Written by Al Lim
Ants coming out of their hiding places is a surefire way of an early disaster warning system. It’s also an undeniably local concept, from which many “locals” take reference. I can barely consider myself a local, being half-Singaporean and half-Thai. Perhaps, I am some flavor of local and global, which brings me to one of the questions I approached this flood lab with: what ways can the global and local intermingle to address the issues of flooding in Chiang Mai? To get at this question, it was imperative for me to hear firsthand from “locals.” I discovered along this process how the idea of being local (northern Thai or khon mueng) has been contested in the context of flooding, deriving varied ways of anticipating, conceptualizing and responding to floods from my discussion with Karen and Hmong representatives. The Karen and Hmong narratives disturb any categorical understanding of the local, upsetting singular, mainstream discussions of flooding in terms of causality and response. The Karen and Hmong are ethnic minorities in Chiang Mai, living together with the khon mueng. Here, I focus on the former two, often under- or misrepresented in many mainstream narratives. Participants of the flood lab talked to Hmong representative Loong Phumeesaelee and Karen representative Loong Sit for an hour at the ISDSI campus through a focus group discussion centered on flooding. I discovered that there is no way to reduce flooding to a singular experience or framework; it has impacted people’s everyday lives and livelihoods in ways that continue affecting them until today.
As mentioned above, ants are one way of the locals figuring out if there will be an oncoming storm or flood for the Karen and khon mueng. Changes in animals and tree behavioral patterns are triggers to anticipate oncoming disasters. For the Hmong, dogs’ behavior of running back and forth is another way to predict an oncoming disaster. If they encounter this, they would tell their children to run and not think too much. For the Karen, the idea of flooding in their Doi Inthanon village is absurd as their elevation is so high that floods would not occur there. Nevertheless, they pay close attention to changes in tree or animal behavior to anticipate disaster. Changes in the fig tree (ต้นมะเดื่อ) is also another gauge for changes in rain and temperature. Each of these have different temporal relationships with the disaster itself, but needless to say, they are ingrained in the way both Hmong and Karen people anticipate disasters. That being said, are there ways to relate these modes of “ethnoscientific” practices with more “technoscientific” approaches?
My first discussion with Loong Sit about the Karen’s response to flooding included his explanation of the need for exchange, empathy and understanding for his people. He claims that the Karen have been blamed for Chiang Mai city’s flooding by the media, where this characterization was not entirely accurate. There seemed to be an implicit understanding of the role of corporations in deforestation being covered up by the media. Instead of pointing fingers at the big companies causing deforestation that then contributed to landslides and other natural disasters, the Karen were blamed because they were the labor for these projects. The blame was then shifted to contemporary corporations, as well as a historical trajectory of colonization and rotation farming since the British and French influence in the region. While the Karen do not experience floods firsthand, they feel victimized by the media in being blamed for the floods. The victim blaming contributes to the cultural marginalization that the Karen face, which then serves to invalidate their cultural practices.
For the Hmong, they have a very different conceptualization and response to floods. Loong Phumeesaelee talked about two causal factors for floods being “nature” and spiritual retribution. The former refers to a more scientific lens of heavy rainfall being the “way nature works,” which might then cause the river to overflow and flooding to occur. The latter stems from a spiritual source, such as an unhappy deity. Loong Phumeesaelee then described the recourse. He said that if there was no time, one would immediately pray to the relevant deity to please tell the disaster to go elsewhere. For example, if it was a flood, he would ask Naga (พญานาค) to help. If he had time to prepare, he would prepare four candles and nine incense sticks as part of the ritualistic request, which has worked well for the village. He also mentioned that more that join this prayer in the village, the better. This communal belief of the Hmong also has repercussions if the wrong deity is entreated. If one asks the wind god what one should have asked the sky god, there would be severe consequences. Therefore, the spiritual source of the flood and the mode of recourse as a prayer to the relevant deity differs significantly from the Karen or khon mueng’s understanding.
Our discussion wrapped up by talking about distinct aspects of both Hmong and Karen cultures. Loong Phumeesaelee was adamant that they had experienced severe injustice in previous decades with education, where the Hmong would have to change their last name to even be allowed to enroll in schools. Loong Sit drew concentric circles to describe Karen metaphysics from the community to the universal god of nature (Zua). He also mentioned his gratitude to King Rama IX who helped rebuild the forest. Each of the stories of how these ethnic minorities are avenues to further explore how each of these cultures address the issue of floods and natural disasters through their own early warning systems, as well as notions of flood causes and appropriate responses. They want to be understood. Approaches that consider their practices as lesser stand to prevent an empathic relationship, which then enables more grounded collaborative interventions to improve flood prevention. Knowledge enmeshed with careful observations of the changes in animal behavior and plants can not only be used to enhance the capacities of “local” disaster prevention across ethnic lines, but also facilitate understanding and disrupt the cycle of blaming minorities. Given the urgency of Climate Change (CC), the divisive characteristics of global and local thus need to be transcended to enable discussion and increased understanding across ethnic lines. For instance, I use my understanding of the “local” language and context to make a case for the validity of the Karen and Hmong cultural practices in a “global” context of an international field lab by writing this article. Building on this, how do our own local/global elements factor into our understanding of disaster and localities, and what can we do to collaboratively tackle disaster situations and CC.
