The Kui are an Indigenous community in northeast Thailand, living along the border with Cambodia. Indigeneity in Thailand, however, is a fraught issue, as the Thai state denies the existence of Indigenous peoples within its borders. Consequently, Indigenous and ethnic minority communities like the Kui have had their histories hidden, omitted from national historical narratives, and their heritage is under threat due to past assimilationist policies and a lack of support from the state. This is a consequence, more broadly, of their exclusion from what Laurajane Smith (Uses of heritage, Routledge, London, 2006) terms the ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse’ (AHD). The AHD describes the way heritage is defined and managed by those in positions of power and authority—in this case, the Thai state. This chapter seeks to examine how the Kui are using digital platforms, particularly social media, as a means of resisting the AHD—to share their heritage, language and history with the wider public, to counteract the previous erasure of the community’s identity. The spaces of Indigenous digital resilience that will be explored in this chapter include public Facebook pages, Instagram, TikTok, blogs and websites. In addition to disseminating knowledge, these platforms also serve a secondary function as ‘non-official’ digital archives for the documentation and preservation of heritage, circumventing the more ‘official’ state documentation of heritage that occurs at the governmental level. This chapter will ultimately ask how digital spaces can be a means of empowerment and a tool for Indigenous communities to subvert the AHD, reclaiming their cultural heritage and identities.

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Social Media and Subversion: Digital Platforms as a Tool for Indigenous Resistance in Thailand

  • Alisa Santikarn

摘要

The Kui are an Indigenous community in northeast Thailand, living along the border with Cambodia. Indigeneity in Thailand, however, is a fraught issue, as the Thai state denies the existence of Indigenous peoples within its borders. Consequently, Indigenous and ethnic minority communities like the Kui have had their histories hidden, omitted from national historical narratives, and their heritage is under threat due to past assimilationist policies and a lack of support from the state. This is a consequence, more broadly, of their exclusion from what Laurajane Smith (Uses of heritage, Routledge, London, 2006) terms the ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse’ (AHD). The AHD describes the way heritage is defined and managed by those in positions of power and authority—in this case, the Thai state. This chapter seeks to examine how the Kui are using digital platforms, particularly social media, as a means of resisting the AHD—to share their heritage, language and history with the wider public, to counteract the previous erasure of the community’s identity. The spaces of Indigenous digital resilience that will be explored in this chapter include public Facebook pages, Instagram, TikTok, blogs and websites. In addition to disseminating knowledge, these platforms also serve a secondary function as ‘non-official’ digital archives for the documentation and preservation of heritage, circumventing the more ‘official’ state documentation of heritage that occurs at the governmental level. This chapter will ultimately ask how digital spaces can be a means of empowerment and a tool for Indigenous communities to subvert the AHD, reclaiming their cultural heritage and identities.