Karens

views updated May 29 2018

Karens

PRONUNCIATION: kuh-RENS
LOCATION: Southern and eastern Myanmar (Burma); Thailand
POPULATION: 5 to 7 million
LANGUAGE: Pwo and Sgaw dialects of Karen; Burmese
RELIGION: Buddhism; animism; Christianity (Baptist, Catholicism)

INTRODUCTION

The Karens are a large and dispersed ethnic group of Southeast Asia. They trace their origins to the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, or Tibet. Karens settled, perhaps as far back as the 8th century, in Myanmar's southern Irrawaddy Delta area and in the hills along the Salween River in eastern Myanmar. In the 1700s, Karens also began living in neighboring Siam (now called Thailand).

There are numerous Karen sub-groups: the Pwo Karens (mostly delta rice-growers), the Sgaw Karens of the mountains; and the Kayahs (also called Karennis), Pa-Os, and Kayans (also called Padaungs), who live in the Karenni and Shan States of Myanmar. These varied people lived mainly in tribal societies, governed by chiefs or princes. They sometimes came into conflict with the Burmese (Burman) dynastic rulers, or with other ethnic groups inclined to wage war.

The advent of British colonization in the mid-to-late 19th century brought a new sense of security to the Karens. Contact with American and European Christian missionaries, and associated literacy and education, was welcomed. The British administrators recruited many Karens into their police and armed forces. When the Second World War came to Myanmar, those Karens became loyal guerrilla fighters for the Allies against Japanese occupiers.

As Britain granted Myanmar independence after the war, Karen politicians hoped for their own nation. Karennis, who had never ceded authority, enjoying "protectorate" status with the British Empire, also expected their nationhood to be recognized. Instead Karens, along with other ethnic populations, were to be absorbed into the new Union of Burma (renamed Union of Myanmar in 1989.) Problems began almost immediately, when troops of the predominantly Burmese (Burman) government killed Karen villagers. A Karen insurgency sprang up and rapidly gained momentum until it threatened to seize control of the capital, Rangoon. The Karen rebels were driven back by the government troops, and the military came to dominate the country, eventually taking over power in 1962, pledging to quell rebellion and unify the country by force.

Counter-insurgency tactics intended to subdue the rebellion by denying it support from civilians actually drove more Karens into joining the rebel Karen National Union, and other Karen peoples such as the Karennis and Pa-Os took up arms against the central military government as well. A consistent pattern of deliberate human rights violations by the government forces against the ethnic minority civilians has continued to this day, driving tens of thousands of Karens to Thailand as refugees and making the Karen conflict the world's longest running insurgency. Sporadic attempts to broker a ceasefire arrangement between the Karen National Union and Myanmar government never bore results, and low-intensity rural guerrilla warfare continued into the 21st century. General Bo Mya, the longtime chairman of the Karen National Union died at age 79 in 2006. In 2008 Padoe Mahn Sha, the rebel group's Secretary General was assassinated near the Thailand/Myanmar border.

LOCATION AND HOMELAND

Estimates of the Karen population of Myanmar vary greatly, as there has been no census in decades. Perhaps as many as 6 million Pwo and Sgaw Karens live there, along with some 150,000 Kayahs, 600,000 Pa-Os, 80,000 Kayans, and other related groups. Another 400,000 Karen-ethnic peoples have roots in Thailand, and thousands of others live there as refugees. In the early 21st century, Karen refugees have increasingly settled in the United States, with a large community coming to live in and around St. Paul, Minnesota.

Karen people live in several parts of southern and eastern Myanmar. The largest Karen population is in the Irrawaddy Delta area, a vast agricultural lowland whose main city is Bassein. On 2 May 2008, Cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy Delta region, killing tens of thousands of people, making over a million homeless, and flooding rice-growing land with salt-water. Myanmar's government delayed aid delivery after the cyclone, and there were reports that Karen villagers in the Delta were discriminated against in relief distribution.

Another significant region for the Karens is the eastern border with Thailand, where the Dawna Mountain Range stretches down to the Tenasserim River. The area along the Salween also is inhabited by Karens. Thaton, Papun and Pa-an are towns with major Karen populations. Kayahs and Kayans live in a rugged, mountainous area where the main city is Loikaw. The Pa-Os live on the plateau of the southern Shan State. According to international human rights organizations, as many as 3,000 villages in predominantly Karen areas of eastern Myanmar were destroyed by Myanmar government forces between 1996 and 2006, with the civilian inhabitants hiding as internally displaced people or fleeing as refugees to neighboring Thailand.

LANGUAGE

The languages of the Karens are generally considered to be of the Tibeto-Burman family, and the main dialects are Pwo and Sgaw. Many Karen people in isolated hill areas remain illiterate, and those in the Delta region often can speak only Burmese. Their language does, however, remain a feature of Karen cultural pride. Baptist missionaries developed scripts based on Burmese for Pwo Karen (with 25 letters) and for other Karen languages. An old Pwo script known as "chicken scratch," because of the shapes of its letters, was devised by Karen Buddhists as well.

