GEOGRAPHY: Due to its unique geographical placement, North Eastern Cambodia borders three countries, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, making it an ideal melting pot of different tribes and ethnicities. The hill tribes live in remote highland areas in the plateaus and mountainous areas on the edges of Cambodia. Of course country borders are mere imaginary political boundaries which tribes people have no regard for and often settlements can span both Cambodia and into their neighbouring countries. Their remoteness make it difficult to control and so the tribespeople come and go as they please. For example, during the Khmer Rouge, many tribal people escaped the war and horrors of Cambodia by slipping over the border into neighbouring countries where they lived with fellow tribespeople. When conditions were better in Cambodia, they just wandered back across the border.
BACKGROUND: The minority hill tribes of North Eastern Cambodia were known as phnong or samre, which mean “savages” by the normal khmer people or lowland cambodians and viewed them as inferior, uneducated 'country bumpkins', with their savage blood sacrifices and strange customs. They are now known as Khmer Loeu which literally means "Highland Khmer” and is the term coined for the minority tribes by the government to sound less derogatory, more acceptable and to eventually assimilated them into Cambodia as a whole. During the 1960, the government brought in the army to try and teach them Khmer language and culture which many tribes people resented. Again, recently, the government have renewed their efforts, claiming that tribal languages and customs will continue to be respected but many tribes fear that within a few years, their cultures will have disappeared along with their environment. Many are gradually being incorporated into lowland Cambodian life, adopting Khmer customs, clothing, and practices. Many of the youth are now being taught the Khmer language and are exploited on Cambodian farms.
TRIBES: There are thirteen distinct minority groups. Most come from a very different cultural background than lowland Cambodians. They have different language, customs, survival strategies, religion, and appearance. The main tribes we can visits are the Kavet, Kreung, Jarai, Kachock, Brau, Lao, Tampouen and Chinese.
The Khmer Loeu live in widely scattered villages near their fields. When they abandon their fields to seek new ones, they also abandon their village sites. Sometimes they return a generation or two later when the fields have regained their fertility.
The hill people of Cambodia are either sedentary (staying in one place) or nomadic (migratory). Sedentary groups, which have larger populations, primarily cultivate rice in flooded fields known as paddies. Some are engaged in growing industrial crops.
Nomadic groups are farmers who use slash-and-burn agriculture. Land is cleared for agriculture by cutting down and burning the trees. Then the land is cultivated for several years, and finally abandoned to allow the forest to grow back. After a few decades, the original plot of soil has regained its nutrients and can again support crops.
In addition to growing crops, hill men also raise some domestic animals, including pigs, poultry, and buffalo. Some also raise ducks and geese. Men hunt game and birds in the surrounding forests, and they fish as well. Women do most of the vegetable and herb gathering.
This lifestyle is now threatened as 'abandoned' land which is actually fallow land left to recover, is taken from them by the government as it is wrongly identified as excess land that the tribes to not require. Again, natural forest where they hunt and forage are also begin destroyed and exploited.
HOUSING: Most hill people live much as their ancestors did, without the electricity, running water, and appliances available to many Cambodians who live in the central plains. Traditionally, houses were build from bamboo and thatched grass roof, now they are using wood planks and even tiled roof as they come into contact with Khmers. Each tribal group will have their own style of village, for example the Kavet tribe will have a central communal meeting house, along with the mill and water well forming the centre of their village with personal dwellings surrounding it in a square structure. The Kreung have a main familial dwelling, with small ‘love’ huts to the side, on stilts for their kids as they become of age. The height of the stilts and shape of the roof signifies the sex of the child.
Houses vary in size from huge dwellings in which many families live, to small, single-family structures. Multifamily houses generally are divided into sections, one per family. Each family also keeps its own hearth for cooking food. Houses may be built close to the ground or high on stilts.
