While only a small number of communities (villages) in Cambodia have so far been granted communal land titles, many are expected to receive them in the near future (Baird 2013). Still, the process has been frustratingly slow, and heavily dependent on foreign donor support to pay for the implementation of the legal process. Thus, one could say that the biggest impact of the introduction of communal land titling for indigenous peoples in Cambodia has not been any great practical gains in the ensuring of land security, but rather the adoption of the concept of indigenous peoples. This concept has been ontologically significant by creating a legally recognized boundary between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, a designation with the potential to benefit the population of Cambodia believed to be indigenous, but also to create divisions and incite conflict between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, through the granting of different legal rights (see Baird 2016). Moreover, in the minds of many Khmers, the concept of indigenous peoples serves to reify them as “primitive relics of the past,” who due to racialized differences require particular attention and support from the majority Khmer population. Illustrative of this sort of Khmer mindset, Prime Minister Hun Sen stated that those designated as indigenous peoples would lose their “indigenous” status once they had become “developed” up to the level of the majority Khmer population (see Baird 2011b). In another more recent case in 2012, the prime minister visited the indigenous peoples’-dominated northeastern province of Ratanakiri to hand out land titles. During his visit, four indigenous ethnic Jarai people from the Bokeo District tried to present him with a petition related to a land dispute they were having with an outside Cambodian company, on which he commented: “I was so angry. Do you want to have development or do you want to have the indigenous people collecting stuff in the forest?” (Ratha 2012). He later contradictorily qualified that he would protect the land and natural resources of indigenous peoples (Ratha 2012). These comments indicate that for Prime Minister Hun Sen (and presumably many other Khmers), the concept of indigeneity is fundamentally linked to being primitive and undeveloped, and remains contested and confusing to most. Kuper (2003), in a similar vein, criticized the use of the concept of indigeneity in North America because it supported a similar idea of “the return of the native.”
The 2002 Forestry Law in Cambodia also provides particular rights to indigenous peoples, stating in Article 15 that anyone with a logging concession must ensure “that the operation does not interfere with … [c]ustomary user rights taking place on land property of indigenous community [sic] that is registered with the state consistent with the Land law.” In addition, Article 37 of the same law stipulates that “local communities that traditionally practice shifting cultivation may conduct such practices on land property of indigenous community [sic] which registered with the state.” The demonstrated impact of this law so far has, however, been less than hoped for by indigenous peoples and their supporters.
In conclusion, it is evident that although the current circumstances of indigenous peoples in Cambodia remain far from ideal, at the same time advances in the legal recognition and support for the rights of indigenous peoples to access land and natural areas have surpassed those in Thailand and Laos, the other two countries that are the focus of this chapter. I now turn my attention to those countries, beginning with Thailand.
Thailand
Approximately 2.3 percent of Thailand’s population consists of ethnic minorities or indigenous peoples (Clarke 2001). Unlike in Cambodia, however, the concept of “indigenous peoples” (chon phao pheun muang in Thai) has not yet been legally recognized, and those considered to be indigenous are frequently treated by Thai officials and society as inferior or even as if they were not Thai citizens (Clarke 2001; Kampe 1997; Keyes 2002; Morton and Baird forthcoming). Illustrative of the official position, the government of Thailand informed the United Nations in 1992 that hill tribes in Thailand are “ethnic groups” but “are not considered to be minorities nor indigenous peoples but as Thais who are able to enjoy fundamental rights … as any other Thai citizen” (Kingsbury 1999: 357; emphasis in original). They also reiterated this claim in the early 2000s (Morton and Baird forthcoming). Thailand is unique to mainland Southeast Asia in that large numbers of ethnic minorities living in upland areas in northern Thailand have either only recently been granted citizenship, or are still awaiting citizenship, even in cases where they were born on Thai soil (Kampe 1997; Keyes 2002; Leepreecha, McCaskill, and Buadaeng 2008; Morton and Baird forthcoming), although recently there have been some improvements. The Thai government has tended to distinguish upland peoples both discursively and legally as “non-Thai”; that is, they are typically referred to racially as “chao khao” or “hill tribes,” without explicitly linking them to the Thai nation (Keyes 2002), something that separates Thai policy from that of many other Asian countries since the end of the European colonial era (Baird 2011b, 2015; LFNC 2005). Although more recently they have been referred to as “chao thai phu khao” or “mountain Thais,” a policy to encourage minorities to feel “Thai” has been relatively slow to develop, this term is rarely used in common discussion. Still, the indigenous peoples’ movement in the country has grown significantly over the last couple of decades (Leepreecha, McCaskill, and Buadaeng 2008; Morton and Baird forthcoming), and there is now a strong network of indigenous advocacy organizations, academics, and individuals supporting this movement. This network is concentrated in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai and surrounding areas. While many in this network recognize peoples to be “chon phao pheun muang” (indigenous peoples), there has been considerable debate regarding whether this term is appropriate, or whether another relatively recently coined Thai term, “chattiphan,” which refers to different ethnic groups (Keyes 2002), is preferable (Baird et al. 2017; Morton and Baird forthcoming). To elaborate on this debate would, however, exceed the scope of this chapter.
While advocacy efforts by NGOs in the mid to late 1990s, related to establishing community forestry legislation, did not explicitly draw on the concept of indigeneity, land and forest rights have nonetheless been a key priority for the indigenous movement in Thailand since its emergence in the early 1990s (Morton and Baird forthcoming. For example, Prasert Trakansuphakon (1996: 176) wrote: “Tribal/indigenous organizations were established in 1993 as a result of a number of traditional villages realizing the need to organize themselves in response to the pressures of government [agriculture and forestry] policy and its relocation plans.” Chayan Vaddhanaputhi (1996: 83) also reported on villager demonstrations in northern Thailand in 1995:
In May 1995, there was a large demonstration by ethnic minorities, mostly Karen, protesting against the Royal Forest Department’s policy of relocation and implementation of watershed conservation programmes which will not allow people to continue to live there. The hill-tribe peoples’ demonstration is the first such event in modern Thai history and indicates the frustration of the minority peoples who have not been treated justly. This clearly reflects the problematic of the relationship between the state and the ethnic minorities.
The indigenous peoples’ movement maintains a vested interest in linking indigeneity with land and natural resource management issues, in cases where they affect community livelihoods. In fact, some involved in the movement have advocated using the term chon phao pheun muang instead of chattiphan because they believe that indigenous peoples have particular problems distinct from those of other ethnic minority groups, such as securing full legal citizenship and land rights, and that the framework of indigeneity is the most appropriate for addressing these problems (Morton and Baird forthcoming). Indeed, the natural resource management issues linked to particular government policies and practices are key arguments for many activists in justifying further advocacy of indigenous rights in Thailand.
In the early 1990s, indigenous NGOs, including the Thai NGO IMPECT and the regional NGO based in Thailand, the Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), began to work closely with international NGOs from Europe and North America to support efforts to prevent deforestation and degradation of tropical and subtropical forests in Southeast Asia. These indigenous NGOs partnered with such international groups as the Forest Peoples Programme (FPP), the International Alliance of Indigenous and Tribal Peoples