- One of Thailand’s largest Indigenous groups, Karen Pgaz K’Nyau culture is deeply rooted in animist beliefs that emphasize the importance of living in balance with nature.
- Their approach to land management incorporates sacred and community forests and traditional small-scale farming, where rituals, prayers and customary regulations govern the use of natural resources.
- However, the pressures of modernization and exclusionary conservation policies undermine their capacity to continue their spiritual practices on ancestral land, threatening cultural identity, food security and ecosystem integrity in many highland villages.
HUAY EE KHANG, Thailand — “Do you hear the birds calling?” asks Noraeri Thungmueangthong, as the vibrant trill of a blue-throated barbet rings through the pine trees looming up ahead. “That’s a sign we’re entering the sacred forest.”
Noraeri is a leader in Huay Ee Khang village, an Indigenous Pgaz K’Nyau Karen community of 125 households nestled between undulating hills in the highlands of northern Thailand’s Chiang Mai province. Within the sanctuary of the forest, she points out a wooden receptacle attached to the trunk of a tree.
“When a baby is born, we place its umbilical cord in a bamboo container like this one and hang it on a young tree in this forest,” Noraeri explains. The ritual establishes a spiritual link between the child and the tree, she says. And because their souls effectively grow together, it is understood that any harm to one equates to comparable ill for the other. This acts as a powerful deterrent against cutting the trees, she notes.
“In our culture, we live our lives together with the forest and the trees,” Noraeri says. “Our beliefs protect the forest and all of its resources.”
Traditional Pgaz K’Nyau ways of managing the land are underpinned by Karen animist beliefs, where people, plants and animals each possess a spirit and are inseparably linked through their inner nature. Living in balance with nature is considered paramount to maintain harmony between all beings, ensuring people’s health, food security and environmental stability.
With a population of 500,000 spread across northern, western and central Thailand, the Pgaz K’Nyau Karen people are one of the country’s largest Indigenous groups. Some communities have lived in their current locations for up to four centuries, according to ethnocultural research, many within landscapes still harboring the greatest forest cover in Thailand.
Forests as women’s sanctuary
The umbilical cord forest, or de paw thoo, encompasses 48 hectares (118 acres) of land in Huay Ee Khang. It is one of several types of forests safeguarded by the community for their spiritual and ecological significance, including cemetery forests and watershed forests where farming, hunting and cutting is forbidden. Roughly 60% of the 1,600-hectare (3,900-acre) community territory surrounding Huay Ee Khang village is under such customary protection.
Researchers have calculated that Karen sacred forests alone protect up to 37,500 hectares (92,600 acres) of forests in Thailand.
On another hillside not far from the umbilical cord forest, Ning Amporn scatters the seeds of a bright orange fruit she has just found within the leaf litter as she follows Noraeri deeper into the peaceful shade of the trees.
A resident of Huay Ee Khang and specialist in medicinal herbs and plants used for traditional remedies, Ning estimates the forests around the village yield up to 200 varieties of edible and medicinal plants. Knowledge on how to collect and preserve them, as well as their use in healing, is passed down from generation to generation, she says.
“Whenever my mother would make herbal tea for me when I was sick, I would always get better,” she recalls.
The 9.6-hectare (23.7-acre) forest has been managed as a women’s forest, or ker nue mue, for eight years. A space reserved for women, it’s a vital refuge where women, who often carry heavy household burdens in Karen culture, are able to restore their energies, Noraeri says.
Female elders also use it to teach the younger generation about traditional natural resource management so that they can continue to grow herbs, collect wild food and harvest tree bark and plants from which to make natural dyes for textiles. This helps women not only feed their families and secure their health, but also make a small income by selling forest food at local markets.
Noraeri says the social and financial independence the women’s forest offers is increasingly vital. “Women were traditionally dependent on their husbands and excluded from co-managing natural resources,” she says. “This forest helps us be more independent and resilient.”
