Transcript: Episode #228: Shan Chronicles

Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.

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Host 0:37

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Host 2:15

Our guest today on insight Myanmar podcast is Jane Ferguson who is the author of repossessing Shan land and we'll be talking extensively about her research into Shen people history, culture, music, etc, which I'm really looking forward to bringing that identity and background to our listeners. So Jane, thanks so much for taking the time to come on and talk about your book.

Jane Ferguson 2:37

Well, thank you for having me.

Host 2:39

So let's get right into it. I've started off Can you tell us what brought you as perhaps personally, perhaps professionally, academically, whatever it was to being interested initially, not just in Myanmar as a country, but more specifically with the Shen people and culture and history and that aspect of Myanmar?

Jane Ferguson 3:00

Well, it started off when I was an undergraduate anthropology student, I was an exchange student for a semester at Chiang Mai University, and also a student activist, I'd always been one of these people who would, you know, read the leftist press, are you interested in issues of social change, but it was at that experience in GMI, in 1998, that I met some Burmese activists and I was really well not only just impressed and humbled by their incredible experience, but also really became engaged and interested in friends with them, as well. And afterwards, like after I finished undergrad, I was working for human rights NGO media group focusing on border issues, and the direct experience of working with folks and getting to know the a little bit more about the ethnic tapestry, and then the ongoing civil war in Burma, made me want to ask more anthropological questions related to that. And yeah, simply, it started with a relatively small interest but grew into something that I wanted to dedicate more time and energy to working towards understanding more. Right.

Host 4:25

So the culmination of your research, at least to this date, came in the form of this book that came out several years ago. repossessing Shan land, I'd like to ask you about that title. The the choice of repossessing so can you tell us why you chose to use the word repossessing Chatlin and what that means and what you're trying to impart?

Jane Ferguson 4:45

Thanks. Yeah, so many academic books. It's almost a cliche, that an academic book will have a gerund in the title and then you know, a noun and then the subtitle of What I was interested in about repossessing because thinking, well, first of all, the idea of, you know, buying something on credit, and then having it repossessed, there's this idea about ownership. But also how repossession, especially for poor and impoverished people is something that's quite traumatic. And it often takes place without legal, you know, court proceedings. So, you know, you can think of somebody who has bought a car and they can't afford to make payments on it. And then all of a sudden, the repo man comes and takes it out from under them. So the but then there's also this idea of ownership and use. And so the idea that, you know, Shawn, land really belongs to us this territory, this nation state, that there's a movement to try to reclaim that. But then also, depending on the political and legal context, it's changed over the years. So even this idea of repossession as both a concept and as a metaphor, engages these different aspects of what does rightful ownership mean? What does the law mean? Who has political power, or military power to repossess it asks all these kinds of questions. So that's why I wanted to use that particular gerund. And the concept to think about the changing idea of what does political power What does political authority What does nation state? What does territory mean, across different historical time periods?

Host 6:46

Gosh, asking the question about anything related to Myanmar of what does the law mean? Or what does ownership mean? That's a difficult answer, no matter what part of Myanmar you're talking about. Yeah.

Jane Ferguson 6:56

Well, because also, it raises this question, and especially for thinking about the interrelationship between nation states in Southeast Asia principally, but really, anywhere. How come there's some nation states that are recognized by the UN? And how come there's some that aren't? And what was what was the historical process that allowed both Burma and Thailand to emerge the way they did, and then shot land is in between, in a way? So what was the Shan political authority simply late to the party and not be being able to achieve this independence? So you know, asking this question about different kinds of nation states all over the world, is generative. And then when there's this movement, to say that, yes, we deserve to be a nation state on the international scene, what's going on internally, but then also, what does it mean, whether it's recognized or not?

Host 7:56

Right, exactly. And that's what we'll get into much more in this interview. Before we get to some of the more granular details. I think we have a variety of people listening, some who are quite familiar with Myanmar history and people and geography and some who are not or really just know about what's known as the dry zone in the bar. So can you start us off by just explaining a bit about we're talking about Shan State, the Shan people? Can you give us just a very brief and rough, general broad stroke of the geography, the size, the population, the peoples that we're talking about when we're looking at Chatlin? Sure,

Jane Ferguson 8:33

yeah. So Shan State in Myanmar today is in the northeast of the country. It's the largest state in Myanmar, geographically, and it's situated between, so it's in the Northeast east of Myanmar. So it shares a very long border with Yunnan province in China, and then also shares a border with both Laos and northern Thailand. So it's, it's actually part of what became known by the DEA as the Golden Triangle, and the in this upland area, it had been prior to British colonization in the 19th century, it had been populated by lowland wet rice, Paddy agricultural small state limits, and then Upplands swidden slash and burn art agriculturalists. So it's known as the Shang plateau. And it had been kind of this this cultural Crossroads as well between upland Southeast Asia and then China, but then also right in between, sort of South Asia been moving through Myanmar up towards China, and it's also the location of the famous steel wells Burma Road during World War Two. And

Host 9:58

now that we have a bit more detail was about the location of it. What can you tell us? As far as we know, because it sounds like from your book, these were not exactly certain, but what are the history of who the Shan people are and how they ended up where they are? Well,

Jane Ferguson 10:14

the Shan people, as they're understood today are understood as an ethnic group, but prior to colonialism. And this is another important part about, about the book that I explore in detail, thinking about what does it mean to be a citizen? What does it mean to be a member of an ethnic group, because oftentimes, ethnicity or you know, one's nationality can be taken as a taken for granted, given like you simply are French, you simply are American. But what's, you know, biologically, we're all members of the same species. And prior to ethnic categories, or prior to the ways in which the nation state categorized people, certainly people were aware of cultural difference, but they didn't mean the same thing that they do to people today. That to be Shan was a kind of cultural ecology in the sense that when belonged to a Theravada, a Buddhist statelet. And also this idea of ethnic category, or status was more of a class issue than something that we might consider as kind of biological or, or racial. So in that sense to be Shawn, meant to be Buddhist, engaged in Patty agriculture. And then there were other groups, of course, but they would often be referred to, according to go, there'd be different language names for different groups. And you'd have groups that would be up in the hills and engaging in slash and burn agriculture. But there's a famous book by it's called political systems of Highland Burma by Edmund Leach, and it was written in 1954. And he made the observation that there would be some oscillation between these ethnic categories. So to summarize what the Shan plateau was like, you have these political configurations based on wet rice, Paddy agriculture, Buddhist practice in the valleys, and then up in the hills, you'd have rotating agriculture, and different political different kinship systems, different cultural systems that we'd see. But it wasn't something that was set in stone, as it were, there's a great deal more flexibility to ethnicity than a simple map with with, you know, coloring the maps, and then there's, you know, one color ends and the other begins, it's not like a jigsaw puzzle, so much as I describe it as a coral reef of cultural nuance and cultural difference that isn't set in stone.

Host 13:05

Yeah, and from what I've gleaned through reading different books accounting for this, there's a common theme there that the way that the British colonials came in, and tried to understand what race was and race classifications really changed a lot of the the understanding the composition, even of the population going forward of trying to have these strict classifications according to a British census system that the peoples of what we now call Myanmar didn't necessarily adhere to. But now post British is one of their one of their many, many legacies left behind.

Jane Ferguson 13:42

Yeah, that's a really good point. Because another research project that I've done is the history of censuses in Burma, and looking at how when the British colonized Burma, and they didn't colonize it as a separate territory, initially, they they annexed it as a province of British India. And, you know, censuses with their fetishization of lists and categories. They actually for initial censuses, they used the census categories that they developed in Gaul for using those categories that were based on ideas of caste, or British ideas of caste imposed upon India and then tried to incorporate the same list. It went when they were surveying people in in Burma, and then they found that people weren't able to respond to you know, imagine somebody coming up to you and saying, Okay, what's your caste category? If if that's something that's not culturally legible to you, you're not going to be able to return an answer. A lot of people responded to this saying, Oh, yes, I'm a I'm a Thumma Lu. I am a commoner and you know, they didn't have the box to tick on the on the Census form. And so the British decided that caste would not be a useful category to understand what they called Race and tribe in Burma. So they changed and decided to look at language. What's the surest criterion of difference? They the British thought, but then, you know, as we know, people speak multiple languages, they might not have a specific word for their language. And, you know, what, what language are you going to say, when you might, you know, be a kid have one parent that speaks one language and the other speaks another and then you speak a different language in school? That it's always each each kind of question leads to further fractals of confusion and difference, but in the process of colonization and territorialization, they want to create a fixed impression of what's going on for the purposes of empire and ruling, they're not interested in these complex questions of identity at the individual level.

Host 16:12

So checking one box doesn't account for the fluidity that really defined a lot of the way that people moved within that society at the time.

Jane Ferguson 16:20

Yeah, but even to say that the ethnic categories didn't mean the same thing before is not to romanticize the past, either. Because there were a lot of wars over the years, and also many cases in which the feudal and rice based economies that the poor were could be, you know, captured as war captives, they could, they would be servants to others, or they would be starving while they're sending their rice crops on up to the local lord. So I certainly don't want to romanticize the ancient kingdoms, even though it is part of mainland Southeast Asian state building to romanticize those pre colonial kingdoms to say that, yes, back in the ancient days, we had powerful kings and the people were well fed and happy.

Host 17:18

Sometimes that fluidity was not necessarily a good sign. I mean, that fluidity might be a result of having have been enslaved or have have for safety, identifying more like this than that, or, or might be a result of something that's not necessarily a very positive thing. It's just the nature of the fluidity that was taking place. True.

