Kammu

PRONUNCIATION: kah-MOO
ALTERNATE NAMES: Khamu; Khmu
LOCATION: Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and China.
POPULATION: About 500,000
LANGUAGE: Kammu
RELIGION: Animism; some Buddhism and Christianity

INTRODUCTION

The Kammu (also written Khamu, Khmu, and Kmhmu), who make up the largest minority group in Laos, are believed to be the original inhabitants of the country. They are an Austro-Asiatic people who moved north from the area of Indonesia in prehistoric times. The Kammu practiced paddy rice agriculture in the valleys along the Mekong River until they were displaced around the 14th century by the Lao moving southward from what is today southern China. Pushed out of the fertile river valleys where wet rice agriculture was possible, the Kammu settled on mountain slopes and in small, narrow upland valleys in northern and central Laos and in northern Thailand. There they practiced swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture, clear cutting and burning off areas of the forest, farming the fields for a few years until the soil was depleted, and then burning off a new area and letting the old fields lie fallow. Sometimes they relocated their villages to find suitable land.

The Kammu have traditionally been at the bottom of Laotian society. Members of the ethnic Lao majority frequently refer to the Kammu with contemptuous terminology, including the word kha, or slaves. Ethnic Kammu regions of the country have historically received less funding for roads, schools, and government services than Lao majority areas. Many Kammu joined the Communist Pathet Lao (Lao Nation) movement and the Lao People's Liberation Army in the 1960s and 1970s, during the Lao civil war because the Communists promised them respect and education and technical training in Vietnam if they joined the cause. During the war years some Kammu areas were heavily bombed by the United States as the Laotian civil war was linked to the Vietnam War, which was also being fought in Laos. After the Pathet Lao won control of the country in 1975, some Kammu Communist cadres gained positions of prestige within the government. However, the majority of ethnic Kammu have remained impoverished and have had few opportunities for economic or social advancement.

The Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), established in 1975, has tried to do away with ethnic labels and now refers to "lowland Lao," "midland Lao," and "upland Lao." The Kammu are classified as midland Lao because they tend to live on the mountain slopes. The LPDR government has tried to end slash-and-burn agriculture and has encouraged the Kammu to resettle in lowland areas. Some Kammu had already relocated to escape war related violence. The Kammu, like other midland Lao, are among the poorest people in what is already a very poor country. Their low levels of education and geographic isolation, together with continued prejudice from the ethnic Lao, have been barriers to their integration.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

The Kammu are considered as one of the indigenous populations of Laos and represent the country's largest minority group. There are roughly 500,000 Kammu in Laos and smaller numbers of Kammu in northern Thailand, northern Vietnam, and southern China. A few thousand Kammu fled as refugees after the Communists came to power in 1975, and they have resettled mostly in the United States.

The Kammu live in scattered villages in mountainous areas of north and central Laos and in border regions of neighboring countries. Often villages are small, with only 20–30 families, but some villages can include several hundred households. Neighboring villages may belong to different ethnic groups lumped together with the Kammu as midland Lao, but with their own cultures and languages that are mutually incomprehensible. Young Kammu men often leave their mountain homes to find unskilled jobs in towns and cities for a few years to earn money for a bride-price. During the Lao civil war, many young men went to Thailand to escape forced conscription into the Laotian armed forces. The government has pressured Kammu to switch to settled lowland farming rather than shifting slash-and-burn cultivation, but the land offered to Kammu farmers has often been poor for agricultural cultivation.

LANGUAGE

The Kammu have their own language, which belongs to the Mon-Khmer family of languages, but it is not a written language. Kammu words are mostly monosyllabic, though disyllabic words are still numerous. The normal word order in Kammu is subject-verb-object, though the object may appear at the beginning of a phrase for emphasis. Kammu contains many Laotian and Thai loan words, and Kammu who live in Thai urban areas often adopt the more simplistic syntax of Thai.

The Laotian government's efforts to reclassify Kammu as "midland Lao" has resulted in few references to Kammu in Laotian historical texts and, until recent decades, there were few significant works about the Kammu in Western literature. Variation in the Kammu language is common, as the Kammu are spaced over a wide area with limited contact with more distant settlements. The language includes an increasing number of loan words from Lao.

The majority of Kammu are illiterate, as few have had access to education. Agreements are oral and are made before village elders, who memorize the terms and will arbitrate any disputes. Children use their father's first name as their last name, so last names change every generation. Once a person becomes a parent, he or she is referred to as the father or mother of their child.