In Sgaw Karen, an informal greeting ("How's it going?") is "Madee leh?" and a farewell is "Leh mu mu" ("Go pleasantly"). "Thank you" in Sgaw Karen is "Dah bluet."

FOLKLORE

Karen folklore impressed early Christian missionaries with its similarity to the Book of Genesis in the Bible. The tribal mythology also told of the Karen language being kept in a book, which was lost in the mass migration south from "the river of sand." There is a sense in their old stories of being preyed upon by other ethnic groups, and of wishing to regain some past glories through miracles or supernaturally gifted leaders. Sometimes Karens have become cult followers of messianic leaders who assure them that special clothing or tattoos will make them impervious from harm. In traditional animist, spirit-worshipping belief systems, the Karens must make offerings to natural forces such as "the Lord of Land and Water." Even Christian Karens still have their skin adorned with tattoos as a form of magical protection. Buddhist Karens often wear amulets (small metal, stone, or clay Buddha images) around their necks.

The Kayan people are known for the neck rings made of brass worn by girls and women. Over time, more and more coils are added to the rings, which pushes the collarbones down, giving the appearance of an elongated neck (hence their Burmese name, Padaung, meaning "long-neck"). Kayan society is traditionally a matriarchy and the rings around necks, arms, and knees are sometimes explained as a traditional protection against tiger bites. Many Kayans have become refugees in recent years, and women with neck rings have been exploited as "freak show" tourist attractions in Thailand and Myanmar.

RELIGION

Most of the Pwo and Sgaw Karens are Buddhists or animists. There are also significant populations of Christians, mainly Baptists, and the Karen National Union leadership is largely Christian. Many Kayahs and Kayans are Catholic, and most of the Pa-Os are Buddhists.

There is considerable interplay between animist rituals and Buddhist practices among the Karens. Animists believe in helpful female guardian spirits called "ther myng khae," the "lord of land and water," and local spirits, as well as beneficial and malicious ghosts. The Christians emphasize Bible study and prayer services with hymn singing. Villages tend to be predominantly one or the other of the three religions, while there is a mixture of faiths and houses of worship in the towns. Christian Karens have tried to convert the Buddhists and ani-mists, and Myanmar's military government has encouraged conflict between Buddhist Karens and the Christian-led Karen National Union.

MAJOR HOLIDAYS

The Karen New Year in January is celebrated as a national holiday in Myanmar and is often the occasion for traditional dances and music. Christian Karens celebrate Christmas with parties and caroling trips from village to village. Buddhist Karens hold festivals to mark their religious New Year (mid-spring) and the end of Lent (post-monsoon). Animists hold crop-protection festivals during the monsoon and after harvest.

RITES OF PASSAGE

Traditional Karen society has various taboos for pregnant women, such as not drinking liquor and not going to funerals. Births usually take place at home, assisted by family members or a village "midwife" (often a man). After the birth, the mother eats a special diet of rice and chicken, and the baby has strings tied around its wrists to protect it from evil spirits. Deaths in childhood and infant mortality are very common among the Karens. In rural areas there is little understanding of hygiene and mother-child nutrition, but Karen medical practitioners are working to spread information that can save lives.

Among Buddhist Karens, young boys often become novice monks for a short period of time. Teenaged Karen boys sometimes get tattooed with magical symbols to show their bravery and protect them from harm. Kayan girls may begin to wear coils of brass around their necks as young as six years old, and keep adding to the coils during their teenage years until the neck piece stretches as long as 10 in.

Karens have a variety of funeral customs, according to their religions. The animist Karens believe in an afterlife and dress the corpse to be accepted in the land of Khu See-du, the Lord of the Dead. The body may be cremated or buried. Buddhist Karens hold cremation ceremonies with prayers to ease the deceased person into the next incarnation. Christian Karens hold a funeral prayer service and bury the body, usually with a wooden cross to mark the grave.

INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS

For a polite greeting, a Karen holds his or her right elbow in their left hand, and shakes hands with the right. They use the same gesture to give or offer objects to other people. Introductions will include the honorifics Karens use with their names, usually "Saw" for men and "Naw" for women.

Karens are very hospitable and will expect any guests to eat with them and, if possible, stay overnight or longer at their house. In traditional Karen bamboo houses, sleeping quarters for guests are on the verandah.

Boys and girls usually meet in school, at Buddhist festivals, or in Christian youth groups. In traditional animist villages, funerals have been the scene of much boy-girl socializing. When a young couple gets involved, love letters and secret messages are often exchanged. Sometimes a game is played between groups of boys and girls, with the boys asking poetic questions and the girls replying with a rhyming answer. The questions and answers are about romance, but are subtle and symbolic.