Jane Ferguson 17:40

Yeah. And this is the other the other thing that impressed me by, you know, I spent two and a half years in a Shan village. And it was only a minority of the people in that village that was monolingual. For the most part, people spoke two, three, even four different languages as part of their their daily social existence. And as part of their survival that this is another aspect, I use the metaphor of a prestige ladder, when talking about multilingualism, that the higher up your language is on the prestige ladder, the less likely you're going to learn other languages. So yeah, so how many Australians how many Americans only speak English, it's because it's perceived as this international language. And they might not see it as necessary for to learn another language because other people will learn English. So in the case of Shadowland, for example, if you're an ethnic minority, and you're, for example, aka in Shan State, you would learn Shan in the marketplace. And you're you'd speak aka at home in your village. But when you're going down to the marketplace, you would need to learn shine. And then if you went to state schools, or watch television, you would have to learn Burmese, whereas the person who's Burma and in the heartland would have no immediate or political incentive to learn either shine, or aka.

Host 19:18

Yeah, indeed, in all of my experiences in Burma, just personally speaking, there was only one Burmese person I've ever met that learn to speak in ethnic language and was in a kitchen village and wasn't fluent in kitchen, but picked up the kitchen language. And that was really an outlier of anything I'd heard. But, you know, also this issue of identity it also as you were talking, it makes me think when you look at this fluidity of, you know, how you how do you define identity and then you have to go back a step and say, Well, why do you even have to define identity? I mean, that's kind of an assumption you also have to examine. But one of the things that comes up to me and hearing you say that is how many different names a Burmese person will have. Sometimes they will have those names simultaneously. Sometimes they will have them in different stages of life. And this case, and you know, sometimes they will have it as a monk name or a revolutionary name or, you know, a pen name or something or a nickname. And what I'm thinking of now is when I was spending time in monasteries, and I was, and I never became a monk, but but there were certain times I was contemplating it and just thinking about how life would change with that even temporarily. And one of the things I was thinking about was it, it was maybe silly, maybe not, but I it was the loss of name and realizing that the name like I had so much attachment to this, this personhood being called by this name, which was given by my parents, and I've been known ever since. And to even for a short period, to have that name no longer appear and to be given a poly name was a little jarring in some ways, and a little bit like, Huh, you know, and, and yet, I think if I were to explain that, that I don't want to say hesitation or discomfort but but definitely like a thing I have to consider. There's also some kind of beauty to it, that I'm I'm I'm now it's more down the road of the transformation process of really, really dedicating to a life in robes even for a month or something but but really taking on that new identity. So it's exciting as well. But it's something I have to think about. Whereas with my Burmese friends, it was I just I never really saw that attachment to name, you know, that, that an attachment to name is another way of saying and attachment to identity.

Jane Ferguson 21:32

Well, yeah, and then but then also there's a there's a matter of, you know, who has the power to name and the political baggage or the cultural baggage that it takes with you. And so, there's the there's this, you know, this notion of whether something's an endo nem you know, whether it's a name that I came up with, to name myself on my own or an Exo name, and what other people call me. So, thinking about the history of, you know, that even for example, talking about Shan Shan SHA n is the English term for Shang and the way it's written in Burmese, the written form is incorporated from Siam. And so the shine are considered to be in the same ethno linguistic group as the Thai the Siamese. And so the Burmese spelling of the name reflects that but it was in old Well, the Myanmar meant otoko Sudan. So the the the ruling books, the legal books that they used for administration, they would refer to the Shan people as basically kingdoms towards the northeast of amarapura, Mendeley, etc, the Burmese lowlands, but shine also included what they called Euodia or LAO. So it was a much bigger group than those who are mapped and identified as citizens in Shan State today. So again, you know, even even just this idea that, you know, back in, oh, gosh, 1000s of years ago, Herodotus named what was part of Turkey as Asia, and then that becomes, you know, all these other places get incorporated later. So even just the history of naming and mapping, you know, that seen as a kind of top down project, but then, existentially what does it mean to individuals? What does nation building mean to individuals is another question altogether?

Host 23:47

Yeah, yeah, certainly, this is all really fascinating. And taking a bit of a tangent from some of the notes I've prepared on your book, but I'm really happy that we have because this is this is I can go on with this forever. But getting back to your book, and the story you tell that we can give to our listeners is, Sir Ken Fah, who is one of the the first primary historical figures in Shan history who holds a great importance. So can you first correct my pronunciation and then tell us who he who he was and why it was important.

Jane Ferguson 24:15

sdOkay, well, so clarify is he's the legendary first king of a united Shan land. So he's, and the interesting thing about his story is, you know, okay, every major Southeast Asian nation state that's based on a an ethnic majority majority group will have its national heroes that lived in the past that first of all, their their kingdoms were in decline, but then there was somebody strong somebody charismatic, who is able to unite all of the kingdoms into a strong and thriving empire. So the idea of a historical Golden Age is really important for ideas of nationalism in the present. And I'm not looking at it from the point of view of saying that, Oh, yes, this is this was true or this was factual, but I'm really interested in what these stories mean to the people who tell them and what kind of political implications they have for the future. Again, this, this idea of going back to the gerund of the repossessing, is that we have this Golden Empire in the past, we need to repossess it, we need to revive this this empire. I mean, you can think about how this could be rooted in different kinds of political movements, even even right wing ones that we need to reclaim this, this great place that existed before. But in any case, so So Canva, he was, he was born in a royal household in Macau. This was the center of chan political power about 1000 years ago. And due to Palace political problems, he was one of triplets. So three three triplet boys and him and his mother or his brothers and his mother, they were exiled from the palace because they there was a kind of a disagreement that they thought that she was trying to usurp power from one of the other, more major queens, and they ended up being exiled, but then they were taken in and cared for by a family of tigers. So again, having a mythical dimension of it, adds intrigue, but then also add symbolic power to the story, but so Confor he also his brothers growing up were tiger cubs, and they used to play and tussle and in one tussle, he was attacked in a in a playful wrestling match by one of his tiger brothers, and was scratched down his torso. And so that gave him his name. So means Tiger can scratch and fire so heavenly so that that became his known de guerre, as it were. And once the throne was vacant back in Bilbao, he was already an adult, and he was able to go and assume the throne, and then also extend the empire of Macau and in Shan nationalist history. They talk about uniting the shine stateless, it's never about political subsuming or taking over by force or whether these other stateless we're happy about it. But this idea that there can be a powerful and united shine Empire is something that's entirely a projection on the on the past, and so confab is the figure that represents that. So he's He's the great, yeah, powerful king in Shawn history. But according to these historical discourses, whether he really existed or not, I can't say we only have the evidence that exists to try to even access that past. But it's a powerful narrative. And it's one that's inspired a lot of these Shan separatist movements today.

Host 28:14

And we're jumping ahead a bit but just to ask this question, because it relates to the importance and the legacy of this figure. One of the things that I read into why he would be so important and I want to get your take on this is that there's a legacy through really all these periods, the Bomar kingdoms, the British colonial period, different forms of democracy. And the, of course, the military dictatorship, that there has never been a way for the Shan people to truly unite as one unit, which would make their interests more powerful and more possible to achieve their aims. And so what I read into some of the importance that you describe of this figure is that he represents a a possible legacy, your pathway to a united Shan movement, that's never happened. And so that's why he looms so large is what's your take on that?

Jane Ferguson 29:08

Well, that's part of it. But also, even the idea that by speaking a similar language, that different political groups would therefore be united. I mean, a language is not an existential glue. It's not a political glue. And there, you could say that, well, I mean, Sean, and Ty, or various versions of Shawn, are as different as you Romance languages are in Europe. So you could say well, wait a minute, you know, Portuguese and and French, they're in the same language family, how come they're not united? You know, they it's, you know, language or cultural similarity is very different from political affiliation, and even this idea that people are of a the same race. They're sure therefore they should be united. That's even suggesting well, okay, well, all human beings, we all share 99% of the DNA with each other. We're all the same species. Why do we have political problems? It's this projection or this idea that, Oh, you speak the same language family, therefore you should be united? Well, it's actually often from the perspective of the politically powerful that want to make this argument against those who are less powerful or want to use that as a way for people to, to get together, you know, they talk about unity, but actually what they mean is Anschluss or subsuming, and using this, this racial argument, in order to you know, mystify other relations that include economics, or gender, or geographic location, a number a myriad other ones, a when the British colonized Burma, upper Burma, and then wanted to, they saw on the Burmese map, that there's all of these different Shan State lists, but then they were going to visit them and get them together. And they realized that lots of these so called Shawn princes hadn't even met each other, they didn't necessarily have a political incentive to get together, you know, you don't, you're not necessarily going to hang out with people who are in the same cultural group or linguistic group unless you have business to go there.

Host 31:31

That's really interesting. And I appreciate you for unpacking that question and the complexities behind that more general inquiry. And you also referenced in your answer, the similarities between the Shawn and Ty. And I think this segues into the next question where you point out in the book, one of your main themes really is how the Shan are located geographically between Myanmar Bomar and previous times the Braemar kingdom in and Thailand. And But apart from this physical proximity, there's also this kind of psychological tension and historically being sandwiched between these two large empires, at least through most eras of history when the Chung kings or Shan states were, were not so powerful and unified. So what can you say about how the Shan have had to chart out their identity while having to navigate these more formidable powers? Both now? And historically?

