ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Thailand’s approaches to Indigenous heritage using the case study of conflicts between the State and the Karen community over the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex and Natural World Heritage Site, which sit on the border with Myanmar.
Contributing to the volume’s overall theme of Asian heritage trends, this chapter contextualises Thailand’s treatment of Indigenous heritage within the broader Asian region. Thailand is set apart, however, due to its “crypto-colonial” nature (cf. Herzfeld, 2002), having been a buffer zone between all its colonised neighbouring countries. The national experience with colonialism and, later, the Cold War shaped the state’s definitions of heritage and its attitudes towards Indigenous peoples.
The case study of the Karen Indigenous community in the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex (KKFC) is explored throughout the chapter, starting with the land’s designation as a national park in 1981, progressing to the ongoing forcible evictions of the Karen from the land, and ending with the saga of UNESCO World Heritage listing that began with a nomination in 2014 and culminated in the successful listing of the site in 2021. The contest over the KKFC is, however, still unresolved as protests continue to take place over the Thai state’s position on the Karen’s land rights.
Ultimately, this chapter contributes to a pressing discussion of Indigenous rights to heritage – both natural and cultural – in Thailand, one that began during the colonial period, but which has had ongoing and potent resonances into the present.
