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Endangered Idyll?
By Collin Piprell
Andaman sea gypsies
live, work and play on the water but is this ancient way of life now at
risk?
 Ever-changing
constellations of islands recede into the distance ahead as we sail up the
Burmese coast from Kawthaung, the southern-most town in Myanmar. Deserted
white-sand beaches backed by prime rain forest line the shores, and mountain
peaks on the larger islands beckon from many miles away. We’ve cruised most
of the day without spotting another vessel.
Then we encounter a scene out of some Hollywood fantasy.
Snugged in between a couple of uninhabited isles lie a congregation of
exotic wooden boats, each raggedly festooned with lines and pennants and
teeming with men, women, children and dogs. And there’s more to come. Some
miles off the nearest island, the next day, we spot a train of 14 dugout
canoes full of women and girls in tow behind one of the same odd-looking
wooden houseboats. A week later, off yet another island, we make way for a
fleet of dugouts streaming back to a be-pennanted mother boat with the
afternoon’s catch, where bare-breasted women have been diving from their
canoes for a variety of marine organisms, including shellfish, crabs, shrimp
and sea cucumbers. On the tidal flats in front of a temporary encampment,
young boys are spearing stingrays with tridents longer than themselves. A
few women and children dig sand worms along the waterline.
There’s a dreamlike quality to cruising this archipelago.
These scenes have the flavour of other times and other worlds. And 100 years
ago the sense of mystery and wonder was much the same:
Of all that has happened amongst their islands since men
first came to live and move amongst them, there is no record, and there
never will be any now … Their main, and it would seem their earliest, human
interest centres in the fast-dying colony of the Salon, which has made these
islands its last refuge. When or whence they came, one can only guess; and
whether they had any human predecessors it is difficult even to conjecture.
But it is probable that they are an extremely ancient people, kindred of
that aboriginal stock which peopled the mainland before the advent of the
Htai.
V. C. Scott O’Connor (1904)
 O’Connor,
a late 19
th-century
British observer, referred to the indigenous people of Burma’s Mergui
Archipelago as "Salons". Indeed, these sea nomads have been variously
described as Moken, Mokken, Mawken, Selon, Selong, Selung, Salon and Salong.
English-speakers, often assimilating them to related but distinct groups to
the south, tend to call them Sea Gypsies. (The more southerly peoples,
however, are not Moken, but rather the related Moklen and Urak Lawoi —
peoples who have been more strongly influenced by Buddhism, Islam and
mainstream societies. In Thailand, all three groups are collectively known
as chao le or chao nam, "sea people" or "water people",
respectively. About 2,500 Moklen, whose language is very similar to Moken,
have abandoned the nomadic life to live on the coasts of Phang Nga and
Phuket. About 4,500 Urak Lawoi live on Phuket as well as along the
coastlines and islands of Krabi and Saturn.)
In view of their small numbers and apparent lack of
"vitality", European commentators, including O’Connor, quoted above, were
already predicting the imminent extinction of the Mokens back in the late 19 th
and early 20th
centuries. Today, 100 years later, many would still describe the culture as
"fast dying". And little more is known of its origins or how long this
people has lived among these islands.
Probably the first book on the Moken was The Selungs,
by John Anderson, a British doctor who visited the Archipelago in 1881-82.
Before the 19 th
century, however, little was recorded about these people, although
references to simple non-Muslim boat people along the Trang-Mergui coastline
may be found as far back as the 16th
century. The archipelago itself was at various times part of Siam, Burma and
the British Empire. Still, historical information about these islands
remains scant. For one thing, even though the town of Mergui was long an
important trading hub and, later, a regional pearling centre, most
travellers were reluctant to visit the more southerly islands, legendary
haunt of pirates and crocodiles. Outsiders’ histories of the area and its
people thus tend to be fragmentary, largely anecdotal. The Moken themselves
have no written history, and their myths and legends are only poorly
recorded and understood.
 Some
assume that they were originally an offshoot of the Veddas, the aboriginal
inhabitants of India. There are those among the Moken themselves who suggest
they made their way from the Nicobar Islands, whether directly or else by
island-hopping up through the Andaman Islands and then along the southwest
coast of Myanmar. (Turn-of-the-century encyclopaedias did describe the "Selungs"
as inhabiting both the Mergui Archipelago and the Nicobars.) Most experts,
however, believe they migrated up the coast from the Riaw-Ringga
Archipelago, south of Singapore.
