I’d always been one to see the worst in every situation and take things to heart. In periods of unexpected losses, unintended outcomes, or perhaps even just slight inconveniences, you would never hear the end of my grumbles. It was after one of my friends saw the lack of silver linings in me, that I was given a gratitude journal that began my journey of finding faith during the toughest of times. In a bid to supplement this while experiencing the peace and serenity of rural life, I signed up for Tembusu’s flagship senior seminar, Picturing and Seeing Development. I hoped that this trip would make me grateful for everything I have in my life.

Before flying to Chiang Mai, our weekly seminars with Dr. Priscilla Koh covered various aspects of Thai-Karen history and society, including Karen interactions with the Thai state. Armed with a foundational understanding of Northern Thai culture, our subsequent adventures brought us from the urbanised centre of Chiang Mai (northern Thailand’s largest city) to the swidden farmlands of the Thai-Myanmar Border, before ending at the village of Huay Ee Khang, home to the ethnic Karen.

Judd with Dr. Priscilla Koh, students and faculty of CMU, and other Tembusians on a farm in the Northern Thai highlands.

The Karen are indigenous to the Thai-Burma border region in Southeast Asia. They are one of the numerous ethnic groups in Burma and Thailand. Afflicted by the Burmese conflict that has affected them since 1949, some have fled their homelands in Kayin State to inhabit the mountainous regions of Northern Thailand.

The Karen are also said to be the largest ethnic group termed as a “hill-tribe” by the Thai government, of which has marginalised them from procuring economic opportunities, education, and political representation through their national policies. The term “hill-tribe” is derived from the creation of the Hill Tribe Welfare Committee by the Thai government in 1959. According to Morton and Baird (2019), this occurred during a period of “anti-communist” and anti-opium production efforts by state authorities. Subsequently, it has been claimed that the hill-tribes threaten national security on the grounds of being “border transgressors”, “communists”, and producers of opium (Morton & Baird, 2019, p. 13). For the Karen, their form of slash-and-burn farming has led to their perception as “forest destroying, opium cultivating, dangerous alien troublemakers” (Buergin, 2000). On that point, ethnographic researchers have said that the swidden agriculture that the Karen were known to have practised, which involves “long cultivation and fallow periods”, is no longer commonplace. Rather, the Karen have adjusted to farming at lower altitudes and valleys (Buergin, p. 6). These competing narratives have challenged the status and perceptions of the Karen for as long as they have been termed as a hill-tribe.

For the record, this was not a “voluntourism” trip. Unlike Overseas Community Involvement Programs (OCIPs), we did not conduct English lessons or construct buildings. Our main objective was to conduct fieldwork inquiry on the Karen in the village, synthesising our findings into a five-minute video and presentation for the students and lecturers of Chiang Mai University’s Social Sciences faculty.

To be frank, I did picture myself interacting with the villagers and returning to Singapore brimming with appreciation for my privileged life here, as I write this now in my air-conditioned bedroom in Tembusu College. As with politicians who have encouraged young Singaporeans to travel to neighbouring less-developed countries to foster personal growth,^[1] my family echoed similar motherhood statements along the lines of “counting your blessings” before I flew into Thailand. I later realised how this view was rooted in a paternalistic, “top-down” mindset, one that could detrimentally influence our socio-cultural research in the village.

Lunchtime in Huay Ee Khang. Karen cuisine is hearty and more interesting than our regular dining hall food.

It wasn’t as rude an awakening as I had expected. The villagers were in no way struggling to make ends meet, much less living in ramshackle conditions. I vividly recall being ushered to our accommodation after arriving in the village. As the monsoon season floods considerably, the houses in Huay Ee Khang (and many other Karen settlements in the region) were built on tall wooden stilts. Under each home, was a “void deck” of sorts, where the space was used to store firewood, tools, or even live pigs. These houses were connected by several dirt paths that fanned out from the village center. Just like in University Town, there were roosters. They functioned as the village’s alarm clocks. Even as we basked in the blazing sun in the fields with feral dogs frolicking around looking for food scraps, I felt more at peace than in built-up Singapore. It was a welcome change from the hectic semester that had just concluded a week before and the crowds that thronged University Town.

