The Palaung Land Website

Posted By admin on April 5, 2008

There are three main sub-groups of the Palaung: Pale, Shwe and Remain. Each of these sub-groups has their own language. Most of the Palaung who settled in northern Thailand are of the Pale, also known as Silver Palaung. The photographs here are of this sub-group. Their women are very distinct in their dress. This includes a bright red skirt, worn like a sarong. Typically in the past, these “tube skirts” were made from cotton, which the Pale grew and dyed themselves, and were hand woven. Nowadays the cloth is more commonly bought in markets and hand weaving is giving way to machines. Around their waist are worn quite heavy silver hoops. These are said to symbolize an animal trap, set by the Lisu people, which accidentally ensnared Roi Ngoen, a visiting angel from whom they believe they are descended. The hoops are also believed to afford protection to the women.

The Palaung traditionally have practiced a mixture of Animism and Buddhism. (Although there has been a small amount of recent Christian missionary work among them.) Whereas many associate Buddhism with a pacifistic lifestyle. Like many others in Myanmar and Thailand who are nominally Buddhist, the Palaung also still practice various forms of Animist ritual from their religious past. The most famous such ritual is known as “Nat worship.” Nets are believed to be the spirits of otherwise inanimate objects such as rocks, mountains and rivers, as well as the spirits of deceased ancestors.

There are traditionally 37 different nets, to whom offerings of, for example, betel and tobacco are made on various ceremonial occasions – or simply to appease these spirits if someone falls sick or if a crop harvest has been bad. “Nat wives” are women who have “married” such a spirit, and are sometimes transvestite and/or homosexual men (see the documentary link below). Offerings to nets and other Animist rituals are performed at events such as weddings, births and funerals by Palaung shamans, who are both respected and powerful in their communities.

In 19th Century Myanmar, under British colonial rule, the Palaung were far more powerful in terms of land ownership and political representation than they are today. The British even recognized the Palaung-controlled kingdom of Tawnpeng. Today land ownership is being taken away from the Palaung by Myanmar‘s military government. In Thailand many Palaung work as hired laborers on Thai-owned farms. To the extent that they continue to own land, they farm a variety of crops including tea, grain, rice, opium poppy, betel and corn.

The photographs left and right show the Palaung harvesting corn and carrying it back to their village. While corn is a recent introduction to the crops of the Palaung, others such as rice, tea and opium poppy are generations old. Historically, and extending to the present day, opium poppy has been a lucrative cash crop to the Palaung. In Thailand government control and the efforts of non-governmental organizations have, for the most part, persuaded them to cultivate alternate cash crops such as coffee and beans.

Efforts along these same lines in Myanmar lag behind those in Thailand, but are now underway. Nonetheless, peoples like the Palaung live in poverty relative to their immediate neighbors and due to the power of local drug-lords, as well as the corruption of law enforcers, it will be a long time, if ever, before they abandon opium poppy cultivation. (A recent news link is given below with some reporting and opinion on this issue as it relates to the cultivation of opium poppy among ethnic groups in Myanmar. The visitor to the border areas of northern Thailand can expect to be spot searched for drugs by Thai authorities.)

Besides alternate cash crops, the Palaung have recently begun selling handicrafts to tourists to supplement their income. This is especially prevalent in northern Thailand, where many tour operators and guides take trekkers into Palaung villages. This type of tourism takes place to a lesser degree in Myanmar also. They sell, among other things, shoulder bags, wallets, hand-woven cloth and hand-made clothes. The visitor can overnight in some of these villages, which have basic yet comfortable wooden guest huts that have been purpose-built to accommodate tourists.

The visitor might be surprised by how well these guest huts are built. The Palaung are highly skilled in construction. Their own houses are also wooden huts, which are raised high off the ground on stilts. These days their houses are typically much smaller than in the past. Traditionally their houses have been longhouses accommodating extended families of 50 or more! While the typical house is home to fewer family members these days, the Palaung continue their tradition in which parents host their married sons and their daughters-in-law. Every Palaung village has a headman, whose duties involve making decisions for the village and ruling in disputes.

The headman usually comes from the largest family in the village. This Palaung village was geared to tourism and doing a good job of it. We stopped here for lunch and met an arriving bus load of Italians as we were leaving. The Palaung are called Bulang in China. They are closely related to the Wa people that live on the border between Myanmar and southern Yunnan. The open porch where we were having lunch was soon surrounded by these girls offering very well crafted souvenirs. Lunch and trinkets for tourists were only marginal sources of revenue. This prosperous village had their own pickup truck on which they can be seen loading a squealing pig going to market. The kids as usual were darlings. These Palaung are also recent refugees from Myanmar, notice how some of them are still wearing longish.

http://myanmar-society.blogspot.com/2006/08/prominent-palaung-tribe.html

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