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| Palaung women in traditional dress |
Our December wouldn’t be complete without a day at the Doi Kham Fair in Chiang Mai. At this annual exhibition of the King’s Royal Projects in northern Thailand, we were fortunate this year to meet a group of Palaung weavers. The Palaung (also spelled “Palong’ or, as they call themselves, “Ta’ang”) are the most recent displaced peoples to settle in Thailand from Burma.
In Burma, where they are one of the oldest indigenous peoples, they live primarily in northern Shan State in an area long recognized for tea production. A new report released by Ta’ang Students and Youth Organization estimates that 63% of farming families have lost their land to confiscation by the Burmese military and their cronies, primarily for massive hydroelectric and pipeline development projects. Read more on the
Palaung Women's Organization website.
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| Cotton scarf, naturally dyed |
The Palaung women we met live close to the Thai-Burmese border, about 3 hours by bus from Chiang Mai. Their traditional dress, which they were wearing, centres around red fabric but the handwoven scarves we bought from them are naturally dyed. All were woven with thick, cotton yarns on backstrap looms.
The older women we met belong to a 42-women strong weaving group, while the younger women from whom we also bought belong to another group in a nearby village. As with all the women's weaving groups with whom we work, weaving brings important additional income to these communities.
To learn more about the Palaung people, visit
Indigenous Peoples of the World. For more information on backstrap weaving, visit
Backstrap Basics. And see our post about another
backstrap weaving group from last year's Doi Kham Fair.
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| Cotton scarf, naturally dyed |
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| Cotton scarf, naturally dyed |
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| Cotton scarf, naturally dyed |
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| Cotton scarf, naturally dyed |