Jane Ferguson 32:27

Yeah, thanks. I mean, part of it. Part of it is just a methodology where when people will say, Okay, you're looking at an ethnic minority group, so you have to interrogate the minority? Well, okay. You have to find out what makes them the minority, but you can't just study the minority alone, you have to look at it in relationship with the majority, you have to interrogate the majority group and then for the shine, it becomes a situation and from my work, was looking at nation state building in Shan land, but in relation to nation state building in Myanmar, as well as nation state building in Thailand. And so as part of Thai Nash nation building in the 19th century, and they have a different form of State Building, because not being formal, formerly colonized by a European power meant that you had a royal family, a Thai monarchy, that was integrating and creating a nation state from above, but not against a European enemy. It wasn't a nationalist movement that rose up to oust a European power the same way that Burmese nationalism came about. And there's another important point about thinking about nation state building in Southeast Asia, because prior to colonialism prior to the 19th century, Burma and Siam were very comparable, in many ways, a both ruled by a lowlands ethnic Well, a majority group, with groups in the highlands, a Theravada, Buddhism, wet rice paddy agriculture. So in other words of cultural ecology, which is very similar between Burma and Siam, but then now in 2023, how is it that within Burma, there are 135 official ethnic groups, according to the official government list, whereas in Thailand, to be a Thai citizen means that you are ethnically Thai? And then if you're not ethnically Thai, you're not a full citizen, as it were. So is it really about demographic difference? Or is it more about a different history of state building and the relationship between the state and its ideas of race and ethnicity and how that state makes lists? And so for the Shan in putting Killer because there are many Shawn that became Thai because they happen to be on the Siamese side of the border when Thailand was state building, and they are full time citizens. But there's part of this historic myth of the migration of the Thai peoples down from down from what we have down from China and then created paddy rice agriculture. It's a you know, it's a historical myth of the by races, as it were. And so, yeah, the Shan have very much been absorbed into this Thai nationalist myth, where they're seen as being the elder brothers of the Thai. And for that very reason, Shawn refugees in Thailand today can not get refugee status within the UNHCR, the Thai government won't grip won't grant back to them.

Host 36:04

And you also tell a really interesting story in the book, which I didn't know and really goes into this question of identity and statehood and nationality and everything else. And that's this super famous story that happened a few years ago of the boys that are trapped in this cave in Thailand. So till till that till what happened and why that's so significant. Well, it's

Jane Ferguson 36:28

a fascinating story. So it was only in June, July of 2018, in which this was in Merseyside, like right near the border to two Myanmar, in which I believe it was 12 boys and their soccer coach went into the Tom DeLonge, unknown, the sleeping princess cave, to because it was one of the boys birthday, and they wanted to make merit or go explore the cave and is something that's fun to do. But the cave, there was an unseasonally or unseasonally, early heavy rain. And so the boys and their their coach were trapped in the, in the cave. And then there was a huge rescue I was I was in Northern Thailand at the time, and I was watching this I was glued to the national news. I didn't realize until I was talking to my stepbrother in Washington, DC that it reached world news, like the whole world was worried about these boys in the cave. And they were called Thai boys in the cave stuck in the cave. And then I quickly learned from Shan friends in Northern Thailand, that actually four of the people. So three of the boys and their coach, were stateless. They were not citizens of Thailand. And after the heroic rescue, I mean, it was absolutely amazing that the whole thing was successful. And they got all of the boys out of the cave, after, I believe it was nearly two weeks, stuck in that in that cave, very deep in there. And then, you know, they became national heroes. And they were invited the soccer team, they were invited to go to Manchester to practice with Manchester United, because so many of them were Manchester United fans, they were invited to be on the Ellen show in Los Angeles. And so going back to the issue about four of them being stateless. If you don't have a nationality, you can't apply for a passport, how are you going to fly to Los Angeles, if you can't check in for your flight with your passport, you're not going to get a visa either. And so the government, the military government of Prelude, at the time gate, made an exception and gave these four boys or the three boys and their coach gave them Thai citizenship, because this would be very embarrassing for Thailand to have this, you know, this story go reach international news that these, you know, these boys wouldn't be able to be on the Ellen Show or they wouldn't be able to go to Manchester. So rather than explore the contradictions in you know, Thai citizenship policy, which has a very restricted citizenship or the problem of, you know, four of the boys being stateless, the government just chose to slap passports on them. And so I use that story to open up questions of what does everyday statelessness mean and what are some of the contradictions in Thailand's policy even though it's ideologically warm towards the shine as being an ethnic brother, they make it extremely difficult for a stateless shine, to eke out an existence and in May Many ways, there is a whole lot of bigotry on everyday bigotry on the part of ties towards Shan people.

Host 40:09

Yeah, those are some complex issues. And that's it's such a fascinating moment in time of that, the cave rescue just captivating certain attention. And suddenly it shines this light through the backdoor of the stateless nature of and how to resolve it. And they just do by giving them a quick citizenship kind of under the table to not really make more out of it than it seems. But, but that doesn't really do anything for the Shan people in community that are in similar situations and haven't found their way to international celebrity. Yeah,

Jane Ferguson 40:45

well, I mean, it's also one of these things where if somebody does something that good and really remarkable, that they the state will almost, you know, make an exception to its rules. I compare it in another lecture that I've given on the topic of the cave rescue, because I explore the Ron Howard movie called 13 lives which traumatizes the cave rescue. But thinking of another case, which went viral, in which it was a toddler, who was in a dangling from a balcony on the fifth floor of a Paris apartment building, in which an African migrant, he was able to climb up, you know, scale up the side of the building, like a real life spider man, a man from Mali, I believe, and you rescued the child. And because somebody had their their smartphone and made a video of this, it absolutely went viral around the world. And the French president Emmanuel Macron, had given him citizenship for rescuing the child. And it's like, you have to do something remarkable or amazing to to become a citizen, and you have to do something that seen as good for the world. So if he hadn't made it, or if he had dropped the child, he wouldn't have gotten citizenship the same way. That if, sadly, if the if the cave boys had perished in the cave, it would be a moot point. So there's an aspect of, I would call it media PR, if I was going to look at it really cynically. And I think I do look at it really cynically, that it's only the special cases that get that get exceptions to the rules. And that's what defines the sovereign. That's what defines the power of the state to decide to say like, Okay, we're going to make these rules, they're going to apply to most people. And then if somebody does something amazing or remarkable, okay, we can give you a special privilege, we'll just do that. But we're not going to change things for the majority. Because, frankly, the Thai economy has benefited for decades on the marginalized, and the migrant labor that comes across the border into Thailand and giving them citizenship would give them access to more rights in the country. So

Host 43:07

we've been bouncing around a bit and talking about some of the historical origins and mythical figures and then talking about some current events, but I want to place us in a time of the pre colonial era, and just try to just get an understanding of what of what you've understood about the Shan communities and peoples and how they lived in pre colonial areas balancing both the stronger Bomar kings as well as the some of the Thai kingdoms that were that they they shared more. They were closer with in terms of ethnicity and language than they were with Bomar even though they're on the side of the border now, but what you can tell us about what stands out in the pre colonial era? Okay, yeah,

Jane Ferguson 43:53

it's an interesting question. Because it because, you know, the problem with, you know, studying the past is that basically, it's, well, it's gone, first of all, and so, you know, there's always just these impressions that we have about it, and that we only can access the past based on the evidence that we have at the present. So, you know, history is always this ever changing discourse of thinking about what's relevant to today. Sure. So, so first of all, you know, thinking about the Upplands in, in Southeast Asia, you know, textual evidence might be Buddhist scriptures, but then also will be what the Thai chronicles the poems oudin or the Yassa when the history of kings in Burmese and so when you're using something like royal Chronicles, you have to read between the lines and bear in mind that the royal Chronicles are seeking to do Take events and use them for the purposes of glorifying the present political regime. And so, you know, again, this, this is like, you know, looking at nationalist history that the nation writes its history for its own purposes, and then trying to to imagine beyond that, you know, saying that, you know, even this idea of repossessing Shawn land or the kingdom of silicon phi, is suggesting that there was this existential unity of Thai people, you know, across this entire massive region of the Atlantic in the same way that saying that the ancient phagon kingdom was all of the Brahma people united, and subsuming all of these other minorities. Or you could say the same thing about Sukhothai. You know, it's taking an image in the present and projecting it onto the past. And I can say, with a good deal of certainty that all of the various stateless, you know, people who existed or were, you know, we're living in places like, like Ha, might have not even thought of themselves as Oh, I am a Sean person of Macau, it reminds me of a little sketch when Monty Python and the quest for the Holy Grail in which King Arthur comes across a few people who are like moving mug from one place to the other and says, you know, who lives in that castle? And if you are a Britain's, oh, we're not Britain's Yeah, we're some, you know, who gives you the right to be our king, it was almost as if they hadn't, well, they hadn't got the memo, that they were British, or that they were subjects to the king. So again, unless you have these kind of communication mechanisms, or unless you have state building practices that include, you know, allegiance at a very local level, why would people necessarily think of themselves as as part of an empire, and in the same way, in the basic way, like for Anthropology, 101 of the things that we teach is, the culture is learned, like you don't learn, you don't know you're a citizen of a place unless there's some mechanism for you to to learn about it. So just to summarize a little bit more and back to the original question, what was culture like in Upplands Shan land. And, you know, I mentioned that historically, these thigh these shine statements, were engaged in wet rice at agriculture, and Theravada Buddhism. So just for looking at the map of Shan State today, you can see that the eastern third of Shan State is cut off by the salween river. And there are practices of Buddhism, where you can see that there's more evidence of influence from Cambodian style Buddhism, all the way up to the eastern third of the Shan State, whereas the Western two thirds of the Shan State had more political interaction with the Burma low lens. And so more political connection also means more Burma style, Buddhism. So again, you know, you can speak one language, but then practice religion in a way like say, you know, I might be English speaking, but I might practice Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox style, Catholicism. So that's the difference I wanted to highlight there. And

Host 48:34

in terms of political organization, what can you say about the way that these statements intersected in and corresponded to each other as well as their relation with the marking as well as any other powers in the region that would have been relevant?

