CULTURAL LANDSCAPE AND INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE OF NATURAL RESOURCE AND ENVIRONMENT MANAGEMENT OF PHUTAI TRIBE

Abstract

The study on Cultural landscape and indigenous knowledge of natural resource and environment management of Phutai tribe, is focusing on cultural landscape and intangible heritage which related with knowledge of natural and environment management of Phutai people of KogpaziCommunity, Kuchinarai District, Kalasin Province, Thailand. The cultural landscape of the research site is occurring under the influences of three factors of climate, topography, and natural resource. The climate is hot and dry and natural resource is limited cause by lack of water and geography of high plateau land. These influences Phutai to create sets of wisdom to utilize for maximum benefit and sustainability The cultural landscape of the site can be divided into four zones under the concept of Baan-Na-Pa-Nam or Home-Farm-Forest-Water resource. It was found that the knowledge and wisdom of Phutai in each zone can be summarized as follows; Zone of Baan, the wisdom is under the philosophy to create “peaceful coexisting” under concept of “living together by respect” and controlled by the tradition of “heed sib song”, “Kong sib si”, and Phutai traditional social inter-relationship. Zone of Na, the knowledge and wisdom is under the philosophy of ‘balancing of utilization by love’ that controled by their belief of Pha Mea Tolani (The mother earth) and her network of gods. Zone of Pa, the knowledge and wisdom is under the philosophy to create “respectful to consume and conserve” and controlled by Phutai belief of Don-Poo-Ta that the forest and mountain which is the sacred area where their ancestor’s soul being. Zone of Nam, is the “mixture of the sets of Phutai knowledge and wisdom” that Kogpazi Community apply their Phutai belief in supernatural, regulation, and management to produce the sustainable consumption and utilization of water resources.