FOLKLORE

The Kammu have a rich folklore that has been transmitted orally. They are well regarded by other groups for their knowledge of folk medicines made from plants gathered in the forest.

The Kammu consider Luang Prabang, which served as the Lao royal capital, as their city, and they have a legend that explains how the city was founded by a Kammu.

The old people say that long, long ago people wished to build the city of Luang Prabang, but an enormous tree grew on the site that nobody was able to cut down. Each man that tried fell ill and fled. Then a man by the name of Wang said, "I will cut the tree if you will taboo the day of my death forever." The people promised and Wang cut the tree, but he dropped dead when the tree fell. Once they buried Wang, the Kammu began to build the city of Luang Prabang.

When the city was finished, they looked for a man to be their king. They all went to a cliff overlooking the place where the Ou River flows into the Mekong River, and the people said, "Any man brave enough to jump off this cliff, we will elect king."

The people boarded seven boats and seven rafts in the waters below the cliff and called for the men who wished to be king to jump. Looking down from the dizzying heights, one man after another was afraid and ran away. Finally just one man remained, a relative of Wang, who had cut the tree. This man had tucked a quiver into his belt, and as he leaned over to look down from the top of the cliff, his quiver struck against something and he lost his balance and fell into the river. The people hurried to help him get in a boat, and they praised his courage and elected him king. To this day the Kammu taboo the day Wang cut the tree and the day Wang was buried, and on these days no work is undertaken.

The Kammu played a significant role in annual ceremonies in the Lao court of Luang Prabang until fairly recent times. The ceremonies indicated the Kammu's prior claim to the land through a symbolic payment to the Kammu representatives, who in turn acknowledged the legitimacy of the King of Luang Prabang.

RELIGION

The majority of Kammu are animists, with smaller numbers of Buddhists and Christians. The Kammu believe there are hundreds of different spirits, helpful and harmful, that reside in natural settings. An important aspect of Kammu spiritual beliefs is the notion of reincarnation based upon merit. Individuals are engaged in a struggle between good and evil forces that plays itself out through the interaction of spirits.

Each village has its own shaman to propitiate the spirits that cause illness and accidents, and a priest (lkuun) to perform the village ceremony for the ancestor spirits. A shaman can be either male or female, but the priest holds a hereditary office passed on to the eldest son of the priestly family, even if the individual is only a child at the time. One becomes a shaman by apprenticing to a shaman and learning the magic formulas to be recited on different occasions. The shaman must also be a person of good character who follows many specific rules or the magic formulas will not work to drive away evil spirits.

Living far from health centers and access to modern medicine, the Kammu often attribute illness to evil spirits and call on a shaman to exorcise them and bring back the soul of the patient. Minor diseases are treated by a medicine man, an expert in herbal remedies. It is believed that conception of a child is determined by the ancestors of the wife. If a woman does not become pregnant after marriage, then her father will sacrifice a pig as an offering to his ancestors.

Rituals and taboos are a common part of Kammu spirituality and daily life. The Kammu have a calendar that operates on a 60-day cycle that includes many taboo days when various kinds of work cannot be done and strangers cannot enter the village. During special ceremonies, woven wicker squares and bamboo arrows are placed along paths and trails leading to the village to warn outsiders not to enter. The Kammu also believe that spirits in important places must be placated. For example, before setting out traps or beginning to hunt, a man must perform a ceremony to ask permission from the spirits that reside in the hunting grounds.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The most important holiday for the Kammu is the three-day series of ceremonies once a year to sacrifice to the village ancestor spirits, remake the village common house where the spirits reside, and ritually renew the village. The village spirits are considered benign, helping people lead good and happy lives so long as proper rituals are observed. There is no set day to sacrifice to the village spirits, but the ceremony is usually performed just after sowing the rice so the spirits will bring rain, or just before harvest, so they will chase away evil spirits like the spirits of accidents or the spirits of waste. The house where the spirits reside is cleaned and remade with a new thatched roof, then a black pig is killed and its blood smeared on the altar. The spirits are offered pork, rice, and rice wine, and then the whole village eats and drinks.

The next day a sacrifice is made to the water spirits. Villagers dress up and parade to the village well with drums and gongs. There is a ritual cleaning of the well, and fresh water is fetched from the well in a decorated water container and placed in the house of the spirits.

