New lease of life for endangered people
John McBeth, Straits Times 13 Apr 09;
IMAGINE a tribe of 400 people which has lived for most of its existence out of touch with civilisation in the jungles of Laos, moving on whenever the leaves of their crude shelters turn yellow.
Imagine taking two of their women, traditional hunter-gatherers who have never been on a plane before, let alone seen an ocean, on a six-week tour of the United States.
Then guess what the two wide-eyed weavers thought was the coolest thing of all: Whale watching off the coast of Maine!
But as intriguing as it was to observe their reactions, Refugees International president emeritus Lionel Rosenblatt had a much more serious purpose for organising last year's journey of discovery.
He is seeking to publicise the plight of the Mlabri, or People of the Yellow Leaves, one of the world's smallest group of endangered people whose origins continue to baffle anthropologists. He also wants to find a market for the unusual, naturally-coloured bags the women weave, using a jungle vine they turn into fibre by rubbing it vigorously against their legs.
Smithsonian experts may have gone wild over the quality of the weaving, done on a small hand loom, but selling the bags only in museum shops is not going to provide the tribe with a steady income.
Worldwide, there are about 5,000 different ethnic groups, comprising about 500 million people, which are considered to be in danger of extinction.
'We seem to be more interested in endangered species than endangered people,' says Mr Rosenblatt, who, as a Bangkok-based US State Department official, played a major role in resettling tens of thousands of Indochinese refugees.
Until 20 years ago, the Mlabri wore only a loincloth, sometimes made of bark. But now they wear old clothes and live in more substantial huts than the temporary, ground level shelters that gave them their English name.
They speak what linguists classify as a Khmuic dialect, a sub-group of Austro- Asiatic languages, with their lilting, high-pitched voices falling off on the last syllable of each sentence.
'When they speak it sounds like falling water,' says Mr Rosenblatt, who works with a small privately-funded project called Yellow Re-Leaf. 'As soon as you hear it, you know it is something unique.'
Anthropologists argue over the Mlabri's origins. A 2005 article in PloS Biology says genetic and linguistic evidence indicates they were 'founded' between 500 and 1,000 years ago by a single maternal lineage and one to four paternal lineages.
It is believed that with too few people to engage in standard farming, the tiny group turned to traditional hunting and gathering; only, in the case of the Mlabri, they did more gathering than hunting. Their practice of sleeping in small indentations on generally sloping ground appears designed for a quick escape in the face of danger.
Although they were discovered by a German explorer in the 1920s, I only heard of the mysterious People of the Yellow Leaves 35 years ago while on a trip to the northern Thai border province of Nan.
In those days, they were known only to local officials, traders along the ill-defined Lao-Thai border and the Hmong tribal villagers who sometimes employed them as menial workers, clearing hillsides for upland rice and other crops.
The Thais called them 'phi' - or ghosts - because of their nomadic life, mostly spent in the jungles of Sayaboury, adjoining Nan. But the Vietnam War and encroaching development was to change their lives forever.
About 200 of them were subsequently relocated to Nan's neighbouring Phrae province, where they have been making modern hammocks for a privately-run enterprise which markets them overseas.
The rest of the main body is crowded into a resettlement area in Nan, about five days' walk away, while four other families are still living in virtual isolation just across the border in Sayaboury.
The Thais have never been good at dealing with their ethnic minorities. Mr Rosenblatt, a life-long campaigner for the disadvantaged, had to overcome strong resistance from the Nan provincial governor to bring the two women to the US. But the Mlabri are fortunate to have a powerful champion in Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, King Bumibhol Adulyadej's popular eldest daughter, who takes a personal interest in the welfare of the country's marginalised hill tribes.
As a result of her efforts, they may soon all be brought together again - this time on National Forest Service land in northern Nan, where they can send their children to school but still control their exposure to the outside world.
Says Mr Rosenblatt: 'All they want to do is love each other and stay together for the rest of their lives.' These days, that is about as much as any endangered people can hope for.