Jane Ferguson 48:51

Yeah, thanks for that. I mean, the, you know, thinking of small, stateless, tiny, tiny kingdoms. And this is a really important thing to bear in mind about Southeast Asian history, especially when we're talking about a period before the 19th century, is that unlike South Asian, unlike East Asia, historically, mainland Southeast Asia had a tremendous abundance of land and very few people. So with a very low population density, in order to build a state, there's this fundamental problem of needing people to work in the fields needing people to build your pagodas and, and palaces. So in some ways that gave what we would call the peasantry, a lot of political power in the sense that if they didn't like where they were living or where they were working, they could vote with their feet and find find fields elsewhere. So, but then there's also this question of, you know, needing, needing protection or needing to have some I'm sort of sibility in order to survive. So it's no coincidence that the spread of Buddhism and mainland Southeast Asia also coincided with state building and specifically wet rice agriculture. So there's a key ecological difference here, in that wet rice agriculture, the beautiful rice, green rice paddies that we see in picture postcards from Southeast Asia. Those are the most productive forms of agriculture in terms of protein output per hectare, but they're the most laborious. So you know, there's there's that that trade off there. So you have to have this organization of labor. And then the upland swidden, rice agriculture is does not have the same level of outputs that wet rice agriculture has, and it's more flexible in that sense. But again, it's not as as productive. And this also this relationship between various statelets, that it was often you know, the military strategy, it relates to this issue of labor, relative labor scarcity. So in the upland, Southeast Asia, historically, there are very few wars of attrition, you don't want to kill everybody on the enemy side, because then you're losing potential labor. So oftentimes, it was a military strategy for one town to send an army to another town to you know, frighten the throne and so that they could capture some some labor and, and, and take them back. And so, on the one hand, it was useful for the Concord kingdom, okay, we'll just send you a few people, we'll, we'll compromise. But then if somebody else tries to invade us, you're going to protect us, right? And I mentioned that town. Like, ah, in the upper Well, it's in northern Shan State today. But like Ha actually means multiple slaves, many slaves, in the sense that they were sending tribute they were sending labor to multiple more powerful kingdoms. So even when we're talking about sovereignty, this notion of Westphalian exclusive sovereignty did not exist in Southeast Asia prior to colonialism. And

Host 52:30

in looking at the real powers at the time, like the Bomar kings and the big kingdoms over the years, what was the relationship between these different Shan principalities and when there were strong Mark kingdoms wherever they were located, through the years from the gone to the various places outside Mandalay, and everywhere else? How did those centers of power relate to these many Shan principalities?

Jane Ferguson 52:56

Yeah, well, like I said, I mean, the salween River, goes north to south and kind of cuts off the eastern third of what's now Shan state. And so for the most part, you'd have more political influence on the the western side of the Shan State had more political relations with the Burma side. And the eastern side had more political relations with Siam. I mean, this is this is pure geography. There's also a really important point about the history of various kingdoms and as transportation and as military technology changed over hundreds of years, that there became more of a, shall we say, a condensation of political power, in the sense that by the 18th century, for mainland Southeast Asia, there were fewer smaller, independent kingdoms. And there emerged, the kind of I call them the big three. So thinking about Burma, Siamese and Cambodia that all of the other I mean, other kingdoms existed. There was Lana, which is now Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand, and also Lao kingdoms, but they were all paying tribute to one of the big three, the Big Three were actually Vietnam, Siam and, and blah, blah. So for example, Cambodia in Thailand was called a two headed bird, because they were paying tribute both to the Vietnamese and the Siamese and interestingly, in the colonial period, it was Cambodia that asked the French for protectorate status, because they were sick of paying taxes in two to two directions, and they thought that they would be able to mitigate these problems by being a French protectorate and having the French protect them instead of the Siamese or Vietnamese. So there is I mean, talking about the long delay history across mainland Southeast Asia, you have political change, which was a constant well before colonialism. So yeah, there's another aspect to how the pre colonial past is remembered.

Host 55:22

Yeah, exactly. Well, let's move into that colonial period, the British come and colonize Burma and Shan states are affected. So tell us about how the these Shan State limits were impacted by the British colonial presence? Well,

Jane Ferguson 55:39

first of all, I mean, I mentioned earlier that Burma was annexed as a province of British India. But not all of what we see on the map as Myanmar today was annexed as part of that province. There were some areas that were referred to as ministerial Burma or Burma proper, in which the local government and was completely replaced by British authorities or actually, bureaucrats from India and soldiers from India were principally sent in to to manage what's Burma proper or ministerial Burma. And then there were areas that were sectioned off as part of the frontier areas, or they call them the scheduled areas as well, where the local kings local authorities were allowed semi autonomous control of their areas. And the Shan state's plural as it was, under the British were one of these very areas. And so the British had mapped and in some ways, reorganized political authority in these Shan states and allowing 32 independent Princeton's to survive, and to rule themselves locally, rather than be integrated as part of Burma. So that's a really fundamental divide, that created differences for both not only ideas of race and ethnicity in the area, but also this idea that race and ethnicities correspond to territory. I can't emphasize how important this this this idea of, you know, mapping and making this this separate area was and how it was a watershed event, not only in how people think of cultural difference, but how they think of ideas about about land. And for especially for some shine royalty, they saw the colonial period, as very much a golden age for these Shan Princeton's because not only were their enemies neutralized, so the Burmese King was gone and replaced by the British, the Siamese had also negotiated boundaries through treaties. So they were being left alone by the Siamese, but also for some of the Shan princes, if there was a local peasant uprising, they could call upon the British to send in the soldiers to to crush those, those uprisings and the changing the colonial economy meant that more of these shine, princes could benefit through the sale of teak or the sale of tea or the sale of rice. And basically, you know, enjoy their, their their privilege and become richer because of it.

Host 58:44

As we know, with during the British colonial period, there was a real before World War Two there was a nationalist movement led by a number of Bomar students on song being foremost, they're trying to seek independence from British colonial rule. Looking at that pre pre war independence movement. Where did Sean people fit into that? Did they want independence from from British colonial rule? Or did they want some other did they see some may perhaps not in binary terms in terms of, you know, either where we get our independence as a federal democracy or we stay under British colonial rule, maybe there was some other objective or hope that they had but where did the Shan people fit into this largely Bomar led pre World War Two independence movement?

Jane Ferguson 59:34

Yeah, well, first of all, it's, it's a tough question, because you're so another point that you're useful to keep in mind is that the area which is today, Shan state, is probably around 50% ethnic Shan people so there's lots of other groups in Shan state as well. And when we're talking about independence or political motives, these are usually articulated either by politicians or by the media I, whether, whether farmers traders, you know, water buffalo herders, whether they really cared about political independence, will we we can only speculate because the evidence ends up being largely generated by the nationalists and the politicians in terms of textual evidence about that. But one of the projects of the British going back to the late 19th century was to establish these Shan chiefs school outside of town g, in southern Shan State, were the sons of the elite, so very much like a British style eaten or rugby, where you'd send the upper class young boys to go to school together, not only to learn the ways of empire and to play sports together, but also to form these these old boys networks. The British established the Shan chiefs school, because they wanted to foster a sense of Shan identity amongst the shine, ruling elites, they wanted the shine to get together, but also, they wanted them to operate their bureaucracies in ways that were compatible with the British, British Empire, you know, they wanted the Shan states to be more profitable for them. And so they saw this idea of training, Shine ruling classes as one methodology to do that. But by the time of World War Two, you know, these shine elites, and this is another point about how colonialism changed ideas of ruling and ruling elites was that, Sean people in pre colonial days, people would send like, if you if you have a palace, you would send your your princes and princesses to be to live in the court of your ruling class peers. So you know, very much like European elites and the ways in which there'd be a few royal families that would consider be considered marriageable partners, for the elites that a Shan prince would go to study in the court in Mendeley and become fluent in Burmese, but also as a form of political alliances, after colonialism. SHAN elites were sending their kids to well as they could to, to Cambridge, or to Oxford, or even there was a Shan prince who went to study in the US at the Colorado School of Mines. So learning about empire and becoming cosmopolitan meant going to the most elite schools that existed, but going to the elite schools that were the centers of political power, as part of that. So you already see Sean elites, in some ways cut off from their former Burma counterpart parts in their ways of governance. And so through these, you know, these systems of cultivation, we could say, by the time of World War Two, there were some shine elites, some literati that got together and saw the writing on the wall, that it would be the end of European empire, we might want to think about how we're going to organize ourselves for our political future. And for these shine elites, it meant an independent Sean land. And so one of the major things that they had done around 1940, a group of scholars got together and standardized the Shan written script, and wrote a school curriculum for grades one through five, and anticipated that it would be the shine written language, which would be the language of bureaucracy for a future independent shine nation. And again, this was a standardized version of the Southern chance grip. There's lots of different scripts. I won't go into that very much. But when Ong son was in Britain negotiating with Clement Attlee, about the possibility for Burmese independence, some Shan princes sent a telegram to the British to say, Aung San does not represent our interests. You know, they were looking they these Shan elites were looking for full independence as an independent nation state post World War Two.

