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Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 54, No. 3, December 2013 ISSN 1360-7456, pp282–295

Highlands of history: Indigenous identity and its antecedents in

Jonathan Padwe Department of Anthropology, University of Hawai’i at Ma¯noa, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA. Email: [email protected]

Abstract: The notion that Cambodia’s highland people may claim a distinct ‘Indigenous’ identity has emerged only recently in Cambodia. To date, advocacy for rights under the banner of indigeneity has produced few results for highlanders. Among the problems faced by advocates for Indigenous rights, problems of definition and translation represent an important challenge. Arguing that concepts like ‘Indigeneity’ are not simply adopted ex nihilo in new settings, but are rather incorporated into existing structures of meaning, this paper explores culturally produced understandings of who highlanders are, concentrating in particular on the way that the term ‘Indigenous’ has been translated into . The use of the Khmer word daeum, or ‘original’, to distinguish between Indigenous and other forms of ethnic belonging in the newly derived translation of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ points to historically sedimented beliefs about highlanders as living ancestors of modern Khmers.

Keywords: Cambodia, human rights, Indigenous identity, translation

In a recent debate on the floor of Cambodia’s them figured Mane Yun, a media-savvy young National Assembly, Chheang Vun, a lawmaker Bunong woman who is the founding director from the ruling Cambodian People’s Party of the newly formed Cambodian Indigenous (CPP), attacked Kem Sokha, the leader of the Youth Association. A political cartoon of Cambodian Human Rights Party. ‘Have you ever the day, published on a suppressed anti- built roads or bridges?’ he demanded to know. government website, showed the beleaguered ‘No. Never. You haven’t done a thing. You act in lawmaker in the role of a water buffalo, being the manner of a bunong from the forest!’ (VOA sacrificed as part of a Bunong ritual (KI-Media, News, 2012). In Chheang’s use of the word, 2012). Amid the media storm, the CPP parlia- bunong is a pejorative term, a commonly used mentarian eventually apologised. Khmer epithet for those who are backwards, The next month, Prime Minister Hun Sen uncivilised or savage. Bunong, sometimes himself made news with a less inflammatory, written as Phnong, is also the ethnonym of the but equally revealing statement. During his visit largest highland ethnic group of Mondulkiri to in support of a highly Province in northeast Cambodia. In protest, politicised land titling programme, four Kem Sokha and 20 other parliamentarians members of the Jarai highland ethnic minority staged a walkout from the Assembly. The follow- were prevented from presenting him with a ing day Chheang Vun defended his use of the petition against the taking of their land by term, insisting that the word Bunong remains an a government-backed rubber plantation. In a insult. ‘The people in the northeast are called speech that day, the Prime Minister made refer- Indigenous. You should not call them Bunong. ence to the issue, noting that he had recently You must be careful using that word’, the par- been confronted by a foreigner who ‘claimed liamentarian insisted (Eang, 2012). The media that the rubber plantation development . . . picked up the story, and reported on the vocif- leads to the loss of jobs [muk roba] of the ethnic erous objections to Chheang’s derogatory use minorities. I asked him “now can you clarify to of the term raised by Indigenous rights activists me again, does his Excellency need to promote and by Bunong leaders themselves. Among development or does he need to leave these

© 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd doi: 10.1111/apv.12028 Indigenous identity in Cambodia people to collect resin and vines in the forest for lenges, and in collaboration with groups and tourists to look at?” ’ The Prime Minister went individuals across a wide spectrum of govern- on to explain that foreigners ‘want me to mental and non-governmental agencies and promote development. But on the other hand, organisations, Cambodia’s highland people they give me a lesson on creating rubber plan- have in recent years sought to position them- tations and how this will lead to the loss of selves as ‘Indigenous Peoples’ within contem- culture. This is too bad. Don’t be confused. porary political debates. It is a move that locates Wearing shoes, driving motorcycles, and so on them within globally circulating universalist dis- is not against Indigenous lifestyles’ (Kuch, 2012; courses about rights and forms of belonging, RFA Cambodia, 2012). and opens a space for collaboration with inter- As these cases illustrate, the term ‘Indigenous’ national advocates from the worlds of environ- has taken on new relevance in Cambodian poli- mentalism, sustainable development and the tics. Chheang Vun’s explanation that ‘Indig- promotion of human rights. enous Peoples’ – chun chiet daeum pheak tech While Indigenous Peoples and their advo- in Khmer – is the appropriate way to describe cates have managed to obtain some policy those who were once referred as savages illus- responses to their concerns – notably in the trates the point. So, too, does Prime Minister field of bilingual education – to date, identity- Hun Sen’s deft explanation that Indigenous based advocacy has failed to achieve signifi- identity and participation in the modern world cant reforms, and those claiming the status of are not incompatible. And yet both cases dem- Indigenous Peoples have been excluded from onstrate how far Indigenous Peoples have yet to meaningful participation in policy-making pro- go to obtain their political goals. The fact cesses on the issues that directly threaten their remains that one still hears Bunong used as an livelihoods and well-being. The list of these insult on the floor of the National Assembly, issues includes: legal and illegal logging and while the Prime Minister’s vision for the ‘devel- deforestation of village lands (Global Witness, opment’ of the northeast leaves little room for 2007; Padwe, 2011b: 110–111); various forms the recognition of Indigenous land claims and of expropriation, including the awarding of little space for highland people to express their economic land concessions (United Nations own desires. Cambodia Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2004; NGO Forum, 2006); the establishment of protected areas and Indigenous politics in Cambodia conservation-based exclusions of Indigenous The concept of Indigenous identity is not indig- Peoples from forest resources (Baird and enous to Cambodia. Indeed, the possibility for a Dearden, 2003); and the creation of large-scale politics of Indigeneity in Cambodia is very infrastructure projects such as hydropower recent. While English-language terms like dams and trans-national transportation corridor ‘Indigenous’, ‘Indigeneity’ and ‘Indigenous projects (Hirsch and Wyatt, 2004; Padwe, identity’ have circulated among Cambodia’s 2011b: 115–116). The establishment of com- international development community since the munal land titling under the 2001 land law early 1990s, a stable translation for the term was developed with the participation of Indig- ‘Indigenous Peoples’ as chun chiet daeum enous Peoples’ representatives and was initially pheak tech has only been available in the lauded as a solution to problems of land loss since the crafting of the coun- and marginalisation. However, while several try’s Land Law in 2001 (Baird, 2011a: 167). The communal land titles have been awarded term, which assigns the category of Indigenous recently, tract sizes are small, the programme identity exclusively to highland ethnic minori- has faced numerous delays in implementation ties, has emerged during a period when Cam- and highly politicised initiatives such as Prime bodia’s highland peoples have faced numerous Minister Hun Sen’s deployment of thousands of challenges, including loss of land, loss of university students to assist in land titling have autonomy, and increasing economic and politi- introduced confusion into the titling process cal marginalisation (Fox et al., 2008; Padwe, (McAndrew and Oeur, 2009; Woods and Kuch, 2011a; Baird, 2011b). In response to these chal- 2012).

