Thailand Compiled Genealogies

Thailand Ethnic Groups
Seven major hill tribes in Northern Thailand: Each has a distinct language and culture Ancestral origins: Burma, Laos, and ultimately, China Some preserve an oral genealogy tradition
 * Karen, Akha, Lahu, Hmong, Mien, Lisu, and Palaung

Other ethnic groups:
 * Thai, Malay, Khmer

Karen/Kariang People
The Karen/Kariang people are one of the largest hill tribes in Southeast Asia. Oral history project at Chiang Mai University
 * Southern and Southeastern Burma (7 M)
 * Northern Thailand (400 K), by far the largest hill tribe
 * United States (65,000), diaspora began in 2000
 * Heterogeneous ethnicities
 * Center for Ethnic Studies and Development
 * Director: Chayan Vaddhanaphuti
 * Assistant: Malee Sitthikrienkrai

The project ‘Living with and in the Forest in Northern Thailand’ of the Center for Ethnic Studies and Development (CESD), Chiang Mai University, Thailand, aims to enable the Karen youth of Huay Hin Lad Nai to study their own community history…. The youth group has started to conduct in-depth interviews with community elders, particularly on the historical background of the community, family and kinship structures…. Supported by academics from CMU, they transcribed, edited and discussed the recorded material. In collaboration with visiting international students, they further recorded biographies of selected villagers and collected them in a booklet. First analyses of the collected data centered around community transformations and mobility patterns over the last one hundred years. Based on this information, a detailed kinship map and digitalized timeline of the community were produced.


 * KAREN COMMUNITY ORAL HISTORY PROJECT: by the Minnesota Historical Society

Akha People
450,000 people, one of the largest hill tribes. They live in Southern China (Yunnan Province), Eastern Burma (Shan State), Northern Laos, Northern Thailand. They have a heavy emphasis on oral genealogy.
 * Ceremonial recitation of patrilineal genealogy
 * Committed to memory and taught parent to child
 * Back over 50 generations to Sm Mo O, the first Akha
 * All Akha males expected to recite their lineage
 * Recounting of lineage avoids incest (6 generations)
 * Ties of patrilineal kinship and marriage alliance bind the Akha within and between communities