Host 1:04:37

Right. That's interesting. And I've heard the same thing with Korean I was reading in one book that the Korean actually sent their own delegation, claiming the same thing that song didn't represent them and wanting the Korean delegation to meet separately with the British. They were in London and denied a meeting. This is all this kind of loss history that someone you're just looking at it through the lens of the Bomar led independence movement, getting wanting to be liberated from colonial rule that you that sometimes can be glossed over these these other ethnic minorities and ethnic states that have different ambitions and aspirations. But now getting to that post World War Two period. And you reference that these that there was the Shan delegations that weren't that sounds like they weren't able to have their voice heard or their claims made. And yet, I mean, what's interesting with this, it sounds kind of contradictory, because the British did require a long song to be able to show that he had support of the ethnicities in the country in order to go ahead with with granting the independence and that and the the Sean's and especially the role of Saudi Arabia, like, the role that they played in supporting the new union of Burma. And so what were these, like different motivations that were taking place of different rulers and leaders? Or was there a change of heart because on one hand, you do have Shawn support, eventually, ultimately from from at least some leaders to support the new union of Burma, but then you also have a sham delegation that's not being heard. So what were these different forces at play? Well,

Jane Ferguson 1:06:21

um, first of all, I'd like to back up a bit, the British did not require Aung San to get consent from ethnicities so much as the British wanted evidence of consent from the frontier areas, all the political powers in the frontier areas, they wanted to see that the former rulers in the frontier areas would be willing to join a new union of Burma. And so as part of the drafting of the 1947 constitution, the one of the specific clauses is that the the former frontier areas, what later became the ethnic states would be allowed to have independence, following 10 years initial membership in the union of Burma provided it was the will, of the majority of people in you know, following a plebiscite in in that particular ethnic state. And for the Shan at the time. You know, the the panglong agreement was basically a bureaucratic exercise that the British imposed on Aung San to say that, okay, well, you're going to have to demonstrate cooperation from the frontier areas. At the time, there had recently been a funeral of an important figure in the south of Bon loam. And so there was a gathering of important political, political figures in the area. So it's like, okay, take advantage of a bunch of people being together to see if they'll sign my form, basically,

Host 1:08:02

Haha, wow, I never heard that. That's amazing. So

Jane Ferguson 1:08:05

anyway, this, this, this operation, and it was, you know, agreeing to join on in the spirit of equality and unity. This is kind of the ideological baggage that's been put on this event in history, and as the result of one of the longest running ethnic conflicts in modern history that they'll say, you forgot the spirit of the bond loan agreement. Well, you know, everybody that was there is now dead. We don't know what the spirit of the agreement really is. It's a projection onto the past. But also the this point being that, and I've read about this in Shan language sources that, you know, a first of all, not all of the chance Alpha Shan princes were on board with bangle. There's the possibility some of them saw the possibility that they could go with Thailand after World War Two. But they had been treated so badly by the invading Thai forces in both MUFON and Jim tome, that they saw that as not productive or they didn't want, they didn't want to be subsumed. They didn't want to have their entire autonomy and power taken away by the domineering Siamese. And on the other hand, there was this point that they saw, okay, well, if it's in the Constitution, and it's part of the Townlong agreement that recognizes our political authority and power in this area. You know, it was good enough for the schauen princes. But also another important point is that Aung sands political party, the armed wing, will the AF PFL, the Anti Fascist people's freedom League. They weren't going around and bullying it. groups and villages in Shan State are basically to force people to go along with their agenda. So it's I mean, the panglong agreement is seen as a moment of peace and compromise and negotiation and equality. However, that masks a whole lot of violence that was going along, going around elsewhere. Yeah.

Host 1:10:24

And formally, it also excludes the Korean, the Korean never signed on to it, and they were the first

Jane Ferguson 1:10:29

and the current state was not part of a frontier area. So that's why, you know, there's, there's this this really key bureaucratic distinction that, you know, the panglong agreement is seen as this, this, this document of ethnic harmony and why were these ethnic groups? No, it was a bureaucratic exercise for the relationship, or a proper and the frontier areas.

Host 1:10:50

That's really helpful. I've never heard it explained that way. So that's, I think I do have kind of a super superimposing the president on to my understanding of that conference of the looking at its kind of Bomar slash ethnic minorities. And that's really helpful. And looking at it in terms of the the the bureaucratic how it was, how the British governing the country and so designated in that way is because I had always it always stuck out to me in how I understood it. And I think probably even books, I'd read it in that it was very significant that the that the Korean were excluded, and that this gave way to the current insurrection, which happened, which was the first uprising after independence. So that's, that's, that's a very helpful distinction and understanding that

Jane Ferguson 1:11:33

Yeah, well, I mean, also, it's because the panglong agreement has so much political baggage that there's many different interpretations going around. And, you know, this is my interpretation from having read these documents and thinking about, you know, the relationship between, you know, ideas about ethnicity, but then also bureaucratic Fiat, and what, what was the bureaucratic reason for creating this document in the first place? So that led to my interpretation, but, you know, obviously, there's other ones out there. And so this is just, yeah, it's my contribution to the conversation about what what bangle is and what it represents, and the motivations of different groups at the time.

Host 1:12:20

Sure, and then we have mentioned before, so Shweta, who's the first president of the Union of Burma, is there any significance that a Shan person is the first president? And what, in the role that he played before the 1962? Coup? Is there anything notable to say about having a non Bomar in that leadership position?

Jane Ferguson 1:12:42

Well, part of it is because I mean, the the union of Burma. And basically, there's this this other point, you know, and we can we can raise this and think about it. Why would the British specifically choose to empower these student nationalists? Why would they so empower these people who are basically in their late 20s and early 30s? And are activists, they're smart, they're passionate, but they don't have much experience as a statement. So there's part of this question of, okay, maybe the British chose Ong son and his 30 Comrades, because he saw bass, the British saw them as having less political authority, so that the British could carry on their commerce and make a lot of profit through their business connections. You know, it's always like, you know, why, why give political privilege to one particular group or one particular class of people? There's also the point to is that there, you know, at the time of World War Two, and following the end of it, it was the Communist Party of Burma that had the most political power and probably was part of the strongest component of the army. It could be that the British worked with Aung San because they didn't want to work with the CPB, which well, Aung San contributed to founding but they were willing to go with a more moderate who had more. Yeah, more ideas about socialism and, and economic equality. But the fact of the matter is partly because of the 1947 constitution, and the panglong agreement, and socialist ideology that it congealed to create this idea of a union of Burma. So having multiple ethnic groups has always been fundamental. And it's always been important to the image of the nation. You know, this this idea of a chamber of nationalities. Whether having pluralism in the form of a nice image, or whether it was just bamaca nationalists who said, Okay, we're gonna have an image of pluralism but you know what, we're really at the top here Hey, there's there's always been an aspect of Burma chauvinism that has been part of the political model for the union of Burma that okay, we are going to be the royal race, as it were. I mean, they actively borrowed from many fascist ideas during the 1930s. And another aspect of their nationalism, their anti colonial nationalism, is that they weren't even thinking of the frontier areas as part of the map of Burma when they were anti colonial nationalists, they still saw the frontier areas as an entirely different point. So, again, in this this aspect of repossessing, that I like to emphasize in the book is that each group had its kind of image or changing idea of what a nation state represents. And you have to look at what it meant for those people at the time, rather than taking a contemporary one and projecting it backwards.

Host 1:15:53

In what way did communism find a place in Shan communities? Or in what way was it repelled and there were there was anti communist activities, how do we see the playing out of communism in among Shan people in in Shan State at this time? Okay.

Jane Ferguson 1:16:08

Well, I mean, let you know, like I mentioned before the CPB was one of the most powerful groups and they staged an insurrection in in 1948. And there was a split between you know, red flag and white flag. I could go on to factionalism about that, but it's its relevance to Shan State because the CPB had long been active. And throughout the 1940s, we're moving through the Cold War. And you know, the Cold War is really a misnomer when we're talking about you know, mainland Southeast Asia or when we're talking about Southeast Asia, it's not it's not a Cold War, it's actually very hot, and it was killing lots of people. So that's, you know, it was very much fought on the ground in in Southeast Asia, and particularly in Shan state, because you share that there's already this this border with China and fundamentally late so, when following Mao's victory in 1949. In China, you have Chiang Kai Shek scwoman Thumb coming across the border into Shan State, and in 4950. They're setting up camp soon. They're supported by the Thai government, the DEA and Taiwan. By 1952, there were about 12,000 Kuomintang forces in Shan state. There's also the CPB, the Communist Party of Burma later being supported with etiology and arms from China and going around and recruiting people and then benefiting from opium cultivation. And that's actually what the Kuomintang initially set up was heroin refineries, in in Shan State, starting in the 1950s, and moving through the 1960s. So you have all of these cellular armed groups as part of that, and also for people in the Shan State, for example, there's an important figure that I discuss a whole lot in the book, his name is Gunson. He had been fighting on the American side during World War Two. But then, you know, he was recruited as part of their their guerrilla warfare program. But then later, he had wanted to form a Shan State communist party or a sham Communist Party, and went to well solicited to Beijing to get recognition for his Shan Communist Party. And Beijing said, No, you're going to have to go with the CPB, the Communist Party of Burma, we're not going to give you a separate ethnic recognition. So he decided not to and joined and became a key player in in the Shan insurgency. I realized I'm glossing over a whole bunch of different groups in Shan State are different political affiliations. So do you think it would help if I just distilled it to to five major groups? Sure.