© 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 283 J. Padwe

Table 1. Indigenous and national populations of Southeast Asia

Country National populationa Indigenous populationb Percentage Indigenous

Burma 48 337 000 14 400 000–19 200 000 30–40 Brunei 406 000 71 000 17.5 Cambodia 14 305 000 197 000 1.4 Indonesia 242 326 000 50 000 000–70 000 000 20.6–28.9 6 288 000 2 400 000–4 800 000 38.2–76.3 Malaysia 28 560 000 3 400 000 11.9 Philippines 94 852 000 12 000 000–15 000 000 12.6–15.8 69 519 000 1 100 000 1.6 87 840 000 10 000 000 11.4 aWorld Bank (2011). bInternational Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (2010).

There are many reasons for the intractability surrounding the term ‘Indigenous Peoples’ add of these issues. Caroline Hughes, for instance, to the challenges confronting advocates for argues that where international agencies have Indigenous rights in Cambodia. Notions like taken the lead on promoting human rights ‘Indigeneity’ are not simply adopted ex nihilo in reforms such as the establishment of collective new settings. Rather, as Anna Tsing (1999: 157) title to land in Cambodia, their pursuit of has suggested, processes of translation and neoliberal approaches closed off possibilities interpretation are necessary to make globally for truly oppositional politics and left movement circulating categories like ‘Indigenous Peoples’ leaders isolated and vulnerable (Hughes, 2007; relevant in particular social settings and politi- see also Hughes and Un, 2011). Others have cal contexts. Tsing (2005: 89–90) urges us to see pointed to familiar problems of governance such political projects as ‘contingent collabora- in Cambodia, including rampant corruption, tions’ – projects that involve the agency of mul- the political economy of natural resources tiple actors, projects that are shaped by the exploitation in the post-war, patrimonialism, friction of the political terrain upon which their clientalism and the like. proponents seek to establish them. A similar When comparing the success of Indigenous question is engaged by Tania Li, who asks ‘How politics in Cambodia (or lack thereof) to similar does a transnational category such as “Indig- movements elsewhere in the region, population enous Peoples” come to mobilize people in a figures also matter. Table 1 shows populations particular place?’ She answers that ‘a group’s of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ as a percentage of self-identification as tribal or indigenous is . . . a national populations in Southeast Asian states. positioning which draws upon historically Drawing up such a table requires subscribing to sedimented practices, landscapes, and reper- the dubious proposition that Indigenous identity toires of meaning, and emerges through particu- is something an individual either does or does lar patterns of engagement and struggle’ (Li, not have, and can thus be counted.1 Even so, the 2004: 309). table is instructive, showing, as it does, that the Rather than naturalising Indigeneity as a self- population of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ as a percent- evident category of analysis, then, Tsing and Li age of the national population in Cambodia is problematise Indigeneity as a project, an effort extremely small – just 1.4%, the smallest per- they share with others (but see Hale, 2006). centage in the region.2 The only other country Most important for my argument in this paper is with a similar figure is Thailand, where the per- their common assertion that the elaboration of centage is 1.6%. There are, however, over 1.1 Indigenous identities depends to a great extent million Indigenous Peoples in Thailand, in com- on the particularised landscapes of meaning and parison with Cambodia’s figure of just 197 000. history within which they are engaged. This sug- This is the second smallest number of Indig- gests that there is a relationship between friction enous Peoples in a national territory in the and ‘traction’: whether and how a travelling region, behind Brunei. universal takes hold in a particular place – the To these and other explanations should be kind of political traction it gets – depends on the added the possibility that definitional problems existence and nature of cultural and historical