LIVING CONDITIONS

Warfare and forced relocation campaigns by the Myanmar government have displaced much of Myanmar's Karen population. Villagers are compelled to leave their family homes and move to resettlement camps near government army bases (where they are used for forced labor), or they flee to forest areas or across the border to Thailand. As they leave their towns and villages, the rate of infection with malaria, typhoid, cholera, hepatitis, dysentery, and other diseases increases. Many Karens, especially children, die from such infectious illnesses. Several foreign non-governmental aid agencies assist Karen refugees in Thailand's camps, and some aid groups of Karen exiles and foreigners risk crossing the Thailand/Myanmar border to try to help displaced Karens hiding out inside Myanmar. Also, a few foreign aid organizations have attempted to reduce diseases such as malaria among Karens in the Delta region.

Malnutrition is widespread among the Karens, many of whom subsist on rice with chili pepper, and perhaps some fish sauce and greens gathered from the forests. Anemia and vita-min deficiency are common. In addition to forced relocation, the widespread taking of farmers for forced labor by the government military has made it hard for them to grow their crops. Rampant deforestation as the Myanmar government sold off frontier teak forests to Thai logging firms has decreased the Karens' sources of wild game and edible and medicinal plants, as well as causing climate changes and landslides.

For many generations, the Karen people had lived in harmony with the forest. Only if teak trees reached a certain size could they be harvested. They were replanted and the logs were transported by elephants and river rafts. Forest-dwelling Karens built their houses from bamboo with some wood, on stilts with a thatched roof. The stilts are said to be especially high if it is the house of an elephant-owning family, so that the verandah can be used for loading and unloading the animal. In the bamboo houses, the family will sit and sleep on woven mats on the floor. In larger houses of teak or other wood, they sit on benches at tables and sleep on raised wooden beds with mosquito netting. Baths are taken, wearing sarongs, in a river or by pouring water from a village pump or an urn of rainwater. Sections of bamboo or plastic buckets are used to carry water from nearby streams for cooking and washing. Toilets are usually small pit latrines with a bamboo shelter.

The ox-cart is still the usual means of transport for goods and people, along with motorized river long-boats, motorbikes, and elephants. The Karens are well known for their work with elephants, which they capture, train, and use for hauling and transport. Pa-Os and Kayahs often raise ponies or mules for transportation.

FAMILY LIFE

Traditionally, either a boy or girl can propose marriage, and the whole village is allowed a say in whether their marriage would be appropriate and not offensive to any spirits. Weddings are festive occasions when both the bride's and groom's villages come together. The bride changes from her unmarried woman's long dress to a married woman's two-part outfit. Marriage is considered to be for life, and among Karens of all faiths, adultery is considered extremely taboo—as an unnatural act that can bring catastrophe on the whole village. Karens have an average of four or five children, but infant and child mortality rates are very high.

Karen families keep dogs for hunting and as pets. Sometimes they have birds or baby forest animals such as squirrels or gibbons. Karen elephant tamers "adopt" one elephant, train it, and take care of it for life.

CLOTHING

Many Karen men now wear mass-produced shirts and T-shirts with trousers, and women wear sarongs of factory-woven batik cloth. Younger women sometimes wear blue jeans or long skirts, especially if they are in a town or city. However, traditional Karen clothing is still popular, especially in mountain areas and for special occasions. Traditionally, Pwo and Sgaw Karens wear tunics and sarongs of homespun cotton, dyed red, blue, and black. Men and married women wear a loose tunic over a wrapped sarong. The women's tunics are often elaborately embroidered with colored thread and seed-beads. The men's are plainer with fringed hems. Unmarried girls wear simple long white dresses called "hsay mo htoo" in Sgaw Karen. Men and women often wear turbans, and Pwo men sometimes have very long hair worn in side swept ponytails or loose. Pwo and Sgaw women wear masses of bead necklaces and a great many silver bracelets on their wrists and upper arms.

The Kayans wear similar clothing to the Pwo Karens, but usually in natural off-white homespun, and the Pa-O people dress in black cotton tunics with trousers or sarongs. Kayahs are often known as Karennis ("red Karens") because of their predominantly red homespun clothing. The women wear a short sarong wrapped up over one shoulder with a belt or sash and cords of thin black rattan wrapped around their legs.

FOOD

Karens are known for eating a huge variety of foods, including jungle products such as snake, bat, monkey, grubs, bee larvae, ants, palm sugar, wild honey, forest herbs, frog, and lizard. Many types of birds and fish are consumed, and Karens raise chickens, ducks, pigs, cattle, corn, and pumpkins for food. A favorite dish for Karens in the forest is takataw, made by adding a handful of rice and some shreds of dried meat (such as venison or wild boar) to boiling water, letting it cook until the meat and rice are soft like porridge, and then adding some chopped vegetables.