Rituals and blessings
Suwichan Phatthanaphraiwan, an assistant professor of ethnology at Mae Fah Luang University in Thailand, says the spiritual connections to plants, animals and spirits maintained by the Pgaz K’Nyau people can be viewed as a reciprocal exchange of mutual care.
Community members use many natural resources from forests and the surrounding landscape, but they also care for nature as well: “It’s about the balance between take and care,” he says.
Suwichan, who grew up in a Pgaz K’Nyau village not far from Huay Ee Khang, recently co-authored a study that explored the spiritual basis of traditional Pgaz K’Nyau Karen land management and examined the role of customary regulations, rituals and prayers in maintaining harmony between humans, plants, animals and spirits.
When people want to use natural resources, be it soil, groundwater, rain, forests or fire, they perform rituals that demonstrate care for nature as a way of obtaining blessings from the spirits, he says.
“During the rainy season, if we feel there is not enough rain, we will do a ritual to negotiate with the rain spirit, Ta Joo K’Jah, to ask for more rain,” he says. “We will do something in exchange for the rain.” This could take the form of transplanting seedlings of edible tubers like wild taro from one side of a stream to the other. The resulting profuse growth of plants along the river not only encourages the spirits to grant more rain for the plants to thrive, he says, their roots also stabilize the riverbanks against erosion.
In his study, Suwichan notes that spirits responsible for vital processes, such as rainfall and healthy harvests, are also thought to favor certain plants and animals. This underpins customary bans on killing some wild animals, such as gibbons, and seasonal restrictions on harvesting specific types of plants and other nontimber forest products. The telling and retelling of stories portraying their spiritual significance thereby spares wild populations, at least locally, from overhunting and mistreatment.
Rotational farming and seeds
The Pgaz K’Nyau Karen system of rotational farming is also governed by customary rituals and spiritual connections to the land. “Before engaging in any agricultural activity, the spirits need to be consulted to seek their permission,” Noraeri says.
Central to food security in the Karen highlands of Thailand, rotational farming is a form of shifting cultivation whereby a patch of forest is cleared by cutting trees to knee-height and burning them to have land to cultivate for a short period. The land is then left to regenerate as farmers shift to another patch of land. In Huay Ee Khang, farmers leave a minimum of seven years before returning to cultivate the same plot of land again.
Rotational farming has been a source of conflict for many Karen communities in the past. Forest protection policies often lump it together with slash-and-burn clearing for agriculture, like soy and oil palm, viewing it as a driver of forest loss.
The stigma has led to uncertainty over the future of the practice as many families abandon the practice. According to Noraeri, in Huay Ee Khang, only seven families maintain their rotational farms, and on a much smaller scale than before.
Losing traditional rotational farming knowledge could risk erasing precious varieties of seeds that nourish many highland communities.
Mae Chi Hno is a village elder and holder of seed-collecting knowledge within the community. She learned her skills by observing her grandparents at a time when the community collected a wide range of seeds.
“I remember there were up to 200 types of seeds at that time,” she says as she recalls the traditional seed songs called uew hta that explain the origins of crop varieties and guide their cultivation. “But now it’s reduced to about 80 varieties.”
Today, Mae Chi Hno collects seeds that include varieties that thrive in the nutrient-dense soils after burning on rotational land: cucumber, pumpkin, taro, yams, herbs and flowering plants used to attract insects away from edible crops.
Many seeds don’t remain viable for long, however. “We have to collect the seeds every year to keep for the next year’s cultivation,” she says. This is why the continuous rotation of farming cycles is essential to prevent the loss of valuable seed varieties. “Fewer families practicing rotational farming harms the diversity of varieties.”
Noraeri says she’s noticed the decline in crop varieties as fewer families continue their traditional farming.
Forests shaped by human presence
The steadfast erosion of traditional farming techniques could also undermine people’s long-standing relationship with forests, potentially harming local forest integrity and resilience.