284 © 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd Indigenous identity in Cambodia specificities. In proposing a slightly different nity to explore the historically conditioned and take on ‘traction’, Golub and Rhee (2013) point culturally produced frames of understanding out the relevance to these questions of Sahlins’s through which the idea of Indigenous identity is argument in Islands of History. In his analysis of understood and made relevant by Cambodians the death of Captain Cook, Sahlins insists on the today. Nor should the reader assume the exist- importance of understanding Cook’s fate at the ence of a unitary ‘Cambodian’ perspective on hands of Hawaiians through the framework of these issues; Cambodian understandings of Hawaiian structures of meaning, writing that highlanders, and of Indigenous identity, vary ‘Captain Cook fell victim to the play of Hawaiian greatly from person to person and within differ- categories, or more precisely to their interplay ent settings. Nonetheless it is possible to identify with his own’ (Sahlins, 1985: xii). The fate of some culutrally prevalent notions about high- ‘Indigeneity’ in Cambodia depends on a similar landers that are familiar to many Cambodians sort of engagement. and that exert an influence on new forms of This paper addresses one aspect of that inter- representation. play. In it, I am interested to understand the emergence of the term ‘Indigenous’ in Cambo- Problems of translation dia in relation to preconceptions about the people now thought of as ‘Indigenous’. My When scholars, policy-makers and human argument is that the term ‘Indigenous’, and the rights advocates in international settings speak emerging category of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ of Indigenous People, Indigenous identity or within Cambodian politics, is in part the pro- Indigeneity, the terms carry specific meanings. duct of a history of thinking about highlanders The word ‘Indigeneity’ has resonances that dis- as certain sorts of people – as ‘national minori- tinguish it from a concept like ‘ethnicity’, and ties’ in the mid-century socialist understanding an ‘Indigenous Peoples’ is not the same thing as of this concept, and as ‘living ancestors’ of a ‘tribe’ or an ‘ethnic minority’. The translation modern-day Cambodians. These connotations of the term ‘Indigenous Peoples’ into Khmer are present in the term chun chiet daeum pheak thus represents a point of articulation, where tech, and they condition the intellectual and local understandings of social relations are symbolic terrain upon which various actors made to connect to new ideas in the service of engage with the politics of Indigeneity today. creating new social categories. For this reason, That is to say, they structure the kinds of traction the production of new terminology provides a possible for projects of Indigenous identity crea- useful point of entry into the discussion of how tion in the present day. the notion of ‘Indigenous’ identity has been In the following pages I seek to demonstrate made relevant in Cambodia today. how the new term emerged from earlier under- The elaboration of terminology to describe standings of who highlanders are, in order to Indigenous identity and Indigenous rights in show that these conceptions continue to influ- Cambodia should be understood within the ence currently emerging discourses of Indi- history of ethnic classification and ethnographic geneity. Increasingly, that discussion involves knowledge formation in the region. Oscar the voices of Indigenous people and of advo- Salemink (2003: 1) argues persuasively that eth- cates for Indigenous Peoples’ rights. A nuanced nographic practice in colonial Indo-China and view of emerging understandings of indigeneity its post-colonial states was conditioned by ‘eco- in Cambodia would certainly need to demon- nomic, political and military interests within . . . strate the agency of groups and individuals, specific historical context[s]’, and that ‘the among them Indigenous Peoples and their rep- ensuing ethnographic discourses in turn influ- resentatives, who seek to use the language of ence[d] the historical context by suggesting and Indigeneity as part of their effort to open up a facilitating ethnic policies, and by contributing space for political contestation. The present to the formation or change of ethnic identities paper, however, focuses somewhat more nar- through processes of classification’. Salemink’s rowly on the impressions of highlanders held by argument extends the insights of a regional lit- the country’s national majority Khmer speakers. erature on the relationship between classifica- Focusing on this material provides an opportu- tory schemes and projects of rule, and alerts us

© 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 285 J. Padwe to the political implications of such projects terms in order to problematise these naming (Hirschman, 1987; Anderson, 1991: 163–185; practices. Scott, 1998). At least since the mid-twentieth century, In the early colonial period, terms circulating highlanders have been referred to as chun chiet in the languages of the region’s lowland states pheak tech, a term that is generally translated as referred to highlanders collectively as ‘savages’ ‘ethnic minority’. The term is still used fre- or ‘slaves’: moï or man in present-day Vietnam, quently, especially in its abbreviated form chun kha in Laos, and pnong (bunong), stieng chiet. Breaking down the phrase into its com- and tchiong in Cambodia (Baudesson, 1906; ponent parts sheds light on its etymology: chun Chauffard, 1907: 2–3; Dournes, 1971). In their is ‘people’ or ‘a people’; chiet is the Khmer term reports and publications, early French explorers for ‘national’; pheak is a ‘share’, ‘portion’ or and administrators adopted these terms (i.e. ‘percentage’; and tech is ‘little’, ‘few’ or ‘small Leclère, 1881; Maitre, 1909). By mid-century, (in quantity)’ (Headley et al., 1997). Thus, while practitioners of the newly professionalised it is translated as ‘ethnic minority’, and is not field of ethnology sought more appropriate, and generally used to refer to resident populations of less derogatory terms, often settling for the Vietnamese or Chinese living in Cambodia, in altitudinally explicit , a term used at fact the phrase refers to a minority nationality. least as early as 1907 by Bernard (1907: 15). The As Colm (1996: 3) notes, chun chiet was the anthropologist and Catholic missionary Jacques term for highlanders prevalent in Dournes, writing as Dam Bo (1950), noted that discourse, rendered, for instance, in a phrasing ‘for a long time, the European has referred to [the such as bang pa’on chun chiet, or ‘ethnic highlanders] under the name Moïs, and later minority brothers and sisters’. Heder and Montagnards; the former epithet is injurious, Ledgerwood (1996: 22, in Ehrentraut, 2004: 54) and the second is meaningless’. Dismayed by the note that the use of chun chiet by the Khmer fact that Montagnard could refer to mountain Rouge people anywhere, Dournes followed Marcel Ner (1952) in preferring Pémsien, a term derived had its roots in Leninist and Stalinist notions from Pays Montagnard du Sud-Indochinois about ‘nationalities’ within Russia and the (PMSI) administrative zone. This term was aban- constituent republics of the Soviet Union. doned following the de-establishment of the Thus, chun-cheat pheak-tech referred to PMSI. Georges Condominas’s coinage proto- ‘national minorities’ within the boundaries of Indochinois, introduced at around the same Cambodia. time, was more widely adopted; it remains in use among French scholars, along with terms such as The use of this term was continued in the aborigenes and autochtones (Salemink, 2003: post-Khmer Rouge era, appearing as the basis, 155; Bourdier, 1996: 375). Similar changes in for instance, of the term chun chiet pheak tech terminology are evident in English-language nev kompong reap, or ‘ethnic minorities of the literature on highland groups. The term ‘hill- uplands’, which was the descriptor used during tribe’, which was used frequently until perhaps the elaboration of an official Highland Peoples’ the 1990s, has recently been largely replaced Policy by an interministerial committee in 1997 by ‘highlanders’, and ‘upland people’ or (Baird, 2011a: 165). ‘uplanders’. At least historically, then, the term chun chiet As in neighbouring countries, in Cambodia pheak tech, translated as ‘national minority’, changing political circumstances have led to the implies not Indigeneity per se, but rather con- adoption of a series of new or newly repurposed tains an implication that highlanders’ national names in Khmer, the language of Cambodia’s belonging is distinct from that of Khmers, a gloss ethnic majority, to refer to the country’s high- that is reminiscent of international debates over land people. Baird (2011a) has provided an multinational states at the time of decolonisa- introductory genealogy and contextualisation of tion (i.e. Kunz, 1945). For Ehrentraut, this several of these terms, of which ‘Indigenous reading of the term chun chiet pheak tech sup- Peoples’ is but the most recent. Here I draw on ports his argument that ‘the concept of indig- Baird’s work and elaborate on several key enous peoples is not foreign in Cambodia’