Because of deforestation, crop confiscation, and rural dislocation, nowadays many Karens have trouble obtaining enough nutrition for their families. Karen refugees and poor villagers typically live on rice, chili peppers, some fish paste, and whatever greens they can gather. The Karens normally eat several helpings of rice at meals and for snacks. They eat mostly polished white rice now, which is less nutritious than red or brown rice. For flavoring, many people use monosodium glutamate powder, which comes from Thailand.

Karens often chew betel nut, which comes from a species of palm and is combined with leaves and lime paste; it is a mild stimulant and stains the mouth bright red.

EDUCATION

During the British colonial period, missionaries in Bassein and elsewhere helped the Karens to start Christian-staffed village schools, which were supported by Buddhist and animist parents as well. Myanmar's military government took over those schools in the 1960s, changing to a national rather than Karen curriculum. In Karen National Union-held areas, a series of schools up to the secondary level was established, but most of these are gone now, as the rebels have lost most of their territory to the government. Even in refugee camps, the Karens try to have formal education for their children, but those makeshift schools, like the refugee health clinics, have mostly been destroyed in cross-border raids. Textbooks, often decades old, and school materials are in very short supply, and what schools there are tend to be understaffed. Another difficulty in Karen education is that the schoolchildren are often traumatized by their experience of human rights abuse and are malnourished and beset by malaria and other diseases. In recent years, some young people have been able to receive "backpack medical" or alternative technology training while in refugee camps.

CULTURAL HERITAGE

Karen music includes traditional songs (many of which were love songs) and Western-influenced Christian hymns. In the rebel areas there are also political songs and military marching music played by drum and flute corps. Music that uses the repetitive beat of metal gongs accompanies such dances as the rice-planting dance and the bamboo dance, as well as wedding processions. In the bamboo dance, sets of 8 to 12 long bamboo poles are placed in a grid. Participants kneel on the ground and bang the poles together in time to the music, while dancers step in and out of the openings in the grid.

The Karens have several musical instruments of importance. The Karen drum is a symbol of the people's culture. It is round and made of cast bronze, often with figures of frogs and elephants decorating it. The Karens play a harp called the t'na, which has five or six strings and is tuned with pegs along the neck. Another stringed instrument is the large, wooden guitar-like haw tu. The pa ku is a bamboo xylophone played with hammers, and there are bamboo panpipes and mouth-harps of various sizes. Karens also use imported instruments such as guitars and electric keyboards, especially for Christian church music.

The Karen literary tradition is mostly in oral form. Folk-tales abound, often about a poor orphan boy who falls in love with a girl of a wealthy family. Books by Karens written since World War II include Memoirs of the Four-Foot Colonel by Smith Dun, a high ranking officer in the British Army, and The Golden Book, a Christian interpretation of ancient Karen prophetic poems. Kayan writer Pascal Khoo Thwe's From the Land of Green Ghosts, a memoir of his childhood and life as a refugee won acclaim when it was published in Britain in 2003. Foreign aid workers have also written about their experiences with the Karens. Sylvester Stallone's 2008 movie Rambo was a fictional depiction of the war and human rights abuse affecting Karen villages. A 2002 Thai movie, Blissfully Yours, directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, featured a Karen refugee protagonist. Total Denial, a 2006 film documented the efforts of Karen environmental activist Ka Hsaw Wa, founder of EarthRights International, and his group's lawsuit against Unocal, a petroleum company doing business in Myanmar.

WORK

The Karens have long been rice farmers in wet, irrigated fields in the Delta or in hill fields in the mountains. To cultivate rice in the highlands, villagers burn down plots of forest. This system, called "swidden cultivation," worked well when populations were small and stable, and forests were hardly touched by logging. Now, with the forest size drastically decreased by voracious timber companies and large segments of the Karen population involuntarily on the move, this slash-and-burn method contributes to erosion and loss of wildlife habitat.

Karens also make their living through fishing in coastal areas, working in tin or wolfram mines, and gathering forest products like rattan and honey. There are some educated professionals among the Karens, but many of them live overseas as exiles. When they reach other countries, they often have to take any job available, in spite of their education.

SPORTS

Soccer, volleyball, and a type of kickball called chinlone are popular with Karen young people. Even in mountainous areas, Karen villages often have one flat open space where such sports can be played. Karens sometimes play a game they call mahket in which the large seeds from a vine are rolled to knock over other seeds. In places where television is available, soccer is the favorite spectator sport.

ENTERTAINMENT AND RECREATION

In their free time, Karens enjoy musical activities, movies and DVD shows, and taking walks around their town or village in the evening when the air cools down. People rise at or before dawn and often take an afternoon siesta.

