Talk:Maniq people

Alternate name

Is "Ngau" an alternate name that has been used in Thailand? Badagnani (talk) 06:28, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes. Thai: คนเงาะ khon ngaw RTGS khonngo—Pawyilee (talk) 14:56, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Alternate name?

Are they also called ซาไก? Badagnani (talk) 17:09, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The Sakai (ซาไก) - which wikilink redirects to Semang, a Negrito people in the Malayan peninsula - in Thailand live in the province of Satun (and possibly some nearby districts of other provinces) and are obviously roughly negroid, whether Negrito or not I couldn't possibly ascertain. Though tourists on an organized tour may visit some small village with elderly people and a few kids in simple wooden huts, most Sakai don't actually reside there and are (underpaid) set to work in nearby rubber plantations. This I noticed two years ago. Thirteen years earlier, I had also seen Sakai, still of all ages in a somewhat larger village of simple but perhaps a little larger wooden shacks, which I had driven to myself and assume to have been more authentically contemporary.

The article describes Maniq as hunter-gatherers living in "temporary huts of bamboo with roofs made of banana leaves". That however, typically fits the Mlabri (Mahbri), of whom only about 200 survive more than 1,500 km to the north in the provinces of southern Nan and adjacent Phrae. Actually, these half nomads hunted small animals and gathered mainly roots, and at least in the 1930s their shelters were not built in bamboo but only from banana leaves; they did however use bamboo for many purposes. They were in contact only with Hmong tribes and occasionally worked on their fields. They did not make any textiles but many already had been paid in pieces of Hmong cloth and then wore it as a mere loincloth (I assume an adopted custom on instigation of, and facilitating dealing with, Hmong). Until about three decades ago, they lived unclad and shyly away from the Thai. Meanwhile, agriculturers have been deforesting large areas of their environment. Thai used to call them 'phi tong luang', yellow leaves spirits, because occasional encroachers in the green & brown forests could spot only the abandoned (thus turned clear yellow before turning brownish) shelters and never saw people around. As a few Mlabri are said to have been shot dead by Thai, by then well aware of the naming, frightened of assumedly bad ghosts, the 'phi' is now often dropped and at least one location in Wiang Sa district (bordering Phrae in the province of Nan) became indicated 'Tong Lueang Community' from kilometres away. And Thai tourist gatherers and their preys don't appreciate seeing naked people... thus the Mlabri, whose numbers had come down from 600, have become less hard to find and are being slightly civilized. In spite of global warming, twice during the past decade northern Thailand had a December month with never before experienced cold nights and (in the provinces of Loei and Chiang Rai) even frost (once -1 C and a later year -4 C), which might also have forced Mlabri out of their traditional habits - (compare: Last January a momentary drop in temperature till +8.6 C in Chiang Rai was in the news, and in 2009 the governor of Tak declared nine districts below +14 C as disaster zones.)
A few more small Mlabri tribes are found in Laos, or so I read.
​▲ SomeHuman 2016-04-18 13:34 - 2016-04-19 10:14 (UTC)