Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 March 2019
In Myanmar, the idea of ‘indigeneity’ has been mobilised in two radically different ways. Ethnonationalist groups such as the Chin National Front and the Karen National Union have utilised the concept to lobby for increased autonomy in international forums such as the United Nations, while the Burmese state has used the idea of indigeneity (or native-ness, typically translated as taingyinthar in Burmese) to exclude certain minorities — most prominently the Rohingya — by explicitly striking them from the official list of Myanmar's ‘national races’. To clarify how this definitional tension has developed, this article will situate the competing Burmese appeals to indigeneity within the history of international indigeneity politics, and compare the Burmese ‘Indigenous situation’ to other Asian countries that have addressed the question of who counts and does not count as Indigenous.
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15 Cheesman, ‘How in Myanmar “national races” came to surpass citizenship’, p. 461.
16 Thawnghmung, ‘The politics of indigeneity in Myanmar’, p. 528; see also Cheesman, ‘How in Myanmar “national races” came to surpass citizenship’, p. 462.
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49 Ibid., pp. 899–900; saopha refers to members of the Shan hereditary nobility.
50 Ibid.
51 Thawnghmung, The ‘Other’ Karen in Myanmar, p. 40.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid.
54 Ashley South, Ethnic politics in Burma: States of conflict (New York: Routledge 2008), p. 30.
55 Karen National Union, ‘Objectives’, http://karennationalunion.net/index.php/burma/about-the-knu/objectives (accessed 12 Sept. 2015).
56 Karen National Union, ‘The Karens, a nation, their nature and history’, http://www.knuhq.org/about/the-karens-a-nation-their-nature-and-history/ (accessed 1 Aug. 2017).
57 Ibid.
58 Saw Mae Plet Htoo, ‘Commentary on the Burmese delegate's reply’, Karen National Union (KNU) Bulletin No. 14, Dec. 1987, pp. 6–12.
59 Ibid., p. 10.
60 ‘Saw’ is an honorific title used by Karen men.
61 Hathaway, ‘The emergence of indigeneity’, p. 310.
62 See Morton and Baird, ‘From Hill tribes to Indigenous Peoples’, this vol.
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66 Than Tun Win, ‘Composition of the different ethnic groups under the 8 major national ethnic races in Myanmar’, http://www.embassyofmyanmar.be/ABOUT/ethnicgroups.htm (accessed 22 May 2015).
67 Haksar and Luithui, Nagaland file, p. 15.
68 Walton, ‘Ethnicity, conflict, and history in Burma’, p. 903.
69 Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP), ‘Advancing Indigenous Peoples’ solidarity and movement: A brief history of the AIPP’ (video), filmed in 2012, posted 27 Apr. 2015, https://vimeo.com/126228736 (accessed 1 May 2015).
70 Morton and Baird, ‘From Hill tribes to Indigenous Peoples’, this vol.
71 Swift, Peter, ‘The Burma Democratic Front: How Eighty-Eight Generation Chin were mobilized into the Chin National Front’, Journal of Burma Studies 21, 1 (2017): 134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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74 Cheery Zahau, interview, 11 June 2017, Yangon.
75 Ibid.
76 Morton, Micah, ‘Indigenous Peoples work to raise their status in a reforming Myanmar’, Perspective 33, 22 May 2017 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), p. 3Google Scholar.
77 Ibid.
78 Ibid., p. 7.
79 Ferguson, ‘Ethnicity, belonging, and the national census in Burma/Myanmar’, p. 9.
80 Ibid., p. 10.
81 Morton, ‘Indigenous Peoples work to raise their status’, p. 7.
82 Cheery Zahau, interview, 11 June 2017, Yangon.
83 Cheesman, ‘How in Myanmar “national races” came to surpass citizenship’, p. 462; this article provides an excellent extended investigation of the genesis of the term taingyinthar and its role in Myanmar's ethnopolitics up to the present.
84 Thawnghmung, ‘The politics of indigeneity in Myanmar’, p. 527.
85 Office of the President of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar, ‘We have never had ethnic nationals called “Rohingya” according to official list of indigenous ethnic groups of Myanmar as well as our historical records’, 31 Aug. 2014, http://www.president-office.gov.mm/en/?q=issues/rakhine-state-peace-and-stability/id-4125 (accessed 17 Sept. 2015).
86 Ibid.
87 Ibid.
88 This view appears to be changing in the wake of the catastrophic violence that broke out between the Tatmadaw and the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) in northern Rakhine State, Myanmar, on 25 Aug. 2017. Bangladesh state media reported hundreds of thousands of Rohingya pouring into their country; in an address to the UN General Assemply on 21 Sept. 2017, Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh's prime minister, acknowledged that over 800,000 Rohingya were living in camps in southeastern Bangladesh, possibly signalling a change in both Bangladesh's chosen terminology and perhaps also in their position vis-à-vis the political status of the Rohingya. It should be noted that this is an evolving situation.
89 Yegar, Moshe, The Muslims of Burma: A study of a minority group (Heidelberg: Schriftenreihe Des Südasien-Instituts Der Universität Heidelberg, 1972), p. 2Google Scholar.
90 Thawnghmung, ‘The politics of indigeneity in Myanmar’, p. 539.
91 Pyitthu Hluttaw, Burma Citizenship Law of 1982 (unofficial trans.). http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?docid=3ae6b4f71b (accessed 20 Sept. 2015).
92 Thawnghmung, ‘The politics of indigeneity in Myanmar’, p. 535.
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95 Mu-Lung Hsu, ‘Whose permanent home? Indigeneity and the Muslim “foreigners” in Burma’, paper presented at Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Chicago, 28 Mar. 2015, p. 1.
96 Baird, ‘“Indigenous peoples” and land’, p. 269.
97 Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Reject discriminatory Marriage Bill’. https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/09/burma-reject-discriminatory-marriage-bill, 9 July 2015 (accessed 29 Sept. 2015).
98 Ibid.
99 Thawnghmung, ‘The politics of indigeneity in Myanmar’, p. 535.
100 Nyan Hlaing Lynn and Oliver Slow, ‘Mixed results at latest Panglong Conference’, Frontier Myanmar, 30 May 2017.
101 Ibid.