286 © 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd Indigenous identity in Cambodia

(Ehrentraut, 2004: 53, emphasis added). His the Vietnamese had taken from Cambodia; and assertion is grounded in the work of Will Khmer Islam, the Muslim Cham ethnic group. Kymlicka (1996), for whom, in Ehrentraut’s esti- Not all Cambodians today associate the term mation, the category ‘indigenous people’ is a with the highlanders of the north- subcategory of and shares the meaning of east, however. An alternative ordering assigns ‘national minority.’ However, to the extent that the term Khmer Loeu to those Khmers living Indigenous identity implies a different form of outside of Cambodia in northeast Thailand. belonging from national identity, I would Writing about the suggest that the term chun chiet pheak tech in spoken in the southern region of northeast Thai- fact is suggestive of the ways that the term land, Suwilai Premsrirat (1997: 130) notes that it ‘Indigenous Peoples’ represents a new concep- generally corresponds to ‘the Northern Khmer tion of who highlanders are. (NK) native word khmεr: lG: ‘upper Khmer’ It was in the context of highlanders’ per- which is used to refer to the and ceived non-integration into the Khmer nation- language in Thailand. This is an autonym used state that in 1960 Prince Sihanouk introduced to show the difference between the Khmer in the term Khmer Loeu, or ‘upper Khmer’ to Thailand and the Khmer in Cambodia who are describe the highlanders. The newly elected called khmεrkrO:m ‘lower Khmer’. Prime Minister’s discursive strategy was part of Khmer speakers in northeast Thailand, then, a grander project of Khmerisation of the high- refer to themselves as Upper Khmer, and to lands undertaken to shore up national integrity Khmers within Cambodia as Lower Khmer in a zone of ethnic difference that increasingly (Prakorb, 1993: 252). These relational framings served as a stronghold of revolutionary activity. and ambivalences about who is ‘upper’ and The new name for the highlanders was part ‘lower’ are reflected in the practice of some of a package of development strategies that Khmers in Cambodia, too, who explain that equated modernisation with ethnic assimila- Khmer speakers in southern Thailand are tion. Ethnic Khmers were resettled from the referred to as upper Khmer (Khmer Loeu) lowlands to the highlands, roads and schools because of their geographic position to the were built, and highlanders were instructed north of present-day Cambodia, and their per- to abandon their ‘archaic way of life’ in favour ceived existential condition as former members of modern practices conforming to post- of the Cambodian nation-state, an imagining independence Khmer nationalist perspectives that mirrors that of the lower Khmer (Khmer on modernity (White, 1996: 344). Krom) who are geographically to the south of The introduction of the term Khmer Loeu is present-day Cambodia in Vietnam, and who significant not only because it illustrates the occupy the same existential position, as ethnic political strategies within which naming prac- Khmers residing on land that is understood to tices and the construction of new identities have have been taken from Cambodia. historically been pursued in Cambodia, but also The Khmer translation of the term ‘Indigenous because of what it says about the slippery nature Peoples’, the latest in the succession of new of newly introduced terms. The significance of terms applied to the highlanders, emerged the term Khmer Loeu as applied to highlanders during the drafting of the 2001 land law, a has been widely remarked in scholarship on law which provides for the awarding of collec- the highland people of northeast Cambodia. tive title to Cambodia’s Indigenous Peoples. Ovesen and Trankell (2008: 245) follow As Baird recounts, with the help of local non- Bourdier (1996) and others in locating the governmental organisations (NGOs), a work- term Khmer loeu within Sihanouk’s division of shop was arranged in November of 1998 in the Cambodia’s peoples into Khmer Loeu, Khmer capital of Ratanakiri Province to seek the con- Kandal, and Khmer Islam. These sultation of Indigenous Peoples on the relevant were: the Upper Khmer, or highlanders of subdecree. The workshop included participants the northeast; the , indicat- from the national and provincial government, ing the Khmer ethnic majority within Cambo- Indigenous Peoples from the region, and local dia; the Lower Khmer, who were those ethnic NGOs including the Non-Timber Forest Prod- Khmers residing in the delta on lands ucts Project, an early and influential NGO that

