The Importance of Being Mlabri

Overview

There are only 320 Mlabri people left on this planet. They came out of the jungle in Northern Thailand on the border to Laos one generation ago. The Mlabri people used to be hunters and gatherers. Today they scrape out a meagre existence at the bottom of society working as day labourers for the Hmong farmers, and living in shacks on the outskirts of larger Hmong villages. The Mlabri people are currently going through a transformation process, which has taken many other people thousands of years. Now the young people are faced with the choice of staying with their families in the village or adapting to the Thai society. How do they experience the meeting between their own culture and the local, regional and national majority cultures? In this film young Mlabri tell about their past, present and future as they see it; all expressed in their unique and expressive Mlabri language.

Signe Byrge Sørensen