Host 1:19:20

I mean, this isn't just to give a preface for preface for that this is incredibly complex information that would take volumes and volumes of books to understand let alone just glossing over it in a short part of the conversation about wider showing

Jane Ferguson 1:19:36

history. So I don't I don't mean mean to be feeding your granola with no milk. But just just to simplify just a little bit, because yeah, please Oh, Cold War practices. And then also we have this upland and lowland dynamic. So you have all of these little state limits which have existed for hundreds of years in the Shan plateau but In the middle of the Cold War because there's also this ongoing Shann Resistance Movement, which formed in 1958. But by the 1970s there were about 40 Different armed groups occupying territory or specifically controlling trade routes in Shan State. And if we wanted to summarize, okay, who are the major arms holders who are the major armies in Shan State, the biggest arm? Well, one armed force is that of the Burmese military also known as the tatmadaw, or the sikh.so. The army of the state, the Burmese state. So of the five groups, that's one, number two is the Kuomintang, which is the the group that was fighting initially fighting against the Maoists, but also allied with Taiwan, the CIA and the Thai government. Number three, the Communist Party of Burma, the CPB number for various nation state building, ethnic based militias are ethnic based in name. And then finally there were these other groups that were basically mercenary soldiers, who they were called the CAPWAP, the protection group. So they're basically thugs that got arms that were given concession or allowed to exist by the Burmese Government. So long as they ostensibly fight it fought the other the other groups. So all of these five groups were either access controlling trade routes, were armed groups, armed, Armed Bandit in insurgent groups, whether a name or not. So that's basically the five types of armed groups but they could, they could shift allegiances, people could be double double agents, people could be broadening their portfolios. There's a lot of flexibility, but those are the main five categories that I've devised.

Host 1:22:07

So as we start to get into 62, it's no longer the parliamentary democracy period. It's now a military dictatorship under the iron fist and they win. Maybe it's interesting to look at your chapter on Kusa, because Kinsa kind of combines you have combines a lot of these these these elements together, you have something of Shawn nationalism, something of communism, something of the drugs and narcotics and obviously the arms and so there's an he's something of an enigma, you spend a lot of time in the Kusa chapter not just explaining his background and biography and trajectory, but kind of what it means and unpacking them because as you go into there's some serious debate about was he this? Or was he that so tell us who consol was and what your analysis tells readers of?

Jane Ferguson 1:22:53

Yeah, well, I mean, he he's, he's been the subject. There's a terrific series of documentaries by Adrian Cowell about, about the shine movement and the heroine King, and it does raise this question because he's probably, I would say, the most famous or infamous, depending on your perspective, figure in in Shawn history, who's in you know, internationally well known and he's seen as the this this heroin King and warlord, who, is he a Shan nationalist? Or is he a thug? Seeking to enrich himself? And I don't see it as an either or question I want to, I want to explore a little bit more about what what's the context for how he became powerful, and what he represents to different people. I mean, this is also the anthropologist and me realizing that I would not be able to understand his motives unless I was inside his head at those particular junctures. So I have to leave that for now and not ask those psychological questions, but rather look at you know, what's going on and what he's doing, to try to understand what he is and and represents. So, he was the grandson of a local leader from low Ma, which is one of the principalities in Shan State. And as a teenager, he had his his his mother was Sean also part Chinese, he grew up speaking, both shine and Chinese, which is certainly not unusual for the area. And there's there's traders coming through all the time. And he, you know, at as part of the the Cold War in the 1950s. He got to know, people in both the Kuomintang as well as one of the Gulf gang defense forces and later on As he, you know, he became a minor trader himself, like taking PAC mules to the Thai border. And this, this is part of the context as well is that, you know, at the height of the insurgency in or the set of the insurgencies throughout the 70s and 1980s, under knee winds, economic policy of economic closure, and basically a so called Burmese way to socialism, between 40 and 80% of the economy was operating on the black market. So this is this is the key reason that all of these peripheral armed groups were able to survive because they were not only cultivating opium and refining it into heroin and selling that but also involved in the cross border trade. So this is basically why in the 1990s, when you'd go to Burma, you'd see you know, Thai products all over the shelves. And you know, this is especially true in in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s, that if you wanted to have the majority of manufactured goods were basically coming across the border and being taxed by the by the insurgents usually don't think of insurgency armed insurgency groups as benefiting from the toothbrush trade, but they were that's incredible. Yeah, it really is. So anyway, back to coincide. He was engaged in this trade. That's how he got started. And he was called upon by the Burmese Government, somebody got in touch with him and said, Hey, would you like to set up one of these coffee protection groups to interrupt or fight against the you know, the woman thing, it's basically saying like, okay, you can be mercenary soldiers, we're not going to bankroll you, we might give you some weapons, and we will turn a blind eye to your economic practices, we'll let you trade in hope, opium as long as you're fighting our enemies, it's a it's a way that the Burmese army was able to first of all, surrender a bit of sovereignty, but on the other hand, maintain their own power by having these peripheral groups fighting amongst themselves now coincided throughout the 1960s and 1970s often switched affiliations, and with his armed group would be working for or with the woman. And it was wasn't until the 1970s that he took a major stand against the woman time basically to take to take more power back and later, it was in the 1984 that he merged with another shine group. They are merged his army which he was then calling the shine United army with the shine United Revolutionary Army, another group and basically repackaged his armed groups as shone liberationists Rather than specifically as you know, armed groups or trading groups or as Kakui. So, you know, you in what do you call this in, in, in, you know, corporate in the corporate world, this is called a rebranding, you know, in this field of very various armed groups. And, you know, this could be a Cold War step strategy, specifically to appeal to the Thai government because one of the groups the shine United revolutionary army, which was founded by concern, the guy who had originally thought formed the tried to form the Shan Communist Party, got rejected by Beijing then became a Shan nationalist. He used his Shan United Revolutionary Army credentials to form an alliance with the Kuomintang LabID labeling themselves as nationalists and therefore anti communist. So there's there's a, there's a Cold War rift and how the Iron Curtain divides ideas about ethnicity versus communism is one of the important through lines in understanding the complexities of the of the situation as well,

Host 1:29:18

his research into the different ethnic stripes and inside the politics of insurgency. That's it, that's it, thank you. The thing that really stood out for me in reading that book was just how every ethnicity seemed to be divided along those communist lines of, you know, staunch communist and anti communist and really just splitting everyone down the middle and having having that ideology having to take shape in terms of identity and nationhood and movement and objective and everything else. Of course, when it comes to Sean you also have the role of the narcotics and some of the other powers and actors and influence Is that are there? So it's a lot to sort out? Well,

Jane Ferguson 1:30:01

and, and also, I think, you know, in some ways, it's, it's, it's misleading to start with the etiology of communism first. Because for a lot of the groups on the ground or how they would relate to to other groups, it was a matter of who was going to be sending development assistance, and you know, how they were going to survive in this very fraught area. So, in in some ways, you know, seeing that coincide, was willing to work with the woman time to appoint or was willing to work with the Communist Party to a point, we wouldn't see this as, you know, a would, you know, to face strategy, or somebody who didn't have any ideology, it wasn't really, I think it's more to the point that in the Upplands, in, in this really competitive area, that if you're going to be somewhat powerful, you're going to have to diversify your portfolio. So you know, coincide being willing to benefit from the trade and working with the woman or working with the Burmese army, or being a Shan nationalist. It's really important to see like, where, where's his money? Where's his power? Where are his arms coming from? And if he's willing to work with them, it's not necessarily an ideological stance, so much as it's a practical one.

Host 1:31:31

Yeah, you're bringing up this topic of fluidity, again, where fluidity takes shape, and where fluidity is sometimes a probably as it wasn't days of old, becoming a survival mechanism as well. And I also want to reference you mentioned how, how kind of odd it is that some of the shot insurgent groups were being funded by toothbrushes, you know, passing across the border and the tax, the other way that they're funded that you reference in your book, and which also brings back in the Thai nation. And the experience of being a Shan person in Thailand, is you reference how a lot of the Shan migrants that are in Thailand often illegally, that the money they're making, that's another major source of that money that is then sent back to also fund the insurgent groups. Is that

Jane Ferguson 1:32:21

correct? Yeah, absolutely. And this is, this is very much true today as well, that I had for me, because of the stark economic differences between Burma and Thailand, you have this outward migration of economic migrants, people crossing the borders. And again, to say that oh, political, migrant, economic migrant, I'm looking at, first of all, like for, you know, impoverished areas that for many families, their only you the major source of cash income, might be remittances sent by, you know, a son, or a daughter, or a brother who's working in Thailand. I mean, there's anywhere between four and 5 million people from Myanmar currently living in Thailand. And so this, this remittance economy is a form of direct aid to some of the most impoverished areas. And if those impoverished areas happen to fall within the taxation zone of historically, when well, even today, if they fall into a taxation zone of the Shan State Army, for example, then those remittances that are coming from, you know, the construction worker, son in Chiangmai, and he's sending his remittances back home to urban and that the Shan State army will be coming along and taking some of the resources. So it's it's an indirect funding. For the for the insurgency, yes,

Host 1:33:57

I want to move closer to current day with the coup. But before we do, I just want to take a pause, and you cover so many other areas in your book. But the chapters definitely encourage listeners to check that out and to read in detail because there's only so much justice we can do here. And there's large parts of stories and background that you cover that we can't get to. But one thing I'd like to get to, at least in some short form is Shawn music. I mean, you cover a lot of Shan culture, in various forums, in the book, music is one of those and go into quite some detail. We obviously don't have the time and space to go into the breath that you go in the book, but we can do something you can't do in the book. And that's actually listen to something. So one of the important songs that you cover is the name of the song is the day that Shan will be independent. So let's take a listen to that song and then we'll come back and you can tell us about the significance of this