© 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 287 J. Padwe pioneered the advocacy of Indigenous Peoples’ Asian controversies issues in Cambodia. During preparatory discus- The newly created term for ‘Indigenous Peoples’, sions for the workshop, ‘it was agreed that the chun chiet daeum pheak tech, contains within appropriate term for indigenous peoples in it the notion that Indigenous Peoples are the Khmer language to be used for the title of the ‘original’ inhabitants of a particular place. The workshop should be chun chiet daoem pheak use of daeum serves to distinguish between tech. Adding the word daoem, or “from the minorities considered Indigenous, that is, the origin”, to chun chiet pheak tech (ethnic highland people, and minorities considered minorities) created the term “original ethnic non-Indigenous, such as Cambodia’s popula- minorities”, which is commonly transliterated tions of Vietnamese, Thai and Chinese who into English as ‘indigenous peoples’ (Baird, are considered ‘foreign residents’, and other 2011a: 166). minorities such as the Cham, who are neither The use of the word daeum, meaning ‘origin’ foreign nor Indigenous (Ehrentraut, 2004: 53). and ‘original’, as the turning point for the new The insertion of daeum was not meant to estab- definition of Indigenous, was not without prec- lish that Indigenous Peoples inhabited the edent. In support of its 1991 Operational Direc- territory of present-day Cambodia prior to the tive 4.10 on Indigenous Peoples, for instance, Khmer majority. Indeed, participants of the 1998 the World Bank had published a Khmer lan- workshop at which the new translation for ‘Indig- guage report in which the term ‘Indigenous enous’ was coined also suggested that Cambo- Peoples’ is rendered as chun chiet daeum,or dia’s ethnic majority Khmers be recognised as ‘original ethnicities’, a term that remains in use chun chiet daeum pheak charaon, as an ‘original today (World Bank, 1991). ethnic majority’, to establish this fact (Baird, Following the Land Law discussions, the new 2011a). coinage – which can be conveniently shortened Such debates and qualifications surrounding to chun chiet, the same phrase that is the usual the term daeum in Cambodian ethnic classifi- contracted version of chun chiet pheak tech – cations bring to mind the difficulties that have has been widely adopted and is in common use accompanied efforts to define the term ‘Indig- in Khmer-language popular and political dis- enous’ in the field of international law and in course. The term is used, for instance, in the the international policy arena. While descrip- reports of numerous NGOs, and appears fre- tions of who Indigenous Peoples are have been quently in Khmer-language documents issued incorporated into the policy statements and pro- by the Cambodian government and by regional gramme documents of most multilateral institu- multilateral institutions. The approach of the tions, and are included in relevant policy International Labour Organization’s Cambodia directives of the United Nations, the term itself office is instructive in this regard. In 2005, the resists definition. Faced with the impossibility of organisation established Pro 169, a project to arriving on a definition of the term that would support the rights of Indigenous Peoples in satisfy all interested parties, institutions such accord with the principles established in ILO as the World Bank, the Asian Development 169, the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples’ Con- Bank and the United Nations have refused to vention, a bulwark of international law regard- define the term prescriptively. This approach is ing Indigenous Peoples created in 1989. An reflected, for instance in the language of the unofficial translation of ILO 169 had been World Bank’s Operational Policy 4.10 on Indig- created by the Interministerial Committee on enous Peoples: Highland Peoples’ Development in the late 1990s, but in 2005 the accord was re-translated Because of the varied and changing contexts in and the new term for Indigenous Peoples which Indigenous Peoples live and because derived from the 2001 land law, chun chiet there is no universally accepted definition of daeum pheak tech, was substituted for the pre- ‘Indigenous Peoples,’ this policy does not vious term. One individual who was involved in define the term (World Bank, 2005: Art. 3). translating ILO 169 noted that ‘we would expe- rience an endless discussion for decades if we Similar statements can be found in policies were to stick to clarifying the definition’. addressing the rights of Indigenous Peoples

288 © 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd Indigenous identity in Cambodia issued by many other multilateral institutions. Asian states. Motivated in part by the urgings of Rather than define who Indigenous Peoples the international donors who have played an are, in addition to emphasising Indigenous important role in shaping policy in Cambodia in Peoples’ self-identification as the basis for their recent decades, the government has established inclusion in the category, these institutions have a formal category within the legal system that identified several different characteristics of acknowledges the existence of ‘Indigenous’ Indigeneity – none of them a necessary condi- minorities within the country. Yet the incorpo- tion – including: the existence of distinct lan- ration of the term daeum, or ‘original’, into the guage; the retention of social, cultural and existing term for ethnic minority to distinguish political institutions; attachment to and/or con- between Indigenous and other forms of ethnic tinuing occupation of ancestral lands; and the identity raises questions as well. experience of marginalisation at the hands of the state or within the context of colonialism Origin stories (International Labour Organization, 1989 Art. 1; Asian Development Bank, 1998 Art. 7–11; see In light of the historical difficulty that has char- Sanders, 1999; World Bank, 2005 Art. 4). This acterised efforts to fit the term Indigenous to the refusal, or inability, of multilateral institutions Asian context, it is perhaps surprising that Cam- to define Indigenous Peoples prescriptively bodia’s newly derived definition turns on the emerges in part from Asian states’ unwillingness word daeum, meaning ‘origin’ or ‘original’. to recognise minorities within their borders as Those who developed the phrase chun chiet Indigenous. daeum pheak tech explicitly rejected the notion In a thorough analysis of this so-called ‘Asian that highlanders were any more Indigenous to Controversy’, Benedict Kingsbury (1998: 447) Cambodia than Khmers, an understanding of argues that the notion of ‘ “indigenous majority/minority relations common to settler- peoples”, as the concept has evolved else- state glosses of the term ‘Indigenous’. Nonethe- where, is not well tailored to many Asian situ- less, the term daeum connects to notions about ations’. One of the key incongruities is the the originary nature of highland ethnicities that question of the distinctive experiences of colo- are common in Cambodia and in the region. nialism in different settings worldwide. Whereas Such ideas figure prominently in commonly in European settler states such as the Americas, held understandings of highlanders as the living Australia and New Zealand the term Indigenous ancestors of today’s ethnic-majority state socie- incorporates an understanding of ‘historical ties, as representatives of an earlier phase in continuity with a preinvasion or precolonial cultural evolution, and as repositories of archaic society established on the territory’, Asian states forms of social relations. Readings of highlander have asserted that such a criterion would apply and national history in this vein, which are both equally to ethnic majorities and minorities essentialised and highly ideological, have alike, rendering the term Indigenous meaning- implications for the present-day politics of less in the Asian context (Kingsbury, 1998: 433). Indigeneity in Cambodia. China, for instance, has advanced this argument At issue in these preconceptions of highland assertively in international forums. As Hathaway people as representatives of an earlier stage of (2010: 302) notes, ‘the official stance of Beijing development is a teleology that posits lowland is that all ethnic groups in China, including the societies farther along a trajectory of develop- majority Han, are indigenous; hence, the term ment and advancement than their highland does not apply’. Put another way, the contro- neighbours. It is in opposition to these versy turns on the question of who can claim to civilisational narratives that James Scott (2009: be the ‘original’ inhabitants of an area. 8) argues for a reading of mainland Southeast Understood against the backdrop of the Asia’s highlands as a ‘shatter zone’ of fugitives ‘Asian Controversy’, Cambodia’s efforts in the who have sought to evade the impositions of land law and elsewhere to address the claims of lowland states. He notes that his account of the its chun chiet daeum pheak tech represents a periphery, ‘is sharply at odds with the official more accommodating outlook on the existence story most civilizations tell about themselves. of Indigenous Peoples than is found in other According to that tale, a backward, naïve, and

