Indigenous Peoples in Laos
Ethnic diversity
Laos has the most ethnically diverse population of mainland Southeast Asia. There are at least 240 different ethnic groups, classified into four different language groups: Lao Tai, Mon-Khmer, Chinese-Tibetan and Hmong-Mien. Most ethnic minorities live in the rugged mountains that cover around 79 percent of the country. The ethnic Lao dominate the country both politically and economically. They and other Tai-Kadai-speaking smaller ethnic groups live mostly in the plains.
In 2005, the National Assembly declined to approve a new list of ethnic group names proposed by the Central Lao Front for National Construction. This was after the Central Party Politburo (leadership committee within the Central Party) had sanctioned the list in principle in late 2000. In 2005, the Lao Front decided to counter their setback in the National Assembly by successfully reaffirming the list's validity with the Politburo. The Lao government thus adopted the new list for classifying people by ethnicity during the 2005 National Census. The list presently includes 49 ethnic groups and a large number of sub-groups, but the Lao Front is well aware that this figure is likely to change in the future. There is still not enough known about the diverse peoples of the country.
Livelihood
As diverse as Laos' indigenous peoples are in cultural and linguistic terms, as diverse are their adaptive response to the natural and social environment in which they live. The livelihood systems found range from hunting and gathering (such as the Mlabri in North-western, the Atel, Thémarou, or Mlengbrou in Central-eastern Laos) to various forms of swidden farming in the uplands (generally classified into pioneer swidden like that of the Hmong and the rotational swidden farming of most members the Mon-Khmer and Tibeto-Burman ethno-linguistic families) and wet-rice farming in the plains (mostly by members of the Tai-Kadai ethno-linguistic family). Often, one finds a combination of these basic patterns, supplemented by minor cash crop production, the collection of non-timber forest products for trade, fishing, animal husbandry, etc.
Most of the people in Laos still live in rural areas and depend to varying degrees on forest products, serving a wide range of subsistence needs and opportunities for income generation. Laos has a low population density compared to other countries in Asia, with about 20 inhabitants per sq km, and the country still has extensive natural forests which allow people to live a life in what has been called "benevolent poverty": a subsistence economy with little cash flow but providing the people with ample basic necessities.
This simply means that there is still relatively limited resource scarcity compared to other countries in the region. However, in some areas, like in the North, critical levels of resource degradation have been reached. At 2.4%, Laos' population growth rate is among the highest in Asia. Large-scale commercial resource exploitation (logging, plantations, dams, mining, etc.) is diminishing the resource base of the rural people, and especially the forest dependent indigenous peoples. This makes the indigenous peoples less resilient than before to the impact of extreme weather conditions such as droughts.
Self-organising
Official indigenous peoples' self-organising is almost non-existent outside of the government framework, since contact with and understanding of the outside world is often very limited. Furthermore, the Lao government did not allow the establishment of local Non-Profit making Organisations (NPOs) until 2004, so all are still in the very early stages of development and none of them are devoted specifically to ethnic issues. There are, however, some indigenous peoples involved in these groups. Although there is potential for indigenous people to organise more within this structure in the future, so far, there are only a handful of registered NPOs in Laos, and all are based in the capital city of Vientiane. |
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 People: Nya Heun
Photographer: Christian Erni
 People: Mien
Photographer: Christian Erni
 People: Brao
Photographer: Christian Erni
 People: Brao
Photographer: Christian Erni |