FOLK ART, CRAFTS, AND HOBBIES

Karen women are known for their fine cotton weaving of clothing, blankets and shoulder bags. The weaving is usually done on a small loom set up with a strap that wraps around the waist at one end, but in some areas there are large wooden frame looms as well. The thread is dyed with natural or artificial colors, sometimes with a pattern tie-dyed in. Some woven items are now produced for overseas sale as a means for refugee women to support their families. The Karens also produce etched silver jewelry, baskets, and embroidery.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The Karens feel particularly persecuted after several decades of widespread abuse by military forces of the Myanmar government. The consistent pattern of human rights violations includes forced labor as army equipment porters, human mine-sweepers, human shields, and road and railway builders; destruction of entire villagers; torture of civilians suspected of rebel sympathies; and massacres and executions without trial. Government military abuse of Karen women, particularly rape of village girls by troops, is especially common. These events have made the usually stable Karens into terrified nomads and have turned many into stubborn rebel fighters. Some are third or fourth generation guerrilla soldiers who have grown up knowing nothing but war. For many Karens, the highest priority has become finding a way to escape Myanmar as a refugee, and then obtaining resettlement from Thailand's camps to a third country, in order to start a new life with hopes of peace and education for their children. For others, staying close to their homeland is the goal, even if that means hiding in the forest and moving from place to place to avoid the Myanmar government's soldiers.

GENDER ISSUES

In Karen societies, other than the Kayan matriarchy, women have been considered inferior or subservient to men. Women did a great deal of difficult farm work, but had little status or decision-making power. This has been changing since World War II, as more Karen women have become educated and have taken noteworthy roles in fields such as teaching and health. Dr. Cynthia Maung, a Karen physician, is admired for her brave work in bringing medical care to remote, war-torn regions. Many older women have become village leaders when men have been taken away for forced labor. Refugee women's groups have been formed, emphasizing self-help programs and economic empowerment through the sale of weaving and other crafts. Although Karen society is rather conservative, some individuals who look or behave in ways unconventional to their gender behavior have been tolerated and accepted.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Edward F. Plants and People of the Golden Triangle: Ethnobotany of the Hill Tribes of Northern Thailand. Dioscorides Press, 1993.

Falla, Jonathan. Truelove and Bartholomew: Rebels on the Burmese Border. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Karen Human Rights Group. www.khrg.org (18 April 2008)

Lewis, Paul and Elaine. Peoples of the Golden Triangle. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1984.

Mirante, Edith T. Burmese Looking Glass: A Human Rights Adventure. New York: Grove Press, 1993.

Rebecca, Naw. "Karen Education: Children on the Front Line." Cultural Survival Quarterly 13, no. 4 (1989).

Smith, Martin. Ethnic Groups in Burma. London: Anti-Slavery International, 1994.

Thornton, Phil. Restless Souls: Rebels, Refugees, Medics and Misfits on the Thai-Burmese Border. Bangkok: Asia Books, 2006.

Thwe, Pascal Khoo. From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey. New York: HarperCollins, 2002

"Total Denial," DVD, directed by Milena Kaneva. Italy: MK Production, 2007.

—by E. Mirante

Worldmark Encyclopedia of Cultures and Daily Life

Karens

views updated May 14 2018

Karens

PRONUNCIATION: kuh-RENS

ALTERNATE NAME: Padaung

LOCATION: Southern and eastern Myanmar (Burma); Thailand

POPULATION: 5 million (estimate)

LANGUAGE: Pwo and Sgaw dialects of Karen; Burmese

RELIGION: Buddhism; animism; Christianity (Baptist, Catholicism)

1 • INTRODUCTION

The Karens are a large ethnic group spread throughout Southeast Asia. They trace their origins to the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, or Tibet. Karens settled in southern and eastern Myanmar as far back as the seventh century. (Myanmar was known as Burma until 1990, when the military government changed the country name.) In the 1700s, Karens also began living in neighboring Siam (now called Thailand).

There are numerous Karen subgroups. These varied people lived mainly in tribal societies, governed by chiefs or princes. They sometimes came into conflict with the Burmese (Burman) dynastic rulers, or with other ethnic groups inclined to wage war.

The advent of British colonization in the mid-to-late nineteenth century brought a new sense of security to the Karens. Contact with American and European Christian missionaries, who brought literacy and education, was welcomed. The British administrators recruited many Karens into their police and armed forces. When World War II (1939–45) came to Burma, those Karens became loyal guerrilla fighters for the Allies against Japanese occupiers.

As Britain granted Burma independence after the war, Karen politicians hoped for their own nation. The Karen people, who had never recognized Burmese authority, had enjoyed "protectorate" status with the British Empire, and also expected their nationhood to be recognized. Instead Karens, along with other ethnic populations, were absorbed into the new Union of Burma. Problems began almost immediately, when troops of the predominantly Burmese (Burman) government killed Karen villagers. A Karen insurgency sprang up and rapidly gained momentum until it threatened to seize control of the Burmese capital, Rangoon. The Karen rebels were driven back by the government troops, and the military came to dominate the country, eventually taking over power in 1962. The military government pledged to quell rebellion and unify the country by force.