© 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 289 J. Padwe perhaps barbaric people are gradually incorpo- tinue to be found in mid-century French rated into an advanced, superior, and more scholarship on ethnic classification. In his influ- prosperous society and culture. If, instead, ential Manuel d’ethnographie, for instance, many of these ungoverned barbarians had, at Marcel Mauss asserted that ‘the Moï of Annam one time or another, elected, as a political are archaic and proto-historical’ (Mauss, 1989: choice, to take their distance from the state, a 7, cited in Salemink, 2003: 78). Successive gen- new element of political agency enters the erations of French ethnologists naturalised these picture. Many, perhaps most, inhabitants of the assumptions, and the status of highland people ungoverned margins are not remnants of an as ‘original’ in this sense was preserved in the earlier social formation, left behind, or, as some nomenclature they developed to refer to the lowland folk accounts in Southeast Asia have it, highlanders. Terms such as autocthone and abo- “our living ancestors” ’. rigine served to emphasise the highlanders’ pre- In Scott’s (2009: ix) view, such folk accounts, historical nature and their assumed status as the found throughout the region, comprise a kind of region’s earliest inhabitants. The use of the term cultural-evolutionary fantasy in which high- proto-Indochinois is particularly suggestive: it landers are regarded by lowlanders to embody was proposed by Georges Condominas (1965) ‘what we were like before we discovered wet- ‘to designate the Montagnards as the oldest, if rice cultivation, Buddhism, and civilization’. not the aboriginal population of Indochina’ In Cambodia and Vietnam, understandings (Salemink, 2003: 163). of highland peoples as ‘original’ in this sense Scholarship on highlanders in the post- have complex genealogies, reflecting the colonial states of the former French Indochina recombinative nature of pre-colonial, colonial continued to be influenced by French under- and post-colonial civilisational discourses. Early standings. Writing about the Democratic French scholarly assessments of the region’s Republic of Vietnam, Patricia Pelley (2002: 90) ethnic composition incorporated locally preva- notes that ‘although postcolonial writers made a lent understandings of highlander ‘savagery’ concerted effort to detach ethnographic studies into speculative explanations of the peopling of from their colonialist forebears, the colonial the region, often suggesting that contemporary antecedents quietly reemerged’. Pelley exam- highlanders were the remnants of pre- ines the way scholars there arranged ethnic Indianised, and thus pre-civilised, populations. difference among highland groups along a One example is Eugène Bonhoure’s (1900: civilisational hierarchy in order to incorporate 22–23) raciological account: the highland people into narratives of the devel- opment of Vietnamese nationhood. Within this Populations of Malay origin were undoubtedly discourse, the Muong, for instance, ‘were popu- the first inhabitants [of Indochina]. Coming larly regarded (and are still regarded today) as north along the peninsula of Malacca, even the pre-Sinitic version of the Vieˆ·t’ (Pelley, 2002: arriving by sea, they occupied the shore. Later, 92). driven inward by the invading Mongolian race The case of Cambodia is reflective of the from the north-east, and by the invaders from region as a whole. As was the case elsewhere, the northwest Brahman race, the first occu- views of highland people as representing earlier pants formed the savage tribes which we refer phases in Cambodian history predate colonial to with such diverse names as: Moïs in rule. Like the term chun chiet daeum mentioned Cochinchine, Muongs, Thôs, and Mieus in Tonkin, Bahnars or Bolovens on the plateaus of above, the term Khmers daeum, or ‘original Annam . . . It is without doubt, for example, Khmers’, has served as an identifier for more that the Moïs are of the Malay race, that the than one ethnic minority in Cambodia. In the Khmer Cambodians are of an aryan and brah- , the Khmers daeum manic origin, and that the Laotians are from an described by Marie Alexandrine Martin also use aryan source strongly mixed with the Mongol the term Khmer sot, or ‘pure Khmer’ to refer to race. themselves, as if to indicate that their ethnic difference is traceable to their close connection Assertions that highlanders were the repre- to an originary Khmer essence (Martin, 1997: sentatives of the region’s first inhabitants con- 63). Writing about the Kuy, an ethnic minority of

