Khokmanh or Ban Khokmanh is a village in

Mueang Mueang ( Ahom: 𑜉𑜢𑜤𑜂𑜫; ''mɯ̄ang'', ), Muang ( ''mɯ́ang'', ), Möng ( Tai Nuea: ᥛᥫᥒᥰ ''möeng''; ''móeng'', ), Meng ( zh, c=猛 or 勐) or Mường (Vietnamese) were pre-modern semi-independent city-states or princip ...

Luang Prabang Luang Prabang (Lao language, Lao: wikt:ຫຼວງພະບາງ, ຫຼວງພະບາງ, pronounced ), historically known as Xieng Thong (ຊຽງທອງ) and alternatively spelled Luang Phabang or Louangphabang, is the capital of Lu ...

, Khoueng

Laos Laos, officially the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR), is the only landlocked country in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by Myanmar and China to the northwest, Vietnam to the east, Cambodia to the southeast, and Thailand to the west and ...

History

Khokmanh village was established about 300 years ago. This area has lush paddy fields with fertile soil. From the 18th century, the Ho ( Chinese Han) came here for wet rice cultivation. Therefore, this region has since then been called ‘Na Ho’, meaning, a rice field of the Ho. Then, the French came to add Luang Prabang and other parts of Laos into the

French Protectorate of Laos The French protectorate of Laos () was a French protectorate in Southeast Asia of what is today Laos between 1893 and 1953—with a brief interregnum as a Japanese puppet state in 1945—which constituted part of French Indochina. It was estab ...

. At that time Sen Kam was ‘Chau Lau’ or District Governor of this region. During that time, Khokmanh had only 10 families of the Lao o
Lao Loum

ethnic group An ethnicity or ethnic group is a group of people with shared attributes, which they collectively believe to have, and long-term endogamy. Ethnicities share attributes like language, culture, common sets of ancestry, traditions, society, re ...

. Around 1961, an additional 20 households from nearby came to live there. In 1995, under the Lao policy in merging small villages into the larger ones, an additional 11 families of the

Khmu The Khmu (; Khmu: ; or ; ; ; ; ; ) are an ethnic group of Southeast Asia. The majority (88%) live in northern Laos where they constitute the largest minority ethnic group, comprising eleven percent of the total population. Alternative hi ...

ethnic group moved from Huoi Nhai region to live with

Lao Loum The Lao Loum (; , , ) is an official Lao People's Democratic Republic designation for lowland dwelling Tai peoples, including the majority Lao people. The Lao Loum, literally meaning 'lowland Lao', are the inhabitants of the river valleys and ...

families in Khokmanh.

Geography

Khokmanh is located in the Kuang Si watershed area which is a part of the Muong Khai Development Zone, about 27 km southwest from the

city. The village altitude is approximately 297 meters above sea level. Khokmanh is bordered by

Yang Yang may refer to: * Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy * Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902 * YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration p ...

village 2,570 meters in the south, the

Mekong River The Mekong or Mekong River ( , ) is a transboundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's List of rivers by length, twelfth-longest river and List of longest rivers of Asia, the third-longest in Asia with an estimated l ...

about 4,773 meters in the north; Pak Si village about 2,673 meters to the east, Thapene village about 2,978 meters in the east, and Noong Bua Kham village about 6,898 meters in the west. Khokmanh is located in between two streams creating the Kuang Si watershed, the Huoi Si and Huoi Sieu.

Ethnicity and demography

In October 2016, Khokmanh village had 168 households of the

and Lao Loum ethnic groups, including 975 people (539 females). Specifically, the

had 157 households with 911 people (500 females); the

has 11 households with 64 people (39 females). Totally, the village has 407 people at working age including 198 females. Villagers in Khokmanh are mostly engaging in traditional shifting cultivation and raising

livestock Livestock are the Domestication, domesticated animals that are raised in an Agriculture, agricultural setting to provide labour and produce diversified products for consumption such as meat, Egg as food, eggs, milk, fur, leather, and wool. The t ...

Culture and religion

The ethnic groups in Khokmanh practice

polytheistic Polytheism is the belief in or worship of more than one Deity, god. According to Oxford Reference, it is not easy to count gods, and so not always obvious whether an apparently polytheistic religion, such as Chinese folk religions, is really so, ...

religion. In addition to worshiping

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha (),* * * was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist legends, he was ...

Wat A wat (, ; , ; , ; ; , ) is a type of Buddhist and Hindu temple in Cambodia, Laos, East Shan State (Myanmar), Yunnan (China), the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Etymology The word ''wat'' is borrowed from the Sanskrit ''v ...

, they have formed and maintained community spirit forests as ''Lac Ban'' - worshiping Village's Spirit, ''Khet Huoi Nhap'' as village cemetery, ''Phu Long'' as Coffin Mount, ''Phu Ho'' as spirit forest of the

families who used to live in Huoi Nhai village, ''Phu Sot'', ''Phu Vieng'' as well as community use forests such as ''Phu Nho''n, ''Phu Kheo Khan Thung'' and ''Phu Mac Ca''. Since 2016, Luang Prabang district and provincial authorities, in consultation with Social Policy Ecology Research Institute - SPERI and with support of CCFD-Terre Solidaire, have conducted community based

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

and

land Land, also known as dry land, ground, or earth, is the solid terrestrial surface of Earth not submerged by the ocean or another body of water. It makes up 29.2% of Earth's surface and includes all continents and islands. Earth's land sur ...

allocation for Khokmanh. The aim is to promote sustainable usage and management of

community forest A community is a Level of analysis, social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place (geography), place, set of Norm (social), norms, culture, religion, values, Convention (norm), customs, or Ide ...

and land resources, as well as preserving the

cultural identity Cultural identity is a part of a person's identity (social science), identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, Locality (settlement), locality, gender, o ...

of the ethnic groups not only in Khokmanh but also in the entire Kuang Si upper catchment including districts of Luang Prabang, Mueang Nan and Xieng Ngeun of Luang Prabang province. Accordingly, at first the entire Khokmanh traditional territory, including 1,768.25 hectares of different categories of forest and land were measured and legitimized. This includes 400.65 hectares of

agricultural land Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other organism, forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous ...

(400.19

arable land Arable land (from the , "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the purposes of a ...

and

paddy Paddy may refer to: People *Paddy (given name), a list of people with the given name or nickname *A nickname or slur for an Irish person Birds *Paddy (pigeon), a Second World War carrier pigeon *Snowy sheathbill or paddy, a bird species *Black ...

crops, and 0.46 hectares of fish ponds), 1,350.48 hectares of forestland (356.48 hectares of water protection forest, 307.3 hectares of strictly preserved forest, 481.26 ha of family regenerated forest after shifting cultivation and 205.21 hectares of community use forest). Furthermore, a set of paper official maps and e-maps regarding the status and planning of Khokmanh forest land on the basis of

local knowledge Traditional knowledge (TK), indigenous knowledge (IK), folk knowledge, and local knowledge generally refers to knowledge systems embedded in the cultural traditions of regional, indigenous, or local communities. Traditional knowledge include ...

have been established. The traditional boundary of the Khokmanh territory with neighboring villages is defined and governed under the inter-villages regulation which is based on participatory community customary law and

statutory law A statute is a law or formal written enactment of a legislature. Statutes typically declare, command or prohibit something. Statutes are distinguished from court law and unwritten law (also known as common law) in that they are the expressed wi ...

References

{{coord missing, Laos Khokmanh