Government forces sent to subdue the rebellion actually drove more Karens into joining the rebels. A consistent pattern of deliberate human rights violations by the government against ethnic minority civilians has continued to this day, driving tens of thousands of Karens to Thailand as refugees and making the Karen conflict the world's longest running rebellion.

2 • LOCATION

Estimates of the Karen population of Myanmar vary greatly, as there has been no census in decades. Perhaps 5 million Karen tribal members live in Myanmar. Another 300,000 Karen-ethnic peoples have roots in Thailand, and thousands of others live there as refugees.

3 • LANGUAGE

The language of the Karens is generally considered to be of the Tibeto-Burman family, and the main dialects of Karen are Pwo and Sgaw. Many Karen people in isolated hill areas remain illiterate, and those in the Delta region often can speak only Burmese. Their language does, however remain a feature of Karen cultural pride. Baptist missionaries developed scripts based on Burmese for Pwo Karen (with twenty-five letters) and for other Karen languages. An old Pwo script known as "chicken scratch," because of the shapes of its letters, was devised by Karen Buddhists as well.

In Sgaw Karen, an informal greeting (How's it going?) is Madee leh? and a farewell is Leh mu mu (Go pleasantly). "Thank you" in Sgaw Karen is Dah bluet.

4 • FOLKLORE

Karen folklore impressed early Christian missionaries with its similarity to the book of Genesis in the Bible. The tribal mythology also told of the Karen language being kept in a book, which was lost in the mass migration south from "the river of sand." There is a sense in their old stories of being exploited by other ethnic groups, and of wishing to regain some past glories through miracles or supernaturally gifted leaders. Sometimes Karens have become cult followers of messianic leaders who assure them that special clothing or tattoos will make them impervious to harm. In traditional animist, spirit-worshipping belief systems, the Karens must make offerings to natural forces such as "the lord of land and water." Even Christian Karens still have their skin adorned with tattoos as a form of magical protection. Buddhist Karens often wear amulets (small metal, stone, or clay Buddha images) around their necks.

A Karen subgroup, the Kayan, are known for the neck rings made of brass worn by girls and women. Over time, more and more coils are added to the rings, pushing the collarbone down, giving the appearance of an elongated neck (hence their Burmese name, Padaung, meaning "longneck"). The Kayan subgroup of Karen is traditionally a matriarchy. The rings around necks, arms, and knees are sometimes explained as a traditional protection against tiger bites. Many Kayans have become refugees in recent years, and women with neck rings have been exploited as "freak show" tourist attractions in Thailand and Myanmar.

5 • RELIGION

Most Karens are Buddhists or animists (believers in spirits in nature). There are also significant populations of Christians, mainly Baptists and Catholics.

There is considerable interplay between animist rituals and Buddhist practices among the Karens. Animists believe in helpful female guardian spirits called ther myng khae, the "lord of land and water," and local spirits, as well as beneficial and malicious ghosts. The Christians emphasize Bible study and prayer services with hymn singing. Villages tend to be predominantly one of the three religions, even though there is a variety of houses of worship in the towns. Christian Karens have tried to convert the Buddhists and animists, and in recent years Myanmar's military government has encouraged conflict between Buddhist Karens and the Christian Karens.

6 • MAJOR HOLIDAYS

7 • RITES OF PASSAGE

Traditional Karen society has various taboos for pregnant women, such as not drinking liquor and not going to funerals. Births usually take place at home, assisted by family members or a village "midwife" (often a man). After the birth, the mother eats a special diet of rice and chicken, and strings are tied around the baby's wrists to protect it from evil spirits. Deaths in childhood are very common among the Karens. In rural areas there is little understanding of hygiene and nutrition, but Karen medical practitioners are working to spread information that can save lives.

Karens have a variety of funeral customs, according to their religions. The animist Karens believe in an afterlife and dress the corpse to be accepted in the land of Khu See-du, the lord of the dead. The body may be cremated or buried. Buddhist Karens hold cremation ceremonies with prayers to ease the deceased person into the next incarnation. Christian Karens hold a funeral prayer service and bury the body. Usually a wooden cross marks the grave.

8 • RELATIONSHIPS

For a polite greeting, a Karen holds his or her right elbow in their left hand, and shakes hands with the right hand. They use the same gesture to give or offer objects to other people. Introductions will include the titles Karens use with their names, usually Saw for men and Naw for women.

Karens are very hospitable and will expect any guests to eat with them and, if possible, stay overnight or longer. In traditional Karen bamboo houses, sleeping quarters for guests are on the veranda.

Boys and girls usually meet in school, at Buddhist festivals, or in Christian youth groups. In traditional animist villages, funerals have been the scene of boy-girl socializing. When a young couple gets involved, love letters and secret messages are often exchanged. Sometimes a game is played between groups of boys and girls, with the boys asking poetic questions and the girls replying with rhyming answers. The questions and answers are about romance, but are subtle and symbolic.

