Tampuan (also spelled Tompuan or Tampuon, Tumpoun, Tumpuon, Khmer: ទំពួន) are an indigenous ethnic group living in northeast Cambodia. Numbering about 31,000, the Tampuan people live in the mountainous Southern and Western portions of the Cambodian province of Ratanakiri. They have their own language of the Mon–Khmer language family.
Aborigines are the peoples living on the land of the Kingdom of Cambodia, who express their aboriginal ways of society, culture, and economy, practicing their traditional ways of life and living as a collective, in a community.
We utilize our ancestral language, Tampuan, alongside Khmer, which is essential for communication with non-Tampuan individuals in the region. Typically, our children speak the ancestral tongue within our communities. However, we encounter discrimination from other groups, which undermines our efforts to preserve our cultural identity.
This may lead future generations to renounce their heritage in pursuit of acceptance. Additionally, we’ve observed a decline in community engagement; where once there was vibrant participation, now there is a trend towards individualism. Our Tampuan language boasts a written script based on the Khmer alphabet and includes sign language for those with hearing impairments. With resources such as music and a dedicated radio station available online, we strive to promote and safeguard our language.
We consider that the main challenges for our Tampuan communities are these:
- The risk of losing our identity and traditions, to forget our ancestors.
- The problem is that young people seem to get away from our own aboriginal identity.
- The influence of external cultural elements like the way of dressing, fast foods, other kinds of music, and a different way to relate with nature is not always positive, such as thinking that deforestation is a sort of “development.”
We, Tampuan, consider that in order to sustain a community, a village, we need to preserve the ancient knowledge and elements of identity such as the way of dressing, our traditional food that is healthy and comes from the forest, and other things that are important to us, sometimes misunderstood by other peoples. At the same time, we need to ensure the right to work, the education for our children, the access to healthcare,e and many other services that are the rights of all people. We need the whole community to have access to clean water, good roads for transport and communication, good schools and ethnic schools where our culture and language are respected, and access to technologies like the Internet because they are tools that help us in the care of our community processes, education, preservation of language.
The Tampuan community in Ratanakiri is in charge of the care and protection of the Lake Yeak Laom which is also a huge source of natural water. It belongs to our ancestral territory. We have created committees to be responsible for guarding and protecting the environment and the territory.
The preservation of the environment is natural to us because we see the territory as the place of our ancestors and the source of life. It is the place where we keep our identity, our traditions, and our spirituality. In that place, we communicate, teach, and transmit ancient knowledge to our children and youth.
Our traditional religion is what they call “animism” because we believe in spirits, although the main religions also believe in spirits. We believe in Neak Tha, Prey Phnom, and Steak, all those names are difficult to translate, then people call them in general “spirits”. They can be seen as positive or negative according to the ways you relate with nature.
For this reason, we respect and pay honor when we enter a forest because it is integrated with that spiritual world. The main leader of our ancestral religion is Cha Thom, a wise elder, man or woman, who knows very well that world of spirits and nature. They are the leaders of our tradition, they know the ancestral wisdom, they lead the ceremonies and they can answer about everything related to the spirits.
Written by representatives of the Tampuan Indigenous group during the third installment of the “Voices” program of the Salesians of Don Bosco in Kep province in Cambodia on January 27, 2024.