My groupmates preparing for a field interview. We were accompanied by a furry friend who had ventured from an adjacent rice paddy.

Most villagers were involved in agricultural work, growing crops such as rice and taro. When we first came to the village earlier that week, we learnt from the ex-village headwoman, Noreari, that they were resistant towards state intervention in their farming practices.

From the perspective of the Karen, rotational farming entails the clearing of land for re-cultivation and subsequent revitalisation through allowing decaying plant matter to nourish their farmlands. It maintains soil fertility and reduces the odds of erosion and overexploitation. This incongruence between the Thai state and the Karen has been a focal point of their interactions, as the land use policies enacted by the government have been of detriment to the livelihoods of the Karen. Most infamously, the creation of Kaeng Krachan National Park in 1981 led to the “dispossession” of the traditional lands of the Karen. Relocated to less arable land, they have been unable to fully practise their rotational farming and perform traditional rituals (World Rainforest Movement, 2021).

A small-scale example of Karen swidden farming.

Over the next few days, my intrepid group and I ventured into the rice paddies and forests where we interviewed villagers of different backgrounds for our presentation. The most vivid of these interviews was with a female villager who ran a small stall selling iced slushies. She had returned to the village from Chiang Mai after completing a post-secondary diploma in nursing and a short stint in a public hospital there. When we asked what drove her return, she said that the village offers young people more freedom, as long as one has a goal to work towards.

My group’s typical interview set-up while in the village.

To her, freedom meant the safety and liberal environment of the village, where she could pursue her endeavours without the fear of being judged as an outsider by city-folk. We were about the same age, yet I couldn’t resonate with her beliefs then. The city seemed to offer so much. Built-up infrastructure, better-paying opportunities, and modern healthcare were some things I thought would’ve offered her the “freedom” many young people desired. Besides, in most films and music that I consume, the notion of moving from rural to urban has often been corroborated with the ideals of “making it big” and pursuing a better life. The woman added that working in the hospital was pressurising, and the cost of living in the city was significantly higher than in the village, where she practically did not have to pay rent. To her, Chiang Mai (and even Bangkok) weren’t the concrete jungles where dreams are made of. What she had was the drive to elevate her community. She sought to bring back the knowledge she had received from the modern education she received in the city to open up the village for community-based tourism. Some of the village elders naturally opposed this, but that was for our research project to uncover and debate. Her innate desire to elevate the status and economic standards of the village particularly struck my heart, as I found myself asking whether I would have had the passion to do the same if I was in her shoes. It drilled in me the values of perseverance and to be more cognisant of new surroundings. What I had assumed about rural life beforehand did not necessarily hold true, especially in this vastly different cultural context from Singapore.

We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to attend a Karen blessing ceremony.

Returning from the Thai highlands, I found myself grappling with a few difficult questions. I hoped that our fieldwork did not inconvenience the villagers we had interviewed, who I assumed were mostly preoccupied with agricultural tasks before we came. I wondered what impact our presentation to the faculty members of Chiang Mai University would have on the Karen people in the long run. Perhaps what gnawed at me the most, was wondering what lessons my peers and I could bring home from this trip, and how we could give back to the Karen community. I knew that my growth could stretch beyond the trip and the grades that I would eventually receive. I just wasn’t sure how.

Reflecting on my thoughts and sense of moral responsibility during my time in Chiang Mai, I had felt that the pre-conceived societal narratives I had subscribed to about the Karen needing our help were ill-advised. During our field research, I had discovered how the modernities that were derived from city life– technology, capitalism, and tourism, threatened to unravel the delicate social fabric of Huay Ee Khang. Through seeing how family structures and community bonds functioned, I felt that while they have been disenfranchised from the privileges enjoyed by other ethnic groups in Thailand, it was not in our position to push for change on their behalf. It was up to them to navigate these complexities. These sentiments echoed with each villager we interviewed, from the male farmers who were satisfied with how life was slow and simple, to the female weavers who felt that they wanted more agency in village affairs.