9 • LIVING CONDITIONS

Warfare and forced relocation campaigns by the Burmese government have displaced much of Myanmar's Karen population. Many villagers have had to leave their family homes and move to resettlement camps near government army bases (where they are forced into labor). Other villagers have fled to forest areas or across the border to Thailand in order to escape Burmese oppression. When the Karens come into contact with other environments and societies, they often become infected with diseases. Many Karens, especially children, die from such infectious illnesses. Little health care is available, although in Karen rebel strongholds some clinics have been set up by teams of traveling medics. A few foreign aid agencies had been operating in Thailand's Karen refugee camps, but then the entire camps were burned in cross-border raids.

Malnutrition is widespread among the Karens, many of whom subsist on rice with chili pepper, and perhaps some fish sauce and greens gathered from the forests. Anemia and vitamin deficiency are common. In addition to forced relocation, the widespread capture of farmers by the government military for forced labor has made it hard for the Karens to grow their own crops. Rampant deforestation as the Burmese government sells off forests to Thai logging firms has decreased the Karens' sources of wild game and edible plants, as well as causing climate changes and landslides.

For many generations, the Karen people have lived in harmony with the forest. Only if teak trees reached a certain size could they be harvested. They were replanted and the logs were transported by elephants and river rafts. Forest-dwelling Karens build their houses of bamboo with some wood, perched on stilts and with thatched roofs. The stilts are especially high if the house belongs to an elephant-owning family, since the veranda can be used for loading and unloading the animal. In bamboo houses, the family will sit and sleep on woven mats on the floor. In larger houses, which are made of teak or other wood, the family members sit on benches at tables and sleep on raised wooden beds with mosquito netting.

Baths are taken, wearing sarongs, in a river or by pouring water from a village pump or an urn of rainwater. Sections of bamboo or plastic buckets are used to carry water from nearby streams for cooking and washing. Toilets are usually small pit latrines with a bamboo shelter.

The ox-cart is the usual means of transport for goods and people, along with elephants and motorized river long-boats. The Karens are well known for their work with elephants, which they capture, train, and use for hauling and transport. Some Karen tribes often raise ponies or mules for transportation as well.

10 • FAMILY LIFE

In Karen societies, other than the Kayan subgroup, women have traditionally been considered inferior or subservient to men. They did a great deal of difficult farm work, but had little status or decision-making power. This has been changing as more Karen women have become educated and have taken noteworthy roles in fields such as teaching and health. Dr. Cynthia Maung, a Karen physician, is admired for her brave work in bringing medical care to remote, war-torn regions. Many older women have become village leaders when men have been taken away for forced labor. Underground political and social women's groups have begun, emphasizing self-help programs and economic empowerment.

Traditionally, either a boy or girl can propose marriage, and the whole village is allowed a say whether their marriage would be appropriate and not offensive to any spirits. Weddings are festive occasions when both the bride's and groom's villages come together. The bride changes from her unmarried woman's long dress to a married woman's two-part outfit. Marriage is considered to be for life, and among Karens of all faiths, adultery is considered taboo—an unnatural act that can bring catastrophe on the whole village. Karens have an average of four or five children, but infant and child mortality rates are very high.

Karen families keep dogs for hunting and as pets. Sometimes families keep birds or baby forest animals such as squirrels or gibbons. Karen elephant tamers "adopt" one elephant, train it, and take care of it for life.

11 • CLOTHING

While many Karens now wear mass-produced shirts, T-shirts, trousers, and sarongs of factory-woven batik cloth, traditional dress is still popular, especially in mountain areas and for special occasions. Traditionally, Karens wear tunics and sarongs of homespun cotton, dyed red, blue, and black. Men and married women wear a loose tunic over a wrapped sarong. The women's tunics are often elaborately embroidered with colored thread and seed-beads. The men's tunics are plain, having only fringed hems. Unmarried girls wear simple, long white dresses called hsay mo htoo in Sgaw Karen. Men and women often wear turbans, and Pwo men sometimes have very long hair-worn loose or in sideswept ponytails. Women wear masses of bead necklaces and a great many silver bracelets on their wrists and upper arms.

Among subgoups, Kayans are often known as Karennis ("red Karens") because of their predominantly red homespun clothing. The women wear short sarongs wrapped over one shoulder with a belt or sash and cords of thin black rattan wrapped around their legs.

12 • FOOD

Karens are known for eating a huge variety of foods, including jungle products such as snake, bat, monkey, grubs, bee larvae, ants, palm sugar, wild honey, forest herbs, frog, and lizard. Many types of birds and fish are consumed, and Karens raise chickens, ducks, pigs, cattle, corn, and pumpkins for food. A favorite dish for Karens in the forest is takataw, made by adding a handful of rice and some shreds of dried meat (often venison or wild boar) to boiling water, letting it cook until the meat and rice are soft like porridge, and then adding some chopped vegetables.

Due to deforestation, crop confiscation, and rural dislocation, nowadays many Karens have trouble obtaining enough food for their families. Karen refugees and poor villagers typically live on rice, chili peppers, some fish paste, and whatever greens they can gather. The Karens normally eat several helpings of rice at meals and for snacks. They eat mostly white rice now, which is less nutritious than red or brown rice. For flavoring, many people use monosodium glutamate powder, which comes from Thailand.

Karens often chew betel nut, which comes from a species of palm and is combined with leaves and lime paste; it is a mild stimulant and stains the mouth bright red.

13 • EDUCATION

During the British colonial period (1885–1947), missionaries helped the Karens start Christian-staffed village schools, which were supported by Buddhist and animist parents as well. The Burmese military government took over those schools in the 1960s, changing them to a national rather than a Karen curriculum. In rebel-held areas, a series of schools up to the secondary level was established, but most of these schools are gone now, as the Karen rebels have lost more and more territory to the government. Even in refugee camps, the Karens try to have formal education for their children, but makeshift schools, like the refugee health clinics, have mostly been destroyed in cross-border raids. Textbooks, often decades old, and school materials are in very short supply, and what schools there are tend to be understaffed. Educators also are faced with schoolchildren who are traumatized by their experience of human rights abuse, who are malnourished, and who are beset by malaria and other diseases.

14 • CULTURAL HERITAGE

Karen music includes traditional songs (many of which are love songs) and Western-influenced Christian hymns. In the rebel areas there are also political songs and military marching music played by drum and flute corps. Music that uses the repetitive beat of metal gongs accompanies such dances as the rice-planting dance and the bamboo dance, as well as wedding processions. In the bamboo dance, sets of eight to twelve long bamboo poles are placed in a grid. Participants kneel on the ground and bang the poles together in time to the music, while dancers step in and out of the openings in the grid.

The Karens have several musical instruments of importance. The Karen drum is a symbol of the culture. It is round and made of cast bronze, often decorated with figures of frogs and elephants. The Karens play a harp called the t'na, which has five or six strings and is tuned with pegs along the neck of the instrument. Another stringed instrument is the large, wooden guitar-like haw tu. The pa ku is a bamboo xylophone played with hammers, and there are bamboo panpipes and mouth-harps of various sizes. Karens also use imported instruments such as guitars and electric keyboards, especially for Christian church music.

The Karen literary tradition is mostly in oral form. Folktales abound, often about a poor orphan boy who falls in love with a girl of a wealthy family. Books by Karens written since World War II (1939–45) include Memoirs of the Four-Foot Colonel by Smith Dun, a high ranking officer in the British Army, and The Golden Book, a Christian interpretation of ancient Karen prophetic poems.

15 • EMPLOYMENT

The Karens have long been rice farmers in wet, irrigated fields in the Delta or in hill fields in the mountains. In the past, to grow rice in the highlands, villagers would selectively burn small plots of forest. This system, called "swidden cultivation," worked well when Karen populations were small and stable. At that time, the Myanmar forests were hardly touched by logging. Now, large timber companies are drastically reducing the size of the forest, and adding "swidden cultivation" to indiscriminate logging contributes to erosion and loss of wild-life habitat. Karen rebels have established wildlife sanctuaries where no hunting or farming is allowed, but even these species-rich preserves are now under threat from the Burmese government's petroleum transport projects and government deals with foreign timber firms.

Karens also make their living by fishing in coastal areas, working in tin or wolfram mines, and gathering forest products like rattan and honey. There are some educated professionals among the Karens, but many of them live overseas as exiles or serve in the Karen National Union.

16 • SPORTS

17 • RECREATION

In their free time, Karens enjoy musical activities, movies and video shows, and taking walks around their town or village in the evening when the air cools. People rise at or before dawn and often take an afternoon nap.

18 • CRAFTS AND HOBBIES

Karen women are known for their fine cotton weaving of clothing, blankets, and shoulderbags. The weaving is usually done on a small loom set up with a strap that wraps around the waist at one end, but in some areas there are large wooden frame looms as well. The thread is dyed with natural or artificial colors, sometimes with a pattern produced by tie-dying. Some woven items are now produced for overseas sale as a means for refugee women to support their families. The Karens also produce etched silver jewelry, baskets, and embroidery.

19 • SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The Karens feel particularly persecuted after several decades of widespread abuse by military forces of the Burmese government. The consistent pattern of human rights violations includes forced labor as army equipment porters, human minesweepers, human shields, and road and railway builders; destruction of entire villages; torture of civilians suspected of rebel sympathies; and massacres and executions without trial. Government military abuse of Karen women, particularly rape of village girls by troops, is especially common. These events have transformed the usually stable Karens into terrified nomads and have turned many into stubborn rebel fighters. Some Karens today are third-generation guerrilla soldiers who have grown up knowing nothing but war.