290 © 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd Indigenous identity in Cambodia north-central Cambodia, Keane (1880: 261) songs and Khmer-language karaoke videos. noted that, ‘the Kuys are regarded by the Essentialised images of highlanders portray Cambojans as representing the primitive Khmer them riding elephants, playing gongs, drinking stock, hence are by them known as the Khmer- rice beer from jars, and wearing characteristic dam, that is, “original Khmers” – the Khmers of woven tunics, dresses and loincloths. Renato the grand epoch in Cambojan history’. Rosaldo (1989) identifies the underlying Revolutionary ideology in Cambodia drew on emotion in such portrayals as ‘imperialist nos- similar sources and produced similar represen- talgia’ – a mourning for what one has destroyed. tations of highlanders as were found in post- In various guises, similar attitudes inflect devel- colonial Vietnam. The correspondence of ideas opment projects and government programmes reflects shared experiences of colonialism as that encourage the ‘selective preservation’ well as the particular histories of Cambodia’s (Salemink, 2003: 276) of highlander culture in communist leaders, who were educated in Cambodia. French schools or indeed studied in France, and An instructive site for the transmission of such who developed Cambodian communism under representations is the Cambodian Cultural the influence and tutelage of Vietnamese- Village, a theme park that opened in Siem Reap dominated Indo-China Communist Party in 2003. Sitting on 250 ha in the country’s (Kiernan, 1985; Heder, 2004). Several authors tourism capital, the Cultural Village is home to a have commented on Khmer Rouge attitudes series of miniaturised representations of iconic towards the highlanders, who were considered Cambodian buildings and monuments, a wax to be untainted by capitalist modernity (i.e. museum illustrating the history of Cambodia Colm, 1996: 6; White, 1996). As David from pre-Angkorean to modern times, and a Chandler (1991: 175) points out, Khmer Rouge series of villages representing the country’s dif- leaders Pol Pot and Ieng Sary ‘claimed . . . to ferent ethnicities, including Chinese, Khmers, have been inspired by the spirit of people who Kola (the Shan, a group of Burmese origin), had no private property, no markets and no Cham, as well as two highland groups, the money. Their way of life and their means of and ‘Phnorng’ (meaning ‘Phnong’ or production corresponded to the primitive com- ‘Bunong’). The park’s interpretive materials are munist phase of social evolution in Marxist written in Khmer, English and Mandarin, but the thinking’. These sympathies notwithstanding, great majority of visitors when I visited in 2007 Khmer Rouge leaders sought to eliminate the were Cambodians, and much of material pre- backwardness they perceived among the high- sented at the park’s exhibits is clearly intended landers through assimilationist policies, enforc- for a national audience. The overarching narra- ing communal living and prohibiting customary tive of this material seeks to demonstrate the religious and cultural practices (Colm, 1996). In development of the Khmer nation as a culturally a 1978 interview, Pol Pot boasted of the integrated and coherent modern nation-state, a regime’s success in modernising the backwards nationalist project it shares in common with people, ‘declaring that while these “national numerous open-air cultural museums that have minorities” were very miserable before, “now been established throughout Southeast Asia one cannot distinguish them from the other (Hitchcock, 1998). people. They wear the same dress and live like In the Cambodian Cultural Village, the high- every one else” ’ (Edwards, 2007: 1). land groups are invariably portrayed as ‘primi- tive’ and pre-modern. Their cultural inferiority is suggested in the grunting barbarity enacted by Cultural preservation ‘Kreung’ hill people in a performance depicting Today, as in the past, assimilationist tendencies a highland marriage ceremony (a Khmer suitor sit side by side with efforts at cultural preserva- is awarded the beautiful highland bride, to the tion, the majority of which must certainly be chagrin of his Cham and Vietnamese rivals), as said to belong to ‘the song and dance variety’ well as in the representational strategies used to (Li, 2004: 313). There is an element of nostalgia depict highland people in wax museum diora- in the representations of highlanders in Cam- mas. In the wax museum, one of the earliest bodian popular culture, in advertisements, historical figures shown is Liu Yi, a queen of the

© 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd 291 J. Padwe ancient kingdom of Funan, who is portrayed structures of meaning. To understand the ability, against a natural setting, bare-breasted in an or inability, of Indigenous Peoples’ advocates to animal skin. Subsequent exhibits portray gain traction for their causes thus requires, Bunong and Kreung families, also in naturalistic among other things, attention to the sources of settings, near traditional houses where mounted this meaning, and suggests that the creation of a taxidermy specimens – a muntjac, a spectacle new category of ‘Indigenous’ identity and the bear – pose as if they were their domesticated elaboration of Indigenous rights in Cambodia pets. Another diorama shows Jayavarman VII in must be seen as part of a longer history of pro- an authoritative stance, while myriad troops cesses of knowledge formation and ethnic clas- march in formation behind him. Additional dio- sification in Cambodia and in the region. ramas portray heroic Cambodian responses to There are many parallels between the prac- French colonialism, depict urban life at mid- tices of naming and containing highlanders that century, and tell the story of the modernisation occurred in Cambodia and those that were of the country under the present regime, even as pursued in neighbouring countries. Often, these they gloss over the details of recent civil and practices emerged in response to the same international conflict. global politics and proceeded according to the The transition from the caveman-esque por- same logics – logics of colonial state formation, trayal of Liu Yi, through the idyllic natural for instance, or of decolonisation. Thus, just as scenes of the highland people and on to Prince Sihanouk’s nationalist projects led to the Jayavarman’s embodiment of masculine com- construction of the somewhat slippery catego- mand, enact evolutionist readings of highland- ries of Upper, Middle and Lower Khmer, so too ers’ place in history. In doing so, they also evoke neighbouring Laos produced a system of ‘trino- the explanatory paradigms that contributed to mial classification’ that divided the the ways that highlanders are understood today. into three major groups, the (lowland One can imagine, for instance, that the transi- Lao), Lao Thoeng (the mid-slope Lao) and Lao tion from matriarchy to patriarchy that plays out Sung, or highland Lao (Kossikov, 2000: 231). In in the dioramas can trace its intellectual gene- a similar vein, the Thai terminology for ‘ethnic alogy from Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient minority’ follows a similar logic to that used in Society, through to Engels’ Origin and Evolution Cambodia. As Pinkaew Laungaramsri explains, of the Family, to Stalin’s Dictionary of Dialecti- ‘the term chon klum noi was used by the Thai cal Materialism and from there to the work of government during the Cold War period of the revolutionary-era students and post-colonial mid-twentieth century to refer to ethnic groups ethnologists (Pelley, 2002: 48, 51). of races (chua chat), languages, religions, customs, traditions and beliefs that are distinc- tive from those of “the majority” of the country’. Conclusion As in Cambodia, in Thailand the creation of a At the Cambodian Cultural Village, as else- term for Indigenous or native people is accom- where, a reading of highlander identity as proto- plished through the use of the word ‘origin’, as historical, and the incorporation of highlanders in the term khon dung doem. But unlike in into specific slots in the developmental narra- Cambodia, Vietnam and China, where official tive of modern Cambodian nationhood, reflect approaches to the ‘Asian controversy’ construct the kinds of sedimented practices and particu- national majorities and minorities as equally larised landscapes of meaning that help to ‘Indigenous’, in Thailand notions of Indigeneity shape popular understandings about who ‘are absent from the state’s perception of the ‘Indigenous Peoples’ are. The crafting of a new non-Thai minorities, despite the fact that many vocabulary of Indigenous belonging, and of them are original inhabitants of what is today ongoing efforts to adapt the new term ‘Indig- Thailand’ (Laungaramsri, 2003: 162). enous’ and to make it meaningful within the To the extent that the new construct of Indig- Cambodian context can be seen in the way enous identity is becoming salient in Cambo- Indigenous Peoples are represented in speeches dian politics, it is apprehended and made by the Prime Minister and by Cambodian par- meaningful in Cambodia through reference to liamentarians. Such efforts build on existing cultural schema that predate its arrival. This