FAMILY: The family is utmost important in hill tribes people, they tend to be large as they rely on their children to assist with chores, farming and livelihoods. The women have the primary responsibility for domestic chores, child care, carrying water, and looking after the domestic animals. They also gather food and weave. In agricultural villages, they are also involved in some rice cultivation chores. Men do the hunting and the heavy agricultural tasks. They also make and repair tools and build and repair houses and most ‘importantly’, the men are responsible in making the alcoholic beverages!
The infants and small children are greatly desired and are treated with great indulgence. Seldom scolded or punished, they are carried constantly by parents, siblings, or extended family members until around age three or four. By the time girls are five or six years of age, they are assisting their mother in the home and with caring for younger siblings. By that age, boys are helping with garden duties and caring for the family's livestock. By the age of eight or nine, both boys and girls help in the fields. Many youth marry while they are still teenagers. By the time most hill tribespeople have reached their early teens, they are fully socialized into adult life. The lives of adult hill people center on family, making a living, and dealing with the spirits or gods who rule the earth.
CLOTHING: Different hill tribes are identified by their different traditional clothing, patterns, colour and jewelry which are full of meaning and significance. For example different head gear within a tribe for women can signify whether they are married, a maiden or available. The hill tribe women are extremely skilful at weaving traditional intricate and colourful patterns and can spend weeks just on one item, embroidering and adorning them with silver hoops. Women wear a variety of skirts. Men wear a short loincloth and strings of beads. Sadly, with increase exposure to western values, the tribespeople are wearing a combination of traditional, cambodian and western style clothing and sometimes only wearing their beautiful traditional clothing during festivals and important rites and rituals.
There are some very remote highland groups who file their front teeth and wear tattoos just as their ancestors did.
DIET: Some hill groups who are primarily rice cultivators have rice as their staples. Others raise root crops, such as cassava, taro, and yams, depend primarily on those crops as well as maize (corn), eggplant, beans, sugar cane, bananas, and other fruits and vegetables. Rice and vegetable crops are supplemented by greatly valued meat. This comes either from domestic animals, such as pigs and poultry, or game and birds from the neighbouring forests. Additional valued foods include fish and eggs. Rice wine (jar wine) and cassava beer are common and are consumed primarily on ritual occasions and for honoured guests which you will have a chance to sample on your treks and homestays.
Because modern appliances and packaged goods are few, much time and energy goes into the growing, preservation, and preparing of a family's daily meals. Women are primarily responsible for everyday food preparation. Men often bear the responsibility for making alcoholic beverages and cooking ritual foods.
CUSTOMS, RITUALS AND RELIGION: Many of the hill tribes are animists where they believe that magical spirits live in the natural world, inhabiting rocks, mountains, rivers, and trees. These are mainly malevolent and must be appeased by blood sacrifices and rituals. Each village will have a religious leader, who are spirit healers who lead ceremonies to cure illness and other physical and mental problems and communicate with the spirits through ritual and blood sacrifices. They also control the weather, protect the community from natural calamities and aid in the growth of crops.
The people of the hill tribes continue the traditional beliefs and practices of their ancestors where stories of the spirits, landscape, animals, and plants of a group's environment are respected and worshipped. The heroes and myths of the hill tribes of Cambodia are religious and familial in nature. Heroes are actual or fictional ancestors whose deeds and characteristics are passed down from generation to generation. Many of these heroes are considered to have originated particular clans (large family groupings) and founders of their tribal group. The myths of particular groups relate to these founding ancestors and thus form part of their traditional religious beliefs.
The holidays of the tribal groups of Cambodia are primarily religious celebrations. Festivals are held to make the spirits happy and exorcise evil spirits. The beginning of the lunar New Year is always an important festival. Life-cycle events such as birth, puberty, marriage, and death, are celebrated by families and villages. These are often major festivals involving multiple families and villages and considerable money and preparation.
PERSONALITY: For tribal people, like most traditional people living in small villages, interpersonal relations are based on fairly strict rules of etiquette. Most villagers have known one another since birth and will continue living as neighbours for years to come. Consequently, they try to avoid conflict in their everyday relations. With strangers, most tribespeople are modest and reserved. With family and fellow villagers, they are more open and expressive. Always, however, there is an emphasis on getting along with one another. Men and women, even closely related, seldom display affection openly. Visiting is a major activity and a common form of entertainment.