As a field researcher in this course, I felt like I was a bystander to a series of interlinked interactions and dynamics that I could only observe and record. The feeling was difficult for me to swallow at first. I didn’t want to carry a saviour complex, as I recognised that I was approaching this from a Singaporean lens. As I contemplated writing this article, my biggest worry was coming off as patronising or condescending towards the Karen people. My introspective thoughts were centered on the future of the inhabitants of Huay Ee Khang in the face of the changes we explored while in the village. While the challenges wrought by external forces (i.e. the Thai state) was most prominent, the intra-village dynamics between men and women, as well as between youths and elders were apparent hurdles as well.

After giving it careful thought over the summer, I’ve come to realise through my studies and travels that external interventions in “less-developed” communities can have mixed outcomes. I left the adjective in quotations as what one person may see as undeveloped, may not be the same to another.^[2] When these ideas are misrepresented, we may unknowingly exhort sentiments or values that debilitate or undervalue the communities that we engage with. Rudyard Kipling’s poem, The White Man’s Burden, does exactly this. Describing the non-white indigenous peoples of the Philippines as “barbaric” and “brutish”, Kipling implores the “more civilised” white people to take on the “difficult” task of instructing the native peoples that they have conquered. He adds that this is due to the moral duty of the “white man” to introduce the “civilising light” of the Western world. The poem is now seen by scholars as an artefact of imperialism and colonial domination.

Even as I acknowledge the complexities linked to the positions I held during our trip (of being a researcher and an individual from a more privileged background than the Karen), this is only the beginning. This trip to Northern Thailand has given me core memories that have challenged my conceptions of living as a young person in Singapore, and how much we should engage with less privileged communities. Recognising that the Karen are navigating their interlinked sociocultural, political, and generational challenges in their own ways has compelled me to rethink the basis of us imposing our beliefs of what we think is best for them. Ultimately, it has prompted me to consider how we can contribute authentically to the world around us, not as “saviours”, but as informed and compassionate individuals who appreciate the diverse tapestries of societies around the world.

“If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”

– Oprah Winfrey

I’ve returned refreshed with new perspectives on what it means to live with intention. To that end, I still think about the words from that female villager sometimes. To have ambition, doesn’t necessarily need to be things like procuring a highly-coveted internship at a Big Four accountancy firm, or being on top of your studies while having a “stacked” portfolio. It is important for us to recognise that we all lead different unique and fascinating lives. To feel the pressure of wanting to succeed in our society, is already a privilege in itself. While we all hope to be seen as worthy and successful, there are many others who view our lives from afar with desire (or even disdain!)

As the latter half of this semester approaches, I am choosing to face it with courage and chasing my own personal goals, even if it does not align with societal stereotypes. Most importantly, I am grateful for what I have, and knowing that whatever discomfort and challenges I encounter, are opportunities for growth and making myself proud.

Judd at Wat Phratat Doi Kham, on the final day of the trip.

About the Author

Judd is a third-year Political Science and History major who hopes that Williams Racing can win a F1 Constructor’s Championship within the next five years. While he is still an avid Swiftie, he prefers to unwind to the tunes of Frank Sinatra, Richard Wagner and Fleetwood Mac these days. Catch him running away from his problems at nearby park connectors on weekday evenings!

References

Buergin, R. (2000). ‘Hill tribes’ and forests: Minority policies and resource conflicts in Thailand. Retrieved from http://www.sefut.uni-freiburg.de/pdf/WP_7e.pdf

Morton, M. F., & Baird, I. G. (2019). From hill tribes to Indigenous peoples: The localisation of a global movement in Thailand. Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 50(1), 7–31. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022463419000031

World Rainforest Movement. (2021). Thailand’s imposition of national parks: The Indigenous Karen people’s struggle for their forests and survival. Retrieved from https://www.wrm.org.uy/bulletin-articles/thailands-imposition-of-national-parks-the-indigenous-karen-peoples-struggle-for-their-forests-and