1:34:59

(The Day Shan will be Independent - Song)

Host 1:37:48

and that was the Shan song the day Shan will be independent. So can you tell us a bit about the background of the song and why it's so significant and why you've chosen this as one of the songs that you want to acquaint our listeners with? Well,

Jane Ferguson 1:38:02

it became very important to me Let me just say the Translate just the the chorus because you've heard it multiple times now that the one tile POM can one tile on call means on Shantay we will be united on Chandi we will be independent on Shan day, we will love one another on Shan day, we will be independent. So there's this this really strong anticipation of Shan political independence and the the singer and songwriter of this song simu he was a member of he was a teacher within the shine United Revolutionary Army, at their at their base in bang by stone, the Capitol, sort of that was also the base near the town where they had their alliances with the Kuomintang, but in terms of the story of the song itself, and why it became something I really showcase in the book. It's because when I when I first when I first moved to the, the village that I call one gun high in the book to do my fieldwork. So I lived there for two and a half years, but I think it was on the second or third day. It was in the evening. And you know, I'm just staying at the home of the family that I the sham family that I live with there. And I heard like rock band practice. And then I heard this one particular song that was going over and over again and they seem so enthusiastic and energetic about that one song, and I used to play in a punk band. When I was a teenager I played bass and and this is one of the challenges of doing anthropology. It's not like I just I automatically was able to form all of these friendships with people and get all of this intern interview material, you know, you can you can learn so much in an interview. But there's this other point of doing ethnography of doing anthropological research to really getting to know the people that you're going to write about, but getting to know them in depth, and also finding a context where they're willing to spend time with you for two and a half years, right, so I heard this band practice. And then the following day, I walked to the, to the home of the homeowner, an older women. And, you know, I mentioned I asked her about that said, you know, oh, I used to play bass in a band. And then she's like, oh, when you hear the music, come on over. And it turns out, it wasn't a formal band. But it's so much as it was a neighborhood pickup band, you know, something for fun that people could do in the evening, and people would just go to that space, sometimes get on guitar, sometimes get on base, sometimes get on drums sometimes sing along, or sometimes just sit and hang out. And so learning about the musical tastes, and I found, and this is especially true in in Burma, as with other places in Southeast Asia, that during the 70s, especially that guitar culture, local guitar culture, getting song sheets, playing guitar, singing popular songs in groups is a very popular way to socialize. And then this song in particular, it turns out, you know, that it was written by somebody who is in the shine United Revolutionary Army, some of the people that I went to band practice with. And so this became a regular feature of my of my field work experience was getting to know people through music and through songs. And this one, it's, you know, expressing this desire for independence, it's a powerful Shan nationalist song, it only has three chords, it's very easy to learn. So it's accessible in that sense. It has a catchy chorus. And it keeps alive this this proud vision of of Shanice. And it's in the Shan language. And it's powerful in the other sense in that, in 2007, there was a case in which a young man had been singing it in town, G and Shan State, and the Myanmar military arrested him because it's bad content. And the fact that this particular village was just on the Thai side of the border, meant that they had the freedom to sing that song.

Host 1:42:48

Wow, that's really interesting. And really nice to have this cultural piece here that brings out a bit more dimension to the people in the region that we're talking about. Now, moving closer to current times, can you tell us how Shan State has been impacted? First, by the transition period, the democratic transition period, what effect that had on the region and then going to the coup in the post coup, how, what's been happening in China and how it's been impacted, which I know are really many ways, some of which are just beginning to be reported by the media. But, but but let's get into that the transition and post coup.

Jane Ferguson 1:43:27

Okay. Well, I mean, I think quite a number of people had, you know, especially in the West, there was a lot of optimism about the so called transition, that this idea that there was a Burmese spring and that things were going to be opening up. It was in some ways, and also, you know, bear in mind that the NLD and Aung San su chi for quite a few members of the Shan insurgency, not everybody. They were very skeptical, and they saw her as Burma. And they didn't put a whole lot of hope in Shan independence, if that was their particular goal for other further, Shawn people. I mean, there was a Shawn branch of the National League for Democracy. So there were plenty of Sean people who who did vote for NLD. So I don't want to say that that was the whole story, either. But, but especially for the Thai government, and it's, you know, renewing new kinds of diplomatic relations and special setting up special economic zones and very much working with Myanmar capitalists, that there was this possibility. What about the Shan migrants? What about the various informal shone refugee camps that don't have official Thai recognition? Are they going to eliminate those and force all of those people to move back to Shan State? And will they be safe? All of these questions were raised some of them. And also during the transition period, there was a whole lot less humanitarian aid. And we got NGO funding for various border groups. So there was this perception that oh, well, refugees don't need international support anymore. Now that Myanmar is democratic. Well, they never really achieved full peace in the area. Some ceasefire agreements such as that with the Cochin independence army were abrogated during, during the so called transition period, and that the National League for Democracy, despite having full electoral victory, had never really surrendered, or towards a vision of federalism, or giving the geographically peripheral power holders letting into some of their demands, or giving them some of the concessions that in my opinion, should have been given. So, you know, they, they, I realized that to this a topic for another podcast, but that, you know, for the Shan insurgencies, in a lot of ways, it just continued some of the same problems as before. And also, you know, the fact of the matter is, is that the Myanmar government army, expanded its ranks and expanded its firepower during the so called transition period. And you know, and of course, the world is very aware of the atrocities committed against Rohingya in in Rakhine State. And in some ways, you know, having the world learn about the brutality of the army in the transition period. You know, that was a sobering reality. And, but also, there was still continued fighting in in other peripheral areas during during the transition period.

Host 1:47:16

So I realized that one of the challenges and what we're trying to do, not just in how much you cover in the book, but also just how much has covered in a in a region in a population in such a short time, as we tell the story, and we're going to warps, you know, already, we're going to warp speed telling it and we're leaving essential parts out to just kind of cover and give an overview, but a lot of what we're talking about are these facts and figures and, and, and basic details which are necessary to gain this understanding. But I also want to be cognizant that we're not leaving out the individual human stories that are really the lifeblood that that are able to navigate around some of these details and flesh out the actual people involved. And one of the reasons I mentioned that is because it's not just as a kind of my own personal insight or an aside, but it's because what you do in the book, I mean, so there we've, we've talked, for example, about the cave story. That's what the the boys that are trapped in the cave. That's, that's one example from the book where we've gone into some detail of personalities and real life event and anecdote to better understand common humanity. But there's so many other stories that you tell in the book alongside where you're giving this. These these general details about Sean people and religion and culture and history and everything else. But we're also hearing personal stories of all kinds of Shawn people that reflect the larger themes you're telling. So if we could take a minute to, perhaps you can choose at least one of those stories that you follow and flesh out in the book. And if you could share that here and then go into what's significant about the story, and where does this fit into the larger tale that you're telling about the Shawn? Sure.

Jane Ferguson 1:49:03

Yeah. So this is an very, I wouldn't I wouldn't say typical because nobody's typical, you know, the, but a relatable story of a young Shan Shan woman, she's a migrant worker. And she speaks she's, she's 22 years old and her net I call her Nan Lau in the in the book, and she's been living in Thailand for the past five or six years. She migrated with her parents. And she's the niece of a Shan revolutionary except she's she's a young 22 year old woman and she loves Thai fashion. She has a little silver Honda motorbike. She has a work permit to work in, in Chiang Mai, and her Thai is completely fluent. She knows all the latest Thai pop songs. And she got a job as a waitress at this kind of pub or sports bar at Chiang Mai airport called champions one. And she was one of my regular contacts. So she she was friends with the person who operated the shine radio channel. So I'd be hanging out there. And then she'd come and visit and say hi, and gradually getting to know her. I would meet with her for lunch for interviews every once in a while just to catch up and chit chat. But in any case, none Lau after she started the job at the airport. I mean, she was really excited to get this job because she's like, Ooh, there's foreigners. It's fancy, it's high. So high society, I'll be able to make a lot of money, I'll get tips. She liked the idea of being in working in this cosmopolitan space, even if it was just as a waitress at this at this restaurant. Anyhow, a few weeks later, I asked her how the job was going. And, you know, she had initially been a little bit reticent or nervous about the job because she didn't speak much English. But it was in the airport, the laminated plastic menus simply had pictures of the food, so you didn't even need to speak any language to order food. But she told me that, oh, the most annoying customers are the ties. And at first I was like, well do tell why is that because her ties is completely fluent. Every once in a while, she'll have a hint of a sham accent, but otherwise, you know, full comprehension of Thai and complete, you know, linguistic fluency. Otherwise unnoticeable. But she said that every once in a while a Thai customer would say, you know, oh, poor time, my chat. You don't speak Thai, clearly. And so immediately the follow up question for oh, well, where are you from? And while this might be an innocent question for many, especially when you're a precariously documented migrant, it can be really a fraught microaggression. And so even though as I mentioned earlier, Thai nationals nationalism romanticizes the shine as a linguistic brother, not all ties, got the memo, or not all ties, remember the patriotic lessons that they learned in school? And so sometimes, you know, nonlocal would tell me that customers would say, oh, you know, they hear her accent, ask her where she's from. And if she said Shan state, they would say, Oh, so you're Burmese. So a lot of Thai people simply didn't know the difference between SHAN Or Burmese. And there was one story that she told me about where she had said that rather than even open that can of worms, she told a Thai customer that she was from Qingdao, which is a Northern Thai town, not far from from Chiang Mai, hoping to, you know, avoid the the awkward conversation about Burma because a lot of Thai nationalists see the Burmese as the historical enemy of the Thai nation. In any case, the the Thai person, rather than leave it at that decided to quiz her further and say, Okay, well, who is the night Nyamko who was the district official of Qingdao province, or Qingdao district. And so it was even not even letting it go and asking further questions in order to either show off or to somehow prove that she was lying about where she was really from. And I remember when she was telling me this story, we were we were meeting up for lunch, and she repeatedly slammed her fists on the table saying that, if you want to order food, just order food. I don't see why. You know, this bureaucratic quiz has anything to do with what you know me serving you. Food. And it revealed the story was revealing for me, in the sense that this was a Thai customer really wanting to put down a linguistic boundary and to say that No, you're not Thai. And it was the accent that made him latch on to it and want to do that. But then also it was related to status as well. Because, you know, the Thai customer saw the young Shan waitress Oh, she's just a cute Shan waitress I can make these jokes I can do this. He wouldn't do that. If he was making a multimillion dollar Jade deal with coding sa he wouldn't you know if if there's so much money in it for you, you're not going to come up with with micro again. Questions. So again, where class are where ethnicity matters, you know, it's in some of these everyday interactions, we can see new ideas about that. And so yeah, telling that story of Matt Lau and you know, thinking about what a microaggression means, for somebody on the job, I thought was really fruitful. And a fascinating story to tell.

