Karen Longneck Hilltribe - Padaung, Thailand

The Padaung are a sub-group of Karen (Bwe Group) living in Kayah state of eastern Burma on the Thailand border. They number less than 40,000 people in total. The Padaung call themselves "Lae Kur" or "Kayan". They have their own language which belongs to the Kenmic group in the Tibeto-Burman language family.

The Karen themseves are not one homogeneous group but rather a loose confederation of heterogeneous and closely related tribes. Among the smallest of the Karen tribes in Thailand are the Karen Padaung.

In Thailand, only a few families of Padaung have settled temporarily as refugees in Muang District of Mae Hong Son Province, near Ban Tha Ton in Chiang Rai Province, and as of June 2005 a small group near Chiang Dao. Generally they live among other hilltribes groups, mostly Karen.

The Padaung escaped from the Kaya State in Burma to Thailand in the mid to late 1900's and are actually refugees of a political turmoil. They belong to the Karenni sub-group of the Karen People, which are still fighting for their independence in Burma.

The Karen-Padaung occupied central Burma before the Burmese arrived from the North and they, together with the ancient Mon, farmed the Irrawaddy and Salween Valleys and built civilizations based on their unique cultures.

The Padaung women famously wear brass rings around their necks. This distorts the growth of their collarbones and make them look as if they have long necks - which they don't. This row of brass rings do not actually stretch their necks but in fact squash the vertebrae and collar bones. A woman generally has about twenty or more rings around her neck. This neck ring adornment is started when the girls are 5 or 6 years old.

The rings on the arms and the legs are not quite as prominent as those on the neck simply because the neck rings are so pronounced. However, these rings are just as important. The rings on the arms are worn on the forearm from the wrist to the elbow. Those on the legs are worn from the ankles to the knees, and cloth coverings are kept over most of these rings, from the shins down to the ankles.

Most of Padaung are animists, but about 10 percent are Buddhists. Now, the number of Christians is increasing because of the Roman Catholic mission. The annual festival for the fertility and prosperity of the whole community is usually held at the beginning of the rainy season. Sacrifices are made to the spirits for good health and bountiful harvests. Rice is the Padaung main crop.

The Lisu Hilltribe - Northern Thailand

The Lisu Hilltribes belong to the Tibeto-Burman branch of the Sino-Tibetan linguistic family and are scattered throughout all of northern Thailand in the low-lying foothills of the Himalayas. They are thought to have originated in Eastern Tibet and entered into Thailand from Yunnan, China about 100 years ago. The Lisu, as well as many other indigenous tribes of the region, originally settled along the rivers and streams originating from the ice-tipped Himalayas, ultimately becoming the Salween and Mekong Rivers making their way through China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam before finally reaching the South China Sea. Without a country to call their own, when the Chinese, Thai, and Lao and Burmese peoples began to create their empires and draw new lines of demarcation for their respective countries, many peoples including the Lisu were rendered nationless, with no citizenship or political power.

Today, the Lisu and many other tribal societies living in northern Thailand are being shamelessly exploited by the tourism industry as Myanmar, China, Thailand, and Laos - through a project known as the "Economic Quadrangle" compete for development opportunities in a 180,000 sq. kilometer region of the upper Salween/Mekong rivers. This project aims to force these highland communities to abandon their traditional agricultural lifestyles and embrace the project's more exploitive pursuits - such as cultural tourism - as an alternative source of income.

Most tourism packages to the hilltribe regions today are being promoted (and from first-hand experience, falsely so) as 'ecotourism' by an enormous selection of tourist agencies ranging from the low-budget backpacker variety to high-end luxury resorts in beautiful natural settings. In the worst cases, 'model' villages are erected and the long-neck Karen tribal women, wearing their traditional multiple gold neck rings, are kept like prisoners in a human zoo for tourist consumption.

As long as the governments of these participating nations, international agencies and the strength of big business dictate these indigenous peoples' rights, cultural tourism cannot sustain itself. Unless the hilltribe communities are empowered to defend their territorial integrity and to determine for themselves their own economic, political, cultural and social lives, there can be no sustainable development and these rich cultures will ultimately be destroyed.

The Moken People - Thailand, Myanmar

A brief compendium of the Moken people, an indigenous maritime culture inhabiting the Mergui Archipelago off of the coasts of Myanmar and Thailand.

If we were to take the time to observe the Moken people's way of life, there is much that we can learn about conservation and natural resources management. From their basic, non-materialistic lifestyles, they have gained an intimate knowledge of their ecosystems that has allowed them to benefit from a simple living from the sea with minimal destruction to their environment. So familiar have they become with the coastal waters and islands of the Mergui Archipelago and so intimate have they come to be with the winds and tides, moon and stars, and the many gifts the sea provides them that civilization, such as we in the first world know it, becomes unnecessary.

Only very recently have governments and regimes, due in large part to their lust for a perceived never-ending supply of natural resources, begun their quest to relocate, enslave, massacre and ultimately endanger the Moken people and thus their culture. Through most of the 20th century, the Moken enjoyed a hunter-gatherer livelihood focusing primarily upon subsistence, with little desire for or accumulation of material goods. They held a belief that natural resources were owned by no man, rather are to be enjoyed and shared by everyone including their animist gods. Unfortunately, in more advanced western cultures, this materially poor livelihood is viewed as inferior and many attempts have been made across the world to ‘convert’ the masses of primitive underdeveloped cultures to embrace modernity, with little or no consideration for the loss of these rich cultures.

We have seen in many instances where this pathway to modernity has harmed the Moken people as they strive to fit in with a society they know little about and away from the subsistence livelihood that has ensured their cultural and physical welfare for centuries.