Born This Way
Coming Soon….
Looking back, Zack Tu Nan, a queer, ethnic Zaiwa activist and student living in the Netherlands, admits that he had a “rough childhood,” but at a young age, he didn’t quite understand why. “So I was feeling it back then, but I couldn't really pinpoint and name exactly what it is,” he notes. In this conversation, Zack reflects on his lifelong navigation through ethnic marginalization, sexual identity, religious oppression, and political displacement, which all now point to the different reasons why.
Zack was born—literally—a rice field in Kachin State, near the China-Myanmar border, in 1994. At the time of his birth, his parents were running for their lives from Burmese military brutality. They landed in a small village in the Kachin backcountry, run by the KIA (Kachin Independence Army). The village had no electricity, in fact little infrastructure of any kind, as well as no formal, government-run school or other state services. Yet despite these challenges, he fondly remembers the richness of the fertile land, family farming, and growing up in a home shaped by traditional Zaiwa culture, an ethnic minority native to the China–Myanmar borderlands.
After attending school in a KIA-administered facility, he attended a the government-controlled town of Loi Je. Zack’s integration into Burmese public school there marked the first time he felt the repercussions of Bamar cultural domination and the painful consequences of the government Burmanization policies. He was forced to conform: his family name was dropped, his pronunciation mocked, and his distinct identity erased. Even his given name, “Tu Nan”—what he says is a “beautiful” name in Zaiwa culture—was routinely disparaged for its unintended connotations in Burmese (တူးနံ): the black char on food when it is burned.
Alongside this ethnic and cultural marginalization, Zack also navigated a complex inner and outer journey regarding his sexual identity. From a young age, he experienced gender nonconformity— preferring dolls to toy guns, gravitating toward female friends— but had neither the language nor cultural space to express those feelings. He describes growing up with “an innate inferiority complex” and suppressing his instincts due to societal taboos. His identity crisis was further complicated by the rigid boundaries of his Christian upbringing. In the Zaiwa and broader Kachin Christian communities (who had been converted by American missionaries roughly a century ago), homosexuality is strictly condemned. Zack describes how Christian doctrine leaves “no in-between” for LGBT people: “It’s straightforward—you go to hell!” When he finally came out as an adult, his deeply religious mother believed his sexual orientation endangered his soul.
Even as he candidly acknowledges the homophobia within his own ethnic community, he points to an irony in Dutch liberalism: expressions of physical affection between men— common in Myanmar— are considered taboo unless clearly marked as romantic. “Here, even affection between friends is stigmatized,” he notes.
Zack’s reflection on identity echoes yet another facet of his journey of understanding: the importance of “decolonization” and cultural reclamation. In adulthood, he has learned just how much Christianity has altered Zaiwa cultural and spiritual beliefs and practices. Christian missionaries condemned animist practices and reshaped community structures. Christianized villages ostracized those who resisted conversion, considering their ancestral customs as barbaric. Zack now seeks to recover the Zaiwa’s pre-Christian knowledge systems, including animist understandings of gender as dual-spirited, and healing through nature-based spiritual mediums called dumsa. He says this journey is more than academic, it is a journey of self-healing and self-discovery.
Because of the the violence unleashed since the coup, conducting further research into this is challenging; he has to conduct it online, far from home and the Zaiwa elders that still practice animism, many of whom are in their elder years and in fragile health. Zach fears that these traditions may vanish before he can document them. He has also begun relearning the Zaiwa written language through online lessons and is passionate about preserving its oral storytelling traditions and spiritual rituals. He believes that this work will become the focus of a planned documentary, which will draw on his knowledge of oral storytelling, animism, and Zaiwa cosmology—linking these elements to global indigenous struggles and frameworks of decolonization.
Returning to the topic of schooling, Zack explains that he passed the national matriculation with high marks—the first in his family to do so! He spent a gap year in Yangon while awaiting university admission, and during that time, he enrolled in an English-language program. Admitted to dental school in Mandalay, he continued studying English independently there, giving free tours to foreign visitors at U Bein Bridge to practice his speaking skills. It was through those encounters that he first developed an interest in Western culture, and began dreaming of an international education.
He studied in Mandalay for three years. But although he performed well, he found the required learning style of rote memorization complete drudgery. Eventually, he dropped out, and returned to Yangon, enrolling in the U.S.-accredited online university, where he studied business administration. To support himself, he worked as a yoga and Zumba instructor, and eventually opened his own studio—one of the first of its kind in Myanmar.