292 © 2013 Victoria University of Wellington and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd Indigenous identity in Cambodia paper has sought to identify the existence of 2 Estimating the population of highland people in Cam- cultural and historical tendencies in Khmer bodia is likewise extremely complicated (Backstrom et al., 2006: 95–98). understandings of highlanders that inform the creation of the new category of ‘Indigenous Peoples’ in Cambodia. Among these, two that stand out are the perception of highlanders as References ‘national minorities’, a conception that emerged ADB (Asian Development Bank) (1998) Policy on indig- during the socialist-influenced processes of enous peoples. Manila, Philippines: Asian Develop- decolonisation at mid-century, and the belief ment Bank. that highlanders represent ‘living ancestors’ of Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined communities: Reflections on modern Khmers. These understandings are the origin and spread of nationalism, Revised edn, evident in the terms that have been applied to London: Verso. Backstrom, M., J. Ironside, G. Paterson, J. Padwe and I.G. highlanders in Khmer, terms ranging from Baird (2006) Indigenous traditional legal systems and ‘savage’ and ‘barbarian’ to ‘national minority’, conflict resolution in Ratanakiri and Mondulkiri Prov- ‘upper Khmer’ and, most recently, the term inces, Cambodia. Phnom Penh: United Nations Devel- ‘original national minority’ that is used to trans- opment Programme. late the internationally circulating category of Baird, I.G. (2011a) The construction of ‘indigenous peoples’ in Cambodia, in L. Yew (ed.), Alterities in Asia: Reflec- ‘Indigenous Peoples’. They are implicated in the tions on identity and regionalism, pp. 155–176. so-called ‘Asian controversy’, according to London: Routledge. which Asian states differ significantly from the Baird, I.G. (2011b) Turning land into capital, turning people settler-states of the Americas, Australia, New into labor: Primitive accumulation and the arrival Zealand and elsewhere, where the distinction of large-scale economic land concessions in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, New Proposals: between ‘Indigenous’ and non-Indigenous Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry 5(1): people is defined with relation to histories of 10–26. colonialism. And they can be seen operating in Baird, I.G. and P. Dearden (2003) Biodiversity conservation various projects of (selective) cultural preserva- and resource tenure regimes: A case study from North- tion, where the ethnic difference of highlanders east Cambodia, Environmental Management 32(5): 541–550. is inscribed into narrations of the national order Baudesson, C. (1906) Deux Ans Chez Les Moïs, Tour Du of things; according to these narrations, high- Monde 12: 337–384. lander primitivity provides some of the material Bernard, N. (1907) Les populations indigènes du Laos et du from which the story of the advancement of the Cambodge, in E. Chauffard, N. Bernard, G. Gaillard Khmer nation can be crafted. and E. Mathieu (eds), Les Populations Indigènes du Cambodge et du Laos, pp. 1–6. Paris: V. Giard & E. It is important to acknowledge that not all Brière. Cambodians understand highlanders to repre- Bo, D. [J. Dournes]. 1950. Les Populations Montagnardes sent the living ancestors of modern Khmers, nor Du Sud-Indochinois. Numéro Spécial De France-Asie. do they all hold romantic notions that highland Lyon: France. people should ‘preserve their culture’ by retain- Bonhoure, E. (1900) L’Indo-Chine. Paris: A. Challamel. Bourdier, F. (1996) Relations interethniques et spécificité ing traditional styles of dress and housing. des populations indigenes du Cambodge. Interdiscipli- Rather, these and other understandings repre- nary research on ethnic groups in Cambodia: Final sent some of the source material from which the draft reports, pp. 375–433. Phnom Penh: Center for new category of Indigenous identity is being Advanced Study. constructed in Cambodia. The potentials of this Chandler, D.P. (1991) The tragedy of Cambodian history: Politics, war and revolution since 1945. New Haven, new project, liberatory or otherwise, will Connecticut and London: Press. depend in part on the ways that this material is Chauffard, E. (1907) Les Populations Indigènes Du engaged, by whom, and to what ends. Cambodge Et Du Laos, in E. Chauffard, N. Bernard, G. Gaillard and E. Mathieu (eds), Les Populations Indigènes Du Cambodge Et Du Laos, pp. 1–6. Études Notes De Sociologie Coloniale. Paris: V. Giard & E. Brière. Colm, S. (1996) The Highland minorities and the Khmer 1 Also, the population figures for ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Rouge in Northeastern Cambodia 1968–1979. Phnom presented here were compiled by the International Penh: Documentation Center of Cambodia. Working Group on Indigenous Affairs, an organisation Condominas, G. (1965) L’Exotique Est Quotidien. Terre with a fair amount of skin in the game. Humaine. Paris: Plon.

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