Host 1:55:25

Yeah, and thanks for telling it here. And that's just one of many stories that you tell that are aligning these anecdotes with people that you're coming in contact with and weaving their stories into this broader narrative you tell about China identity. And so just another reason to give a plug for the book and encourage listeners to check that out and be able to go into more detail about this. I wish we had more time to hear more anecdotes, but I'm glad we got that one in to wrap up where we're at and the discussion of Shan people and region. I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you a question about the post coup reality. And I'm sure that many listeners are also curious, what forces are at play in terms of how Shan Shan State and the Shan community and peoples have been impacted over these last couple of years by the military coup? Yeah,

Jane Ferguson 1:56:19

thank you. I mean, it's a it's a tough question. Because in a lot of ways, I think many communities in Shan State or people that I talked to, leading up to the 2015 election, I haven't been back to Myanmar since before COVID. So the information that I've got is either through direct, you know, through chatting with my contacts that are still in Myanmar over over social media, or getting together with people who have either relocated to Thailand or still in Thailand, so I don't have on the ground information from having been in Shan state recently. Myself, but in terms of, you know, a shine, you know, response to the coup, I can say, Well, the short answer is it's been a very, it's a varied response. And being shot does not guarantee how somebody is going to relate to, to the NLD or the various political structures because there's, it's a very diverse tapestry. One, one point that I had heard from a somebody affiliated with the restoration Council of Shan state, was that there was a, a Shan Shan had developed a saying that there's a red stick and a green stick. And regardless of which stick it is, if it hits you, it will be painful, and the red stick representing NLD and the green stick representing the military, for some had this idea that. Okay, so now the NLD and the military are fighting each other will the Shan benefit from the spoils of war? That was a question that was phased. Um, and there's this other point, too, is that, since the coup, quite a few people were a lot of inter international observers were confused or dismayed or alarmed to see that the Shan State Progressive Party and the RCSs. So Shan State will shun northern based armies and southern based armies, separate groups, but both using the name shine, we're in we're having skirmishes with each other. And so there was the dismay or the expected question from outsiders say, well there, Shawn, why aren't they united against the military coup? And this goes back to a point that I made earlier, that ethnicity is not this political alliance. It's not this automatic existential glue. And the RCSs and the the ship the sspp have their own autonomy, their own sovereignty, their own political alliances than their own sources of income, and they're competing over over territory. So you know, they're competing over their, you know, sovereign autonomy. And so it's, in some ways, well, of course, it's unfortunate that they're not united against the Myanmar military, but it's also in some ways, naive to automatically expect tend to be an alliance simply because they both have shone in their name. Right?

Host 2:00:04

That's, that's very true and looking at the different groups that are engaged and, and kind of the bigger players, I'm also curious about the ground level because so much of what we've seen among the Bomar has been this generation Z, just unbelievable activity and courageousness and what they started doing and what they've continued doing, and also just kind of like a pan Myanmar, solidarity that we haven't seen before breaking down traditional boundaries and, and being able to talk across those boundaries in ways that hadn't been seen before. So your your answer kind of reflected more the bigger groups and the elders and the leaders, but in terms of Gen Z on the ground, and I know that this is also not I'm not suggesting there's a generality of, or generalization of, of, of, there's obviously a diversity in terms of the kinds of actions that we're seeing, but for as general as you can speak, what are you what are you seeing or hearing or noticing about how Sean Gen Z people are responding?

Jane Ferguson 2:01:08

Yeah, well, I mean, this is a, this is one thing that I really hoped to emphasize and portray, in my, you know, representations of young people in in the book, but also, you know, how much I admire the creativity, the spark the resilience of so many young people, whether Gen Z, but also the people who were these, you know, who fought for the cause, but also the people who managed to get on and, you know, find joy, and are intrinsically amazing and creative people. So there is a lot of focus in, in the book about this aspect of, of music and nostalgia and realizing how dynamic all of it is, in terms of the protests or people, you know, thinking about, you know, categories of ethnicity, or gender becoming more inclusive, you know, taught and ug talking about revising it citizenship laws to become more inclusive. Part of this could easily be chalked up to the idea that, okay, now now that the military is back in the saddle, everybody has a common enemy again, so they're more likely to unite. So there is an aspect of that, but then there also is this incredible cultural vibrancy amongst Generation Z, and, you know, willingness to take on, you know, new ideas about ethnicity and new ideas about gender. So it very much is a very new generation, and the ways in which they're very cosmopolitan, and very much in touch with social movements elsewhere, namely, thinking about the milk tea Alliance, or, you know, the number of people that were able to, you know, part of, you know, various social movements and community based organizations that emerged in the past decade, they were very much involved in, in capacity building, and, you know, the various students that I have either been in contact with or involved with some aspect of their education about Burma, Myanmar, social movements, anthropology, you name it, I've met some really creative people that have, you know, incredible ideas for building a better future. So they're, in spite of all the horrors and the atrocities that continue to go on, you know, this, again, I can't begin to express the horrors and the the biggest internal conflict and Myanmar in fighting since the time of World War Two, it's tremendous. But on the other hand, there there are some pockets of real optimism and those are those are the the Gen Z and their allies. That's

Host 2:04:29

a great note to end on. I really appreciate it before we do go. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention that this discussion hasn't brought up? Well,

Jane Ferguson 2:04:37

I just like to connect plug my next book, would that be okay? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay, well, it's coming out this March, or March 2024. from University of Hawaii press. It's called silver screens and golden dreams, a social history of Burmese cinema. So it's using popular entertainment and the movies To explore 20th century history focusing from 1920 to 1980. So a bit of a difference from Shawn insurgency, but there are two chapters about ethnic minority representation in the movies. So it does it does tie in to some of the themes that we've been talking about today.

Host 2:05:20

Oh, that sounds great. I can't wait to read that one. That's, that's really awesome. And, and I should mention that we began this podcast episode with the intro that was playing at the beginning was the name of that was strive for progress and the outro that we will be playing as we end this will be nature's children. And so would you just say a word about why you chose these two respective songs for the intro and the outro?

Jane Ferguson 2:05:48

Sure, no problem. So actually, both of them are related to the same generation and group of Sean singers the first song strive for progress. Kutcha Hi, my song was written by Sitecom lake a very well known Sean songwriter. And it's actually the intro song that's played at most Shawn concerts and stage shows. So it's a it's a Shawn rock song that kicks off the show. And for the outro the it's a popular song that became part of it's in the Burmese language, but it became a song that brought student activists together in the 1980s so it's a Sean singer citee sigh who sang this song in the 70s but the song natures children why are you putting it away is about finding peace and it's about unity and it became one of the anthems for the 1988 generation of activists and so it's always looked at as part of unity and nostalgia and then also looking forward to a future that free of suffering

2:07:12

(Nature's Children - Song)

Host 2:10:27

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode. As regular listeners are aware, we often remind our audience about our nonprofit mission better Burma at the end of the show. Truth be told, fundraising is hard work. And I can personally attest the fact that it's really no fun to keep asking for contributions. Yet the situation on the ground now in Myanmar is so distressing that we continue to do so on behalf of the Burmese people. What is most helpful at this time are recurring donations, which help alleviate both the stress and time involved in fundraising. If you were able to pledge a certain amount per month, our team can plan around having at least a consistent minimum amount to work within each month. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in a form currency or transfer method. Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities who need it most. Donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement, CDN. Families of deceased victims, internally displaced person IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission better Burma, and your donation you give on our insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fund. Alternatively, you can also visit the better Burma website better burma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites except credit card. You can also give via PayPal by going to paypal.me/better Burma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon Venmo GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search better Burma on each platform and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info@betterburma.org. That's betterburma. One word, spelled b e t t e r b u r m a.org. If you'd like to give it another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artists and communities across Myanmar. Available at alokacrafts.com. Any purchase will not only support these artists and communities, but also our nonprofits wider mission. That's aloka crafts spelled A L O K A C R A F T S one word alokacrafts.com Thank you so much for your kind consideration and support.