Young people do not date as do youth in the West. Courtship may be brief and involve little contact between the future bride and groom in some groups. Parents or matchmakers do most of the visiting and arranging. Contact between young men and women is generally careful, supervised, and understood to be leading to marriage. Marriages tend to remain traditional. In many groups, the choice of a mate and wedding arrangements are made by parents, often before the youth reach puberty.
The Kreung are an exception to this as when their youths come of age, the parents build them separate accommodation and encourage daughters to have lovers so they can make their own choice. This way, they can find true love. Divorce and rape are therefore unheard of.
Kreung love huts: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2174389/Cambodian-fathers-build-sex-huts-13-year-old-daughters.html
Schools and teachers from the lowlands are increasingly available for highland children. However, most highland children continue to be taught traditional skills in traditional ways by parents and relatives. The more contact a village has with Cambodians from the central plains, the more likely their exposure to schools and education in Cambodian subjects and language. Traditionally, knowledge was passed on orally, rather than through writing. They have a strong oral tradition that consists of myths, legends, stories, and group knowledge. In the absence of writing and modern entertainment, youth learned the beliefs and events of their past from their elders. In turn, they passed them on to their children. Recently, however, several of the hill languages have been put into written form.
ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION
Music is a major form of entertainment and used also in the service of religion. Musical instruments include flutes, mouth organs and harps, and percussion instruments, guitars, and banjos, most made from bamboo. The bronze drum is both a musical instrument and a symbol of wealth and status used in important communal ceremonies. It is played on ritual occasions such as marriage and funerals as well as for popular entertainment.
Children spend many nighttime hours listening to the stories and legends of their people.
Movies, television, videos, and other popular entertainment of Westernized countries remain rare in much of highland Cambodia. Tribespeople rely on singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments for much of their entertainment.
During the day, children spend much of their time assisting their parents in hunting, gathering, and growing crops. Boys learn from an early age to help their fathers, practicing with tiny bows, shooting small animals, trying to catch birds and fish, and in numerous ways imitating the activities of their elders. Children who attend school may also play competitive games such as soccer or volleyball.
Hill women weave clothing such as skirts and blouses for themselves, loincloths for their men, and blankets. Using cruder materials, men weave mats and baskets. Embroidery and appliqué work are also done. Men make agricultural, hunting, and gathering tools. The Kuy of northern Cambodia have a reputation for being excellent blacksmiths. The Brao are noted for their pottery-making skills and the Kavet are noted for their musical instruments.
Cultural exchange with the hill tribes of Cambodia will be a memorable and an unique experience. So much to learn and understand, observe and just be with them as part of their daily lives in the tribe. This unique experience is limited due to the fact that their way of lives are begin threaten, by cultural assimilation and destruction of their environment. The youth are seduced by the modern way of life, those exposed to modern schooling, movies, television and pop culture. Rituals, customs, and language is lost as the youth reject their age old traditions and customs which is why each tour you take with Lucky Tours, a contribution is made to the United World School to help preserve their values and traditions and stop the destruction of their environment.
Check out our other itineraries and please contact us for competitive pricing or any other details.
Cultural exchange with the hill tribes of Cambodia will be a memorable and an unique experience. So much to learn and understand, observe and just be with them as part of their daily lives in the tribe. This unique experience is limited due to the fact that their way of lives are begin threaten, by cultural assimilation and destruction of their environment. The youth are seduced by the modern way of life, those exposed to modern schooling, movies, television and pop culture. Rituals, customs, and language is lost as the youth reject their age old traditions and customs which is why each tour you take with Lucky Tours, a contribution is made to the United World School to help preserve their values and traditions and stop the destruction of their environment.
Check out our other itineraries and please contact us for competitive pricing or any other details.
