The Golden Triangle Tribes

The Golden Triangle Tribes

Those pictures were taken during a trip in the Burmese part of the Golden Triangle. Due to the intensive culture of Opium in the area and the dictatorship in place in the country for decades, the region has lived behind closed doors since the departure of the British settlers in 1948.

The British have named the country Burma under their reign and its inhabitants Burmese. But the ethnic reality of the country is more complex. Myanmar gathers about hundred ethnicities and this mosaic is sometimes fuel for tensions and guerrillas movements.

To realize this reportage I was based in the city of Kengtung which is the chief town of the Burmese Golden Triangle. The largest ethnicity in this region is Shan people, but the remote mountains are home to various tribes including the Akkhas, the Eng, the Pau, the Palaung...

They live in remote villages that mostly have no road access and are only accessible after long hikes through deep mountains. Most of those groups live in a self sufficient manner, cultivating rice and raising pigs and sometimes water buffalos for their subsistance. Their limited contacts mainly consist in interactions while selling their productions to markets.

With the limited infrastructures in place, the tensions existing between ethnic groups and the overall tense situation in Burma, their traditions and culture have remain relatively untouched.