Decolonial Endurance: Indigenous World Making on the China-Myanmar Border

November 27, 2023 • 2:30pm – 4pm PST

Asian Center (1871 West Mall) Room 604

Zoom: https://ubc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_AeUAEyQfS_iZ2HNjCGNdxg

This talk focuses on Indigenous Lisu subsistence farmers on the China-Myanmar border and their experiences of Chinese colonial development. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I examine how Lisu practice decolonial world making to sustain relationships with the land, refuse assimilation, and imagine alternative futures through storytelling, care, play, and prayer.

Lau Ting Hui, Yale-NUS College

Assistant Professor Lau Ting Hui is a sociocultural anthropologist. She received her BA in Land Economy from the University of