The Last Elephant Catchers: (In)Visible Indigenous Heritage in Thailand

This thesis explores the imbalances of power that create a national Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD) and the subsequent effects of this. It does so by examining the consequences of imposing state values onto Indigenous and minority communities, whose definitions of heritage, and relationships with the environment can often come into conflict with the national AHD. The central research question, therefore, asks:

What impact does the Authorised Heritage Discourse have on Indigenous and minority communities and their heritage?

This question is addressed by examining the impact of the Thai state’s AHD—influenced by Western and local, historically derived values—on the elephant-related traditions of the Indigenous Kui people of Northeast Thailand, utilising ethnographic fieldwork. The endangerment of the Asian elephant, the loss of Thailand’s wild forests, and the government’s failure to recognise and protect Kui culture within the national AHD have all contributed to the end of the centuries-old Kui tradition of capturing elephants from the wild. The loss of this practice has precipitated the endangerment of three further aspects of Kui heritage and traditional knowledge: the role of the hmor chang, the ‘elephant doctors’ who ventured into the forests to capture the elephants; knowledge of making the Pakam rope— used to lasso the elephants; and finally, the phasaa phi pa, the ‘forest spirit language’, spoken by the hmor chang. This research explores the community-level responses to this cultural endangerment brought about by the imposition of the State AHD, primarily through the lenses of adaptation and loss. These more localised responses are further dictated by AHDs that emerge at the level of the province and community itself.
This main research question is divided into three parts:

1.1 How does the State’s definition and valorisation of heritage exclude
communities, and how might this endanger their heritage?

This first part examines how Kui culture sits within the national AHD. It considers the State’s limited definitions of heritage and the boundaries of nature/culture, revealing how these are incompatible with Kui heritage as their culture conflicts with the nation’s normative value structures and perceptions of cultural heritage and the ‘Thai’ identity.

1.2 How do communities respond to the endangerment of their heritage?
In this second question, the three examples of endangered Kui heritage are considered, alongside examples of new spaces for cultural preservation and heritagisation that have emerged to preserve, adapt and appropriate Kui elephant heritage.

1.3 How do responses to cultural endangerment impact perceptions of authenticity?

This final question explores diverging opinions within the Kui community over the authenticity of traditions that have been adapted in response to endangerment and whether the endangered traditions should be preserved at all.

In addition to exploring the issues of (in)visibility, (mis)recognition, and appropriation that many communities face in their relationship with modern nation-states, this thesis ultimately questions the very nature of ‘cultural heritage’.