“Zomia [from Tibeto-Burman Zomi “people of the hills”] is a new name for virtually all the lands at altitude above roughly three hundred meters all the way from the Central Highlands of Vietnam to Northeastern India and traversing five Southeast Asian nations and four provinces of China…
It is an expanse of 2.5 million square kilometers containing about one hundred million minority peoples of truly bewildering ethnic and linguistic variety… Zomia is the largest remaining region of the world whose peoples have not yet been fully incorporated into nation-states. Its days are numbered.”
– James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed
Former nomads, current rebels, and constant refugees: These are the inhabitants of “Zomia” – a neologism for the jungled hills of the Southeast Asian Massif where diverse people groups have historically survived independent of statehood.
These highlanders have traditionally chosen or been forced to remain separate from modern “civilized” society by living a semi-nomadic and self-sufficient lifestyle. As a land of untamed wilderness and unforgiving terrain, Zomia provides the perfect natural refuge for those wishing to avoid conformity.
Yale professor James C. Scott has proposed a concept contrary to the traditional lowland view of these ethnic minorities: hill tribes are not primitive people yet to evolve into a state, but cultures advanced in the techniques of state-evasion; in “the art of not being governed.”
For hundreds of years, Zomia was out of the reach of even the most powerful regional kingdoms – exactly why the predecessors of the current mountain tenants originally settled there.
But times have changed, and their unique way of life is disappearing.
In most places where highlanders have been forcibly assimilated, they are discriminated against by lowland governments. New financial pressures and the destruction of their homeland for resource extraction is forcing them to abandon their heritage and become citizens of a state that has no stake in their well-being.
In many countries, these marginalized populations strive for independence, but are kept in line by authoritarian regimes and kept poor through corrupt diversion of resources.
We have never had a greater ability to facilitate self-sufficiency for the marginalized peoples of the world, but we must act now if we wish to help preserve their culture and autonomy for the years to come.