An interview with Thi Tran Lanh from the SPERI network We had the chance to meet Thi Tran Lanh, an impressive woman engaged with the Social Policy Ecology Research Institute (SPERI) to defend and empower ethnic minorities in the Mekong sub-great region. Lanh is a charismatic person radiating with passion. She is a convinced activist dedicated to the cause of ethnic minorities. She fights intensively against governments’ and lobbies’ attempts to exploit the land of local communities. She fights for the right of communities to live on and cultivate their ancestral land as well as the right to sustain their cultural traditions. This article aims at introducing Lahn’s work with ethnic minorities:
Enjoy your read! Feel free to provide feedback 😉 The problems faced by ethnic minorities Ethnic minorities in south-east Asia (and all over the world) face various difficulties to preserve their traditional way of living. First, they are living somehow detached from the society by different languages, traditions, cultures and ways of living. Their access to money is very limited and they sometime live in what we call poverty (poverty related to money, e.g. 1.90 USD/day in accordance with the World Bank definition). Moreover, the “modern” culture often segregates and despises non-conventional communities. When this culture reaches ethnic minority, it adds pressure on those communities through isolation, some kind of shame, and, eventually, reject of traditional habits, practices and values. In this regard, they suffer from a lack of visibility and credibility on a national and international level. The governments and legal framework do neither seem to consider ethnic minorities needs nor provide them sustainable top-down solutions to empower them. When ethnic minorities are disrespected, and they lose their roots, the cultural biodiversity is endangered. One of the main legal problem is the land ownership. Ethnic minorities have issues to legally claim their land. Therefore, their lands are subject to the lust of:
Ethnic minorities are custodians of their landscape, natural habitat and ecosystems. Thus, an emerging problem is also the pollution and global lack of respect towards Nature. The solutions The solutions that we introduce in this blogpost are based on a strong key concept: Biological Human Ecology (BHE). In a nutshell: the beliefs, organizations, practices and habits of ethnic minorities are intimately bonded with the local ecosystems; when one harms those practical, organizational, social, philosophical and spiritual integrated systems, one breaks the intimate link between the people and the landscape, one harms the environment and eventually puts the ecosystems in jeopardy. Those communities maintain permanent cultures within their respective places. Why not inspire from their knowledge and wisdom? Social Policy Ecology Research Institute (SPERI) Lahn works for SPERI. SPERI works with ethnic minorities on issues related to the land ownership and culture preservation. “The theoretical foundation of SPERI’s work is the theory of Biological Human Ecology (BHE), a dynamic and indigenously grown theory based on the worship of nature and the ideological values of indigenous people. Central to this theory is the idea that biological characteristics of ecosystems play an enormous role in forming the cultural and social relationships of many indigenous minority communities. The dynamic and complex natures of these ecological systems constitute a nurturing medium upon which minority communities form their core values and create lasting and sustainable societies.” In other words, indigenous ethnic communities develop long-lasting and sustainable societies thanks to the close ties they maintain with their natural ecosystem. The “biological” link between nature and its inhabitants might be what causes societies to survive over time. Lahn’s work consists of:
Most of the legal activity of Lahn through SPERI is to help these ethnic minorities to deal with legal procedures to protect their land, get a governmental recognition for their culture and their land, get protection against lobbies and companies who would take over their knowledge, land and other cultural treasures. As described on SPERI’s website: “Social Policy Ecology Research Institute (SPERI)’s vision is to work towards a society where indigenous people and ethnic minorities in the Mekong sub-great region have equal access to social justice, gender equity, natural resources and fair social economic systems. SPERI’s vision during the period from 2010 to 2020 towards Livelihood Sovereignty of the indigenous ethnic minority communities in Mekong region is determined by five fundamental interrelated rights:
For instance, SPERI helps the ethnic minorities’ map their land: the traditional territory and boundaries, the types of topography and natural resources, socio-cultural economic features… The goal is to bring a legal ownership to the local communities and protect them from expulsion and top-down solutions that are not adapted to their environment. Indeed, their land represents their knowledge, their wisdom, their culture. If they lose their land, there are great chances they will lose their knowledge. Without land they cannot practice their culture, and little by little it kills their unique wisdom. To fight against the threat to the farmers, another aspect of Lanh’s work is to educate them. SPERI provides information about Genetically-Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the risks for farmers, companies like Monsanto, Bayer, Dow, BASF, etc. The goal is to give them the keys to resists the vicious traps of our capitalistic society, the greed of big corporations and corrupt governments… Lanh shared several examples of such vicious traps: expulsions for national parks, for mining activities, etc. One example applies to Lý May Chạn. We stayed ten days at Lý May Chạn, a red Dzao community leader from Ta Phin, a village in the mountains close to Sa Pa, north Vietnam. Lý May Chạn is very knowledgeable about trees and plants that have medicinal virtues. She makes her own medicine with the plants of her land. Lanh told us about Professor Goeltenboth and his request to learn from Lý May Chạn. She welcomed him as well as his students, helped them by sharing her knowledge with them. Apparently, Professor Goeltenboth ended up publishing a book about the red Dzao medicine, labeling the medicine and the recipes under his own name and making money out of it. Nothing came back to Lý May Chạn, he stole her knowledge, her intellectual property and left. Lahn is still defending Lý May Chạn. SPERI also connects the farmers from the network. Farmers from different origins are offered opportunities to meet farmers from other ethnic minorities, learn from their practices and culture, and exchange ancestral knowledge together. On top of being engaged at SPERI, Lahn created her own oasis for farmers of different communities to come learn and build together. The project is called HEPA, we describe it below. The Human Ecology Practice Area (HEPA) HEPA is in a military zone at the border of Laos and Vietnam, in the forest. The first time Lahn came to this place, she was invited to the army’s restaurant. She realized that the meat served at the restaurant came from the animals of the forest. After this lunch she reflected upon this place. She eventually decided to settle there to establish her project under her own conditions; one condition being the end of poaching. HEPA now acts as a gate to protect the forest and its inhabitants. The vision is to build a place to regenerate minority space and welcome minorities to live there, learn, share knowledge and culture. Here is the official description of HEPA’s project: “HEPA is located on approximately 500 ha of mountainous primary rainforest containing the beautiful Huyen Vi Waterfall and Rao An River. Its highest elevations are designated “sacred forest” preserved for worshiping nature. The middle elevation is an area for study and research, while the lowland is an ecological farming area. HEPA was established in 2002 under the Decision No.1230/QĐUB with a 50-year land use rights Certificate to:
As mentioned, a lot of students are coming to learn in HEPA. Originally, HEPA was meant to become a multicultural village. This vision failed because the people coming from ethnic minorities to the farm do not stay. They come to learn and practice but at some point, they want to come back to their original land and settle to build their farm. Lahn is happy to say that many of them go back to their home to proudly build their own, real, slow and honest farms. This shows that the ethnic minorities do not forget their roots and want to regenerate their traditions. In this regard, HEPA is a wonderful place to demonstrate, inspire and motivate people. One of HEPA’s objective for the next three years is to create a “community enterprise”. The steps follow:
We would have loved to visit HEPA but unfortunately, HEPA being located at the border, directly on the military zone, tourists are not allowed to stay for more than one day and volunteers need working visa for long-time stay. Debate: commercial Vs local (recuperation Vs livelihood) As soon as we arrived, Lanh warned us about commercial farms in south-east Asia. She points her finger at businesspeople who invest in “eco” projects for commercial reasons and profit ends. She denounces the power of money power that makes it very easy for “eco”-business owners to acquire the land while getting all benefits for themselves and letting the local people on the side. Lanh makes a clear difference between commercial farms and traditional and local communities. The end goals of the projects are different. For commercial farms, the end goal is profit. For traditional and local communities, the goal is sustainability and reliance or autonomy and resilience for their community. Lahn says that approximately 98% of “eco-farming” projects in south-east Asia are fake. The projects might look similar because they might both care for the earth: respect the nature, employ permaculture methods and practices… The difference lies in the ethics: what about “care for the people”? what about “fair share” of resources, profits, knowledge? Lahn articulated three main critics to commercial farms:
We understand that an “eco” project, and especially a project involving “permaculture”, should have a pure ethical vision. One should design such projects with the nature and the people in mind, to maximize the benefits (especially non-monetary) for the local environment and the community. As Lahn reminded us, one of the obvious definition of permaculture lies in the name itself: permanent culture! Permaculture is not just a tool box to demonstrate fancy ways of growing foods. Permaculture starts with ethics. It is an alternative mindset to empower people and offer them the possibility to develop strong alternatives to the conventional status quo. Ethnic minorities apply sustainable practices and achieve autonomous living. Most of those ethnic groups have been able to survive on the same land for centuries. When we start thinking about the way ethnic minorities have been sustaining on their lands by applying ancestral knowledge and wisdom we can only admire the fact that they know their environment like no one else, they know their forests, their plants, the energy in the air and all elements of their land. In this regard they are real models of sustainable living, and a great model for our “modern” urban society who lost the contact with the earth. As Lahn says, sustainability can only be achieved by the farmers, the real farmers with pure wisdom. The secret lies in the wisdom you put into your project. What is the goal of the project? Is the goal higher than money and profit? For what? for whom? Lahn differentiates the “businessmen farmers” who seek profit through fancy green washing from people like Mr. Phuoc and Lý May Chạn, two farmers from Vietnam that we met thanks to her advice. You can read more about their respective work on our blog . Indeed Mr. Phuoc and Lý May Chạn are two very impressive persons with remarkable projects. They radiate wisdom and pure happiness. Their lives are simple, without any luxury, without seeking for profit and with immense respect to the earth and the people. Complementary and subjective remarks A global phenomenon: “protect nature” Vs profit Lahn says “Government wants to kill me”. We realize how hard her fight is. Indeed, we acknowledge that many governments, lobbies, companies want to acquire the world’s resources for themselves. Ethnic minorities who have been living in forests for ages and never “bought” the land might be frightened from expulsion, for the sake of monetary profit, or told that “progress” is good for them, that they need it. This reminds us about the national parks we saw in Uganda and Tanzania. We wanted to visit national parks but realized that these parks hide terrible stories. We met people from the villages and ethnic minorities who used to live in the forests which are now part of the national parks. We discovered that the government expulsed the indigenous people like the Batwas (a group of Pygmies from Uganda, Rwanda, Congo…) from the forests. These indigenous people now live in villages or cities. They were not prepared to this new life and, for most of them including those we met, they live miserably; victims of alcoholism, one way of making money for a Batwa is to offer silly dances to the tourists on “ethnic eco-tourism” journeys… On top of that, these parks are not only threat to humans but also to animals and nature. Indeed, the armed guards of the parks confine the gorillas inside the national borders. They imprison the gorillas to keep enough of them available for the wealthy tourists. These parks are then only open for tourists against crazy amounts of money. While the parks ask over thousand of dollars for spending one hour with the gorillas, they justify the price under cover of preserving the environment and supporting the communities. These parks do exactly the opposite: they expulse the indigenous people and imprison the gorillas. In fact, the only goal of these parks might well be to get big money from rich and credulous (or unscrupulous) tourists. Thank you Lanh We wish to nurture our relationship with SPERI. SPERI has been a very good information source in Vietnam as well as a very good advice provider in terms of networking and cultural facilitator. We also appreciated meeting Lahn very much. Lahn is an amazing woman, a very strong personality which we are proud to have met and with whom we wish to keep a good connection. We also wish to visit HEPA one day for a visit or a volunteering time. By the way, Lahn is welcoming long-term volunteers and already have a strong network of international Permaculture practitioners coming to the farm and connecting with HEPA and SPERI. We are thankful to Lahn for her inspiring speech, her honest and uncompromising opinions, her excellent pieces of advice. We are still on our way in south-east Asia and hope to meet friends of Lahn in Laos and Thailand very soon. This will probably be the occasion for new article, so stay tuned! Go futher… Example of e-map: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1dUvB5v-JQ8pNIKmpbHH7mhOQpwY&ll=19.740733327291917%2C101.95362335000004&z=14
HEPA Website: http://ecofarmingschool.org/eng/index.php SPERI website: http://speri.org/eng/ Read our blogpost about our stay and volunteering with the Red Dzao community of Ta Phin, near Sa Pa, north Vietnam: https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/blog/ricefields-medicine-a-journey-with-the-red-dzao Read our blogpost about our visit of Mr Phuoc’s eco-farm near Phang Nha ke Bang, Vietnam: https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/blog/from-a-minefield-to-a-model-eco-farm Learn more about our projects: https://sustainable-autonomy.weebly.com/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sustainomy/ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://bit.ly/2L1bbFz
1 Comment
Barbara
7/1/2018 11:26:29 pm
So inspiring to read about Lanh and the valuable work she is doing with SPERI and HEPA to build ethical projects with real farmers along with helping ethnic minorities to survive and prosper in their natural environment with sustainable practices. Her work is a living example of the obvious definition of "permaculture" that she gave you. She is ensuring the continuation of "permanent cultures".
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