On the third day each family places a basket under the water container, which the priest shoots with an arrow from a crossbow. Those baskets sprinkled with a lot of water are a sign of luck and a good harvest, while those baskets the water does not reach presage a poor harvest. There is then a procession to a stream to float away the bad spirits. The young people engage in horseplay with mud fights and pushing each other in the water. A communal meal is eaten at noon, and in the evening the villagers parade home and celebrate with lots of food and rice wine.

RITES OF PASSAGE

For most men the main rite of passage is preparing for marriage, usually by leaving home to work as a laborer for a few years to get money for a bride-price. Each family has a totem and is grouped by totems (plants, birds, four-legged creatures) into a system of marriage alliances. There are three such groups in each village, with a circular pattern of one group taking wives from a second group and giving wives to a third group. The man can choose a bride only from the wife-giving group in his marriage alliance system, or it is believed dire misfortune will result. Ideally there is matrilineal cross-cousin marriage, in which a man marries his mother's brother's daughter (the brother might be a real brother or a clan brother). Within the constraints of the marriage alliance system, the bride and groom are free to choose, but their parents will negotiate the bride-price. Sometimes a man can work for his bride's parents for a few years in lieu of a bride-price.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

Kammu interpersonal relations are based on family lineage. The eldest man in the family is treated with great respect. The marriage alliance system also involves patterns of respect. For example, the father of the bride has a higher ritual status than the father of the groom because the wife brings children to the family. A father-in-law must be treated with great respect. It is even common to call an elderly man father-in-law as a term of respect.

Living in isolated villages, the Kammu must depend upon their neighbors for mutual help—so relations are relatively egalitarian. Although most families farm individually owned plots, in some Kammu villages the land was owned collectively. After the rise to power in 1975 of the communist LPDR government, numerous Kammu communities were successfully converted to collectivized farms, while communal agriculture proved a failure in many other Kammu villages. The closure of all stores resulted in the development of a barter system among the Kammu for trading foodstuffs.

LIVING CONDITIONS

Laos is one of the poorest nations in East Asia and living conditions are harsh for most Kammu. The Kammu tend to be among the most impoverished people in the country and Kammu communities in Thailand, Vietnam, and China live far below the national economic average. Governments have been slow to extend roads, education, and health services to the hill areas. In the aftermath of the Communist takeover of Laos, diseases like malaria, dysentery, and pneumonia were common, and there were high rates of infant mortality and malnutrition. Most Kammu are subsistence farmers, and each day is spent farming, hunting, or fishing. People don't go into the forest alone, however, because they worry about wild animals, snakes, and accidents.

Kammu houses are built close together on pilings in the villages, located on a hilltop or halfway up a mountain at elevations near 1,000 ft. The village is usually surrounded by a thick band of old forest, which separates homes from the fields. The large old trees are believed to have souls, and they serve to protect the village from storms and from fire when the fields are burned off. Houses are built on piles 1–2 m (3–7 ft) above the ground, usually with frame and floors of wood, walls of bamboo matting, and a roof of thatch. There is an open porch on one side of the house and a kitchen hearth built over a box of dirt toward the back. Domestic animals, including chickens, ducks, and pigs, are raised underneath the house in fenced areas. Buffalo are highly valued for plowing fields, as food, and for sacrifice, though few Kammu can afford to own them. Dogs are commonly kept as pets. In most Kammu villages there is no running water or electricity, nor are there any sanitary facilities.

FAMILY LIFE

A household usually numbers 6–7 people but can be much larger. A single dwelling may include parents, children, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren. Much of the work of the household is gender-specific, with women working longer hours than men and responsible for the hard work of hauling water and firewood and husking the rice. Traditionally, young boys left the family home between age six and eight, to live in the nearest village common house with older boys, unmarried men, and male guests in the village. However, newer villages set up in lowland areas have dispensed with common houses for men. Children are engaged in helping the family get enough food from an early age. Boys learn to fish and make snares to catch rodents and small game. Girls help their mothers garden and go in a group to the forest to look for edible shoots, tubers, and other plants. It is the responsibility of the women in the household to ensure there is enough water and firewood, while men provide for the family's meat and fish. The family could not function without the labor of all, so there is mutual respect for the contribution each person makes to the household.