During the democratic transition, he participated in development trainings and started raising funds for internally displaced people (IDPs) in his home state. However, his activism put him at risk. His fundraising events were targeted, fellow organizers arrested, and hotel staff threatened by police. With the political persecution and the problems associated with his sexual and ethnic identity, he began to feel that it wasn’t safe for him anywhere in Myanmar anymore, not in Kachin, nor in Mandalay, nor in Yangon. He finally decided to seek asylum in the Netherlands.
However, the Dutch asylum process was anything but welcoming. Immigration authorities refused to recognize the danger of his situation, insisting that Myanmar was safe for him to return, and he was placed in a refugee camp while awaiting the decision to deport him. He was then moved to a deportation facility and detained when Covid hit, and everything ground to a halt, including his deportation orders. He ran away from the detention center and spent over a year living undocumented in the country with the local Kachin church community. He eventually received asylum after years of legal struggle. Though grateful for his safety, he criticizes the Dutch asylum system. “We were treated like criminals.”
Zack turns his attention to the transition period in Myanmar between 2010-2020. He critiques as a myth the narrative of a uniformly democratic Myanmar during that time. For example, he notes that many ethnic groups—especially in Kachin—did not experience peace or progress. He recalls once admiring Aung San Suu Kyi, and once even snuck out of school to just to be able to attend her speech, only to be whipped by his teacher for doing so. But he later felt betrayed when Suu Kyi and her government ignore the suffering of Kachin people, much like they ignored the Rohingya genocide.
In reflecting on Myanmar’s ethnic hierarchy, Zack highlights the dominance of Bamar cultural norms: Bamar dress as the national costume, Bamar historical figures as the national heroes, the Burmese as the national language. The erasures of other communities’ dress, language and important figures persist even among educated urbanites and in international discourse. “We were always excluded.”
Throughout Zack’s life, he has had to grapple with scars born of the structural exclusion found in both authoritarian and liberal societies alike—from being stripped of his family name in Burma, having his sexuality questioned, or being assigned a number in a Dutch refugee camp. And describing his overall journey, he admits, “I feel actually quite lonely.” He finds that not many younger Zaiwas are equally as interested in his community’s traditional practices topics, and he faces backlash on social media both because of his interest in animism, and his sexual orientation. He concludes, “Of course, I want to move on to the future. I want to live my life! The past doesn't mean that I can just bury it, because the past is still haunting me here right now in the present.”
But despite the trauma and frustration, Zack finds strength in reclaiming his story—and in asserting a Zaiwa identity that refuses to be erased by Christian doctrine, military oppression, or Western frameworks of progress. His work as a filmmaker and advocate is rooted not in politics alone, but in cultural survival and personal healing. As he puts it, “I carry the weight of my family, my kinship, my people and my community.”
Zack Tu Nan would like to add the following two messages:
The song in the introduction is Lahpai Zau Hkam, called “Myu Tsaw Salum,” translated as Patriotic Heart. I grew up listening to this song, and it is still very relevant today. It is about the destruction of our Kachin land, its nature, and our people’s struggles under oppression and foreign ownership of our resources and land, while we are chased out of our own homeland. It is also a poetic song and a call for Kachin people to take action, to better protect our land and identity. The Kachin music featured in this episode is an expression of Kachin pride and in the spirit of community, specifically for use in this context. As with this music, all aspects of Kachin cultural and intellectual heritage, including music, arts, garments, culinary traditions, symbols, stories, rituals, and other expressions, belong collectively to the Kachin people and must not be used, reproduced, or represented without the explicit permission of the Kachin community.
We also add this note after consultation with Zack Tu Nan: The Insight Myanmar Podcast customarily begins and ends each episode with traditional Burmese Buddhist chanting and music, which has become a recognizable element of our format and is valued by many of our listeners. We are, however, mindful that these sounds do not hold the same significance for all. For some members of Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minority communities, this chanting and music are a reminder of systemic efforts to enforce cultural and religious conformity, and they evoke painful personal and collective memories. In particular, our guest in this episode, speaking from a Kachin Christian perspective, shared how such practices have been experienced not as neutral expressions of culture, but as tools of coercion that challenge faith and identity. We respectfully acknowledge this reality. As always, we remain committed to providing a platform for diverse voices and to honoring the lived experiences of all who share their stories with us.