Mounting evidence indicates that many biodiversity hotspots, such as the Amazon and Congo basins and the tropical highlands of Southeast Asia, have been shaped by human presence, including the use of rotational farming, for millennia.
“Shifting cultivation has actually led to many of the diverse forest systems that we know of today, even though we think of them as ‘pristine wilderness,’” says Terry Sunderland, a professor of forest and conservation science at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
Sunderland, who has studied human-forest relationships across Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa for more than 30 years, notes that the demonization of shifting cultivation as a driver of deforestation is largely founded on misconceptions.
Traditional shifting cultivation usually involves small plots of land, Sunderland notes, in stark contrast to the vast areas opened up for commercial agriculture. Traditional rotational plots are typically smaller than one hectare (2.5 acres) per family.
When practiced with sufficient fallow periods to allow forest regeneration, it has also been found to enhance measures of biodiversity: “You have this mosaic of different age stands within a single forest area,” Sunderland says, “and that can attract all sorts of species.” A 2013 study in the Karen highlands of Thailand documented 365 species of plants in rotational farm fallows, including 72 herbs used in local plant-based medicines.
Change on the horizon
Although Thailand is moving to incorporate grassroots-led effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) in its plans to fulfill international conservation pledges, such as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30 by 30 goal, Suwichan says there remains a risk of conservation laws marginalizing Indigenous communities as they have done in the past.
This risks undermining the deep bond between Indigenous people and forests, he says. “If you cannot see the humanity in the resources you protect, then people will no longer have a relationship with nature,” he warns. This could result in forests being regarded as nothing more than material resources and the loss of motivation to protect them, he adds.
Suwichan says the state school curriculum and some health care professionals also sideline Indigenous cultural roots, labeling traditional customs as backward or responsible for environmental degradation. He says he worries that some young people who move away from their highland villages to the city for their education might be left adrift, questioning their Karen identity.
Grassroots efforts are helping to bridge cultural and generational divides, however. Pgaz K’Nyau villages like Huay Ee Khang host workshops to share traditional knowledge, Indigenous farming, cooking and handicrafts for local youngsters.
Recent policy shifts also signal increasing recognition from the government on the value and sustainability of traditional ways of life.
On Aug. 6, Thailand passed its first law to protect Indigenous communities. The Ethnic Protection Bill, scheduled to come into force in November, provides recognition of ethnic identities, affirms their fundamental rights as Thai citizens, and aims to address such issues as cultural erosion, land disputes and displacements.
Although Thailand’s more than 60 ethnic groups have welcomed the legislation, they seek to strengthen the legal protections further by advocating for the inclusion of the term “Indigenous people,” which would affirm their connection to ancestral lands.
For Suwichan, the political effort is a positive step toward meaningful change: “It’s our hope that communities can continue their traditional ways of life and give courage to others to revive and restore these traditions where they’ve been lost.”
Banner image: Noraeri Thungmueangthong is a village leader in Huay Ee Khang village in northern Thailand. Image by Carolyn Cowan/Mongabay.
Carolyn Cowan is a staff writer for Mongabay.
‘Pristine wilderness’ without human presence is a flawed construct, study says
Citations:
Phatthanaphraiwan, S., & Greene, A. M. (2025). Reciprocal relations in the Karen highlands of northern Thailand. People and Nature, 7(5), 1099-1110. doi:10.1002/pan3.70011
Suwichan Phatthanaphraiwan, & Greene, A. (2023). Karen environmental stewardship of natural resources. Journal of the Siam Society, 111(2), 97-108. Retrieved from https://thesiamsociety.org/knowledge-hub/uploads/research/9/6579a1323dde2.pdf
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Junsongduang, A., Balslev, H., Inta, A., Jampeetong, A., & Wangpakapattanawong, P. (2013). Medicinal plants from swidden fallows and sacred forest of the Karen and the Lawa in Thailand. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, 9(1). doi:10.1186/1746-4269-9-44
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