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Paper short abstract:

This paper weaves histories of the Akha and Karen in highland Thailand, and the Ata and Bukidnon in Central Philippines. It asks how indigeneity has been defined and used by governments as tools of cooptation, while probing a just transition for ethnic groups in Maritime and Mainland Southeast Asia.

Paper long abstract:

Discourse surrounding a just transition from actively harmful and unsustainable global economic systems have included conversations initiated by indigenous communities primarily in the Global North (Climate Justice Alliance), with little from those of the Global South.

This paper follows the Akha and Karen through coffee in Northern Thailand, tracing the emergence of coffee cultivation through Christian missionaries and the monarchy. In the Philippines, focus is placed on land grabbing and enclosure in Ata and Bukidnon territories in the Central Philippine island of Negros based on fieldwork conducted in 2017 to 2019.

With coffee as a focal crop, the Karen and Akha story traces early misunderstandings of Karen and Akha planting approaches to scholarly essentialisations of ethnic identity. Contemporary rituals and intentional rites celebrated by an Akha network in Thailand, settled and increasingly supported by state infrastructure, suggest the acquisition of secure livelihoods and wealth is not mutually exclusive with cultural renewal and intentional choice. As the Akha have had to dwell in constant movement from nomadic journeys from Yunnan, China, to Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, contemporary urban mobility is intersecting with Akha historical experience.

The Philippine conversation, in contrast, revolves around questions of power and disenfranchisement in the process of identifying the Ata and the Bukidnon as indigenous. Fieldwork interviews reveal telling details concerning the imposition of identities and political structures on both these groups, and how these impositions have facilitated both the delineation of Ata and Bukidnon territories, as well as these communities’ alienation therefrom.