CLOTHING

In the past, clothing was most often rough homespun cloth made from their own cotton that the women spun and wove, but today manufactured fabric or store-bought clothes are increasingly common. Women wear a long-sleeved blouse that fastens to one side and a sarong, while men wear a shirt and pants. Rubber sandals serve as shoes. Both sexes may carry woven or knit bags. In addition, there are special clothes for ritual occasions.

FOOD

The staple food of the Kammu is sticky (glutinous) rice, which is eaten at every meal. The Kammu generally do not purchase food, but grow or hunt what they eat. Besides rice, Kammu farmers grow corn, tobacco, maize, sugarcane, and occasionally cotton and opium. The men fish, hunt small game with rifles and crossbows, and set snares for rodents and other small animals. Frogs and various insects are also eaten. Fish and meat are smoked and dried over the fires that are continuously maintained in common houses reserved for men. Large game is usually shared within the community. The women gather bamboo shoots, mushrooms, and other wild plants in the forest. Deforestation has made supplementing the daily diet through hunting and gathering more difficult. Although most families have a water buffalo or cow, these animals are rarely eaten except on ceremonial occasions, when an animal is sacrificed to propitiate the spirits. Fruit trees, including bananas, citrus, and jackfruit, are planted around the village. Eggs are considered a special food, and gifts of eggs are given to a bride's family. Black sticky rice is used for traditional ceremonial meals. It represents safety, so a small packet of black sticky rice is always carried by people when they travel. Kammu meals tend to be rather simple and are seasoned with salt and chilies.

EDUCATION

Few Kammu have had any formal education in a classroom. Although schools are being extended into Kammu areas, schools remain scare and tend to have very low standards. Lessons are conducted in Lao, a foreign tongue to many of the pupils. Teachers sent to Kammu areas often consider the assignment a hardship. Compulsory school attendance laws, such as those in Thailand, are rarely enforced and do not apply in any case to children living at a great distance from a school. More than half of the Kammu never attend school. Kammu boys are more likely to be sent to school than girls. Few Kammu are able to afford the cost of sending their children to schools in urban areas.

In villages Kammu receive practical education in daily chores from their parents and older siblings. Boys learn from older male residents, while girls hone their skills with the family's females. Because of the pattern of males leaving the village to work in cities or in northern Thailand for a few years, men are more likely to speak a national language like Thai or Lao.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

The Kammu have a musical tradition, but instruments are usually played for ceremonial purposes in conjunction with prayer and sacrifice. Their instruments include long wooden drums, kettlegongs, knobbed gongs, cymbals, bamboo beaters, flutes, and buffalo horns. Musical instruments are often ritual gifts. Bamboo clappers are a gift from the bride's family to the family of the groom, while the highly valued long wooden drum is usually a gift given by the groom's family to that of the bride.

There are songs appropriate to various ritual occasions, and different types of music for every season of the farming year. Music thus plays a ritual role in securing a sufficient supply of food.

WORK

The majority of Kammu are subsistence farmers and fishermen who reside in villages in mountainous regions. While Kammu are unable to accumulate great wealth, most villagers are able to provide for their daily needs, and some villagers are capable of keeping dozens of animals, including highly prized water buffalo. Within the villages, men tend the fields, hunt, and fish, while the women raise children and sew clothes. Children help their parents and both boys and girls may help with the care of young siblings. When the rice develops ears in the autumn, young people stay in small field huts for days to scare away the birds and wild animals that come to eat the rice. Teenagers enjoy this period away from the village and grownups. Grandparents help with cooking, childcare, and small chores near the house.

In recent decades, Kammu men from Laos have increasingly migrated to Thailand in search of work. Young Kammu men find employment in Thai factories and shops, as well as in the logging industry. During the war years, many youths fled to Thailand to avoid military conscription. Traditionally, men would work abroad until they saved sufficient money for a bride price and then return to their home village, but now many Kammu men have married Thai women and have become Thai citizens.

SPORTS

The regions of South East Asia that the Kammu reside in are impoverished, and there are no traditions of organized sports among the Kammu. For children, play typically involves preparation for adult tasks. Thus, boys are often found fishing, catching insects, and practicing with bows and arrows, and children of both sexes often swim in rivers and streams.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

Singing and storytelling are popular forms of entertainment. Folk tales include creation stories, tales of magic and the supernatural, stories of plants and animals, and tales of mischief and trickery.

Music plays an important role in Kammu ceremonies. During the ritual calling of spirits by shamans, chanting and the playing of gongs are used to communicate with the deceased and natural spirits. Songs and the playing of musical instruments often accompany weddings, the building of new houses, harvests and New Year celebrations. When Kammu entertain guests in their home, grain alcohol is consumed, songs are sung, and musical instruments are played. Bronze drums are often played during ceremonies, especially for summoning rain.

Kammu in urban areas have access to the kinds of entertainment enjoyed by the majority population, including theater, bars, and festivals.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

The Kammu are very skillful in the use of bamboo, which they use to make a wide variety of objects ranging from baskets, musical instruments, water containers, and snares to a complete house. Traditional Kammu musical instruments (constructed by Kammu villagers) include two kinds of bamboo flutes (pii and tot), lutes (saw), Jew's harps, bamboo beaters (klt), clappers (taaw taaw), gongs, and bronze drums.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

Lack of education and geographic isolation has resulted in economic and social stagnation in Kammu populated regions. While the economies of Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and China have experienced double digit growth in the last two decades, the Kammu villages situated in the rural mountains remain underdeveloped and have seen a lack of government investment in infrastructure. The Kammu tradition of slash-and-burn agriculture has fallen out of favor for environmental reasons, and local governments have pressured the Kammu to resettle in lowland areas. In addition, illegal loggers and corrupt local officials have colluded to expel Kammu villagers from the forests adjoining their villages that have traditionally been used for hunting and gathering. The Kammu still face prejudice and discrimination. Many ethnic Lao still casually use the pejorative term "slave" in speaking of the Kammu and other midland minorities, despite the efforts of the LPDR government to call all people "Lao" and to stress the multiethnic nature of Lao society.

The Kammu who have settled in lowland areas are threatened by cultural assimilation by the majority culture. Kammu children in these regions are educated in the national language and gradually adopt the culture of the dominant group. Acculturation and assimilation are common among Kammu migrants in towns in northern Thailand who work and marry local women. Their children are raised as Thai, and the Kammu migrants adopt the language and culture of the Thai.

GENDER ISSUES

In Kammu villages work tends to be gender-specific. Men clear and burn the swidden fields, weave baskets, repair farm tools, care for large animals, trap, and hunt. They are also more likely to be involved in trade, selling livestock, forest products, and, more recently, scrap metal left over from the war. Men often migrate to find work as farmhands on Lao-own farms and as laborers in urban areas. Many Kammu men find work in Thailand, where they can earn comparatively higher wages and purchase goods otherwise unavailable in their home villages. Women cook, care for children, husk rice, haul water, and firewood, care for gardens and pigs and poultry, gather edible plants, weave cloth, and sew. They may engage in small trade with vegetables and chickens. One area of labor where men and women work together is in the planting of crops. Men poke holes in the field to plant seeds, and women follow after to drop in the seed and cover it over. Both sexes weed, although this hard and fairly continuous chore is more likely to be done by women. Both sexes also harvest.

Sexuality is overtly expressed in Kammu folk tale traditions. In the Kammu language, sexual imagery does not elicit shame and folk story tellers freely mention the sexual lives of characters in stories. In one folk tale recorded in Thailand, The Orphan Makes a Field, the hero succeeds in successfully tricking his seven wives into going to bed with him. Despite sex not being a taboo subject, Kammu folk tales lack explicit and graphic sexual descriptions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Damrong Tayanin. Being Kammu: My Village, My Life. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1994.

Lindell, Kristina, et al. A Kammu Story-Listener's Tales. London: Curzon Press, 1977.

———. Folk Tales from Kammu II. London: Curzon Press, 1980.

———. The Kammu Year: Its Lore and Music. London: Curzon Press, 1982.

———. Tribe Kammu of Northern Laos and Thailand: Folklore and Folkliterature. Taipei: Chinese Association for Folklore, 1984.

Mansfield, Stephan. Lao Hill Tribes: Traditions and Patterns of Existence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Suwilai Premsrirat. "Aspects of Inter-Clausal Relations in Khmu." In J.H.C.S Davidson ed. Austroasiatic Languages London: School of Oriental and African Studies. University of London, 1991.

Uchida, Ruriko and Amy Catlin. "Music of Upland Minorities in Burma, Laos, and Thailand." in Terry E. Miller Sean Williams The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Vol. 4. New York: Routledge, 1998: 546-47.

—Revised by David Straub