who should be considered ‘indigenous peoples’, and what rights should they have. The findings indicate that there is considerable variation amongst people regarding the meaning of the term ‘indigenous peoples’; who should be considered indigenous; and what rights those defined as being indigenous should be entitled to.
Acknowledgements
The study that this paper is based upon was funded by Open Society Foundations, although the views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the Foundations. The grant was supported the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We are also thankful to the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Groups Network of Thailand for their support, and we are especially appreciative of all the people who consented to being interviewed for the study. Without their willingness to share their ideas, this study would not have been possible. Thanks also for the anonymous review comments provided to the authors via Asian Ethnicity. These comments helped improve the paper significantly. Any shortcomings that remain are the responsibility of the authors.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Mérieau, “Thailand’s Deep State”.
2. Nilprapunt et al., “Draft Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand.”
3. Crispin, “What Thailand’s Rejected Constitution Means”.
4. It should be noted that indigenous activists in Thailand typically refer to Indigenous Peoples as ‘chon phao pheun muang’, not ‘chon pheun muang’ (Morton and Baird 2016; Prasit 2016). Also, activists often prefer to capitalize the first letters of ‘Indigenous Peoples’.
5. Kingsbury, “The Applicability of the International Legal Concept”; Baird, “Translocal Assemblages and the Circulation”; Baird, “Indigeneity in Asia”.
6. Morton and Baird, “From Hill Tribes to Indigenous Peoples”; Leepreecha, “The Construction and the Movement”.
7. Kingdom of Thailand, “Draft Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand”.
8. Ibid.
9. See Schliesinger, Ethnic Groups in Thailand; Schliesinger, Tai Groups of Thailand for information about the Hmong, Lua, Lisu and Khon Muang ethnic groups.
10. Kingsbury, “The Applicability of the International Legal Concept”.
11. Baird, “The Construction of “Indigenous Peoples””; Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia.
12. Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia; Karlsson, “Anthropology and the “Indigenous Slot””; Bowen, “Should we have a Universal Concept”; Kingsbury, “The Applicability of the International Legal Concept”.
13. Li, “Ethnic Cleansing, Recursive Knowledge”.
14. Kuper, “Return of the Native”.
15. Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia; Baird, “Indigeneity in Asia”. However, only one country in Asia, Nepal, has signed and ratified ILO (Citation1989), an international treaty that is designed to ensure self-determination for indigenous peoples, something also promoted in UNDRIP, but with less ‘teeth’.
16. Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia.
17. See note 6 above.
18. Baird, “The Construction of “Indigenous Peoples”.
19. Gray, “The Indigenous Movement in Asia”; Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia.
20. Winichakul, “The Others Within”; Streckfuss, “The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam”.
21. Forsythe and Walker, Forest Guardians, Forest Destroyers; Declore, “The Racial Distribution of Privilege”; Vandergeest, “Racialization and Citizenship”; Delang, “Deforestation in Northern Thailand”; Tungittiplakorn, “Highland-Lowland Conflict”.
22. Munger, “Culture, Power, and Law”.
23. Sakboon, “Controlling Bad Drugs, Creating Good Citizens”.
24. Coalition on Racial Discrimination Watch, “Shadow Report on Eliminating Racial Discrimination”.
25. Buadaeng, “The Rise and Fall of the Tribal Research Institute (TRI)”.
26. Vaddhanaphuti et al., “Kung Satawat Kanphathana Thisung”; Leepreecha, “The Construction and the Movement”.
27. Kingdom of Thailand, “Draft Constitution of the Kingdom of Thailand”.
28. Harding and Leyland, The Constitutional System of Thailand.
29. Baird, “Translocal Assemblages and the Circulation”.
30. Baird, “The Construction of “Indigenous Peoples”.
31. See note 20 above.
32. Morton and Baird, “From Hill Tribes to Indigenous Peoples”.
33. Winichakul, “The Others Within”; Streckfuss, “The Mixed Colonial Legacy in Siam”.
34. Buadaeng, “The Rise and Fall of the Tribal Research Institute (TRI)”.
35. Vaddhanaphuti et al., “Kan Wichai Thang Chattiphan Nai Lao-Thai”.
36. See note 6 above.
37. See note 8 above.
38. At the time of the field research done for this study, the Indigenous Peoples and Ethnic Group Network of Thailand existed, and this was the term used when conducting interviews. However, since then, the name of the network has changed to the Indigenous Peoples Network of Thailand.
39. Rhum, “The Cosmology of Power in Lanna”.
40. Rights and Liberties Protection Department (RLPD), First to Third Periodic Reports of Thailand.
41. Gray, “The Indigenous Movement in Asia”; Erni, The Concept of Indigenous Peoples in Asia; Baird, “The Construction of “Indigenous Peoples””.
42. Schliesinger, Ethnic Groups in Thailand.
43. Flaim, “Problems of Evidence”.
44. See note 32 above.
45. See note 8 above.
46. Draper, “The Thai Lao Question”.
47. See note 40 above.
48. See note 42 above.
49. See note 40 above.
50. Geddes, Migrants of the Mountains; Tapp, Sovereignty and Rebellion.
51. Schliesinger, Ethnic Groups in Thailand.
52. See note 40 above.
53. Bradley, “Onomastic, Orthagraphic, Dialectic”.
54. See note 6 above.
55. Buadaeng, “The Rise and Fall of the Tribal Research Institute (TRI)”.
56. ILO, Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples.
57. See note 18 above.
58. See note 6 above.
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Ian G. Baird
Ian G. Baird is an Adjunct Professor at Chiang Mai University. He is also an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also affiliated with the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, the Asian American Studies Program, and the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies at UW-Madison. As a Canadian, he completed his Ph.D. in Geography at the University of British Columbia in 2008. Baird has a broad array of interests but is especially focused on research related to large dam development and fish and fisheries in the Mekong River Basin, and large-scale plantation concessions, indigeneity, political conflict and insurgency, and marginal histories in Southeast Asia. He mainly works in Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, where he lived and worked for many years.
Author’s postal address: Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Prasit Leepreecha
Prasit Leepreecha is a faculty member at the Department of Social Science and Development, Faculty of Social Sciences, Chiang Mai University. He is also affiliated with the Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD). He received his PhD in Anthropology at the University of Washington in 2001. He has various interests related to ethnicity in development contexts in Mainland Southeast Asia. In addition to publications in Thai, he has coauthored two books: Challenging the Limits: Indigenous Peoples of the Mekong Region and Living in a Globalized World: Ethnic Minorities in the Greater Mekong Subregion.
Author’s postal address: Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand
Urai Yangcheepsutjarit
Urai Yangcheepsutjarit is Hmong and she works as a research assistant at the Center of Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Chiang Mai University, where she also received a Master’s of Arts degree in 2015. She also works as a police instructor at a Border Patrol Police School, northern Thailand.
Author’s postal address: Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand