Reality adapts itself without recourse in the eyes of the observer, even if the observer is an anthropologist. This feeling is even more significant with the Moken. Indeed, if one wants to see the dead, that is, if one expects them to be a dominated minority on the verge of extinction, the Moken know how to accommodate this perfectly. The Moken proclaim to anyone who listens: “Moken matay ka” (“we are dead”). The person whose outlook was the first to change was Jacques, my teacher, friend and colleague. My outlook also somewhat changed, unless it was Jacques who managed to convince me of what I had been trying to make him hope for 12 years. The Moken are very much alive! Besides, why would anyone want to seek an exception in history amid several centuries of interaction, resistance, out-branching and reconstruction with sedentary peoples? Malays raiding for slaves, British missionaries, Thai nationalists or Burmese military, none of these neighbours or invaders ever managed to “swallow” the Moken. Why should it be otherwise with Burmese fishermen, these former rice farmers who twenty years ago began their conquest of the Mergui Archipelago?
Sedentary peoples do not want anything but the tools they need to equip themselves with. Everything in Moken society is a matter of symbolism, ideology, choice… Sedentary ideologies – whether communist, capitalist, socialist – “à la Burmese” or not – or ideologies of war, are based on access to resources. The Moken nomads thus have little to lose in interacting with sedentary peoples. All the material they need to equip themselves with is their nomadic ideology: adaptivity, non-accumulation, equality (despite the religious hierarchies that appear only when it comes to rituals), mobility, all of which are principles that take precedence over their strategies. Continue reading
Moken Spirit 