The Moken are related in uncertain ways to other groups
of sea nomads inhabiting the waters of the Malay Peninsula. The Mergui
Archipelago population, however, is that least affected by mainstream
societies. Most speak only Malay and Moken, an Austronesian language,
together with a few words of Burmese or Thai. And these "Burmese" Moken are
the only group of sea nomads, among an estimated total of 20,000, who remain
largely uninfluenced by Islam or Buddhism.
The groups farther south have settled in coastal
villages, for the most part. The Moken, on the other hand, have long been
nomadic hunter-gatherers whose range is mainly limited to the littoral zones
— the shorelines, together with their contiguous marine and forest shallows
— of some of the more than 800 islands of the Mergui Archipelago, which
extend hundreds of miles up Myanmar’s southern coast. A lesser number
inhabit the Surin Islands and Phuket, in Thailand. Moken communities are
organized on kinship groups — exogamous extended families — based around
flotillas of six-eight boats, each fleet having its own loose territory.
Although estimates vary — given the difficulty of counting such a shy people
dispersed over such a broad and largely wild area — 2,000-3,000 Moken with
somewhere between 200 and 500 houseboats still maintain a semi-nomadic
lifestyle in the Mergui Archipelago, a few still travelling back and forth
across the border in their boats to visit kindred communities in Thailand.
 These
people recognize two main seasons — the wet May-October southwest monsoon,
and the dry October-May northeast monsoon. Traditionally, families spend
six-eight months aboard their distinctive wooden boats. They stay ashore
only in the wet and blustery southwest monsoon. In the latter season, you
might sail around a point of land and into a protected cove where you find
yourself confronted with a scene from another age. And the Moken are as
startled to encounter you as you are them. The boats have motors instead of
sails, and plastic oil bottles serve as marker buoys; otherwise, the scene
could as easily be from 100, even 200 years ago. An animist totem pole
stands in the centre of the stilted and thatched village of 20-30 dwellings,
and work is proceeding on the dugout keel of a traditional houseboat. In the
wet season, they occupy their time with boat maintenance and construction,
hunting wild pigs and other small game, gathering fruit and vegetables and
digging for wild yams.
Historically, the Moken have sought home ranges both rich
in littoral resources and remote from other cultures. Eighty-odd years ago,
one British observer reported that the islands were very seldom visited, and
those who did go there tended to be Christian missionaries or government
officials: "The former want taxes and the latter want to convert them; and
the [Moken] is very timid, and avoids both."
But today the winds of change are blowing in earnest.
Sights such as the rainy season village described above are only rarely
encountered. In the interests of bureaucratic efficiency and political
security, the nomads are being encouraged to give up their nomadic ways and
settle in easily administered areas. The Burmese government has established
a permanent settlement on Pu Nala, just south of Lampi Island. As you round
the north end of the island, you sight a small pagoda on a grassy hill. Back
of the beach stands a coconut grove and several dozen atap huts on stilts.
High-prowed wooden longtail fishing boats lie at rest along the waterline.
Farther up, on the sand, several of the distinctive traditional live-aboard
Moken vessels, weathered and to all appearances derelict, sit high and dry.
(Burman fishing boats are also in evidence, for a number of Burmese have
settled here as well.) The Myanmar government has built the pagoda, a
monastery, school and even a small museum to cater for tourists. Every two
months, it also supplies the village with essentials which, together with
the educational facilities, provide incentive for Moken families to
relocate. Shops offer everything from biscuits to cigarettes and beer;
though you still find sea cucumbers, delicacies for trade in Ranong or with
visiting dealers from Mergui Town, drying over charcoal fires in the main
street.
The trade-off, of course, is exposure to Burman and other
cultures, Buddhist assaults on their traditionally animistic beliefs, and
loss of at least part of that indigenous knowledge that allowed them, on the
one hand, to brave the elements for eight months of the year aboard their
famously seaworthy boats, and, on the other, enabled them to survive in a
sustainable relationship with the littoral ecosystem.
 The
fringing reefs of the Mergui Archipelago are still rich in marine life. The
forest remains home to all sorts of wildlife. Early in the past century, the
Mergui Gazetteer, for example, listed the following animals for the
district: gibbons, flying lemur, jungle-dog, flying fox, civet, tiger,
leopard, bear, elephant, boar, mouse-deer, sambhar, barking deer, bison,
wild cow, tapir, rhinoceros (single- and double-horned), turtle, python and
cobra. Virtually all of these species still inhabit these islands, although
some are now threatened with extinction.
What is perhaps an even more profound tragedy, however,
goes relatively unremarked. The indigenous sea nomad culture — as rare and
as endangered a phenomenon as any animal species in the region — may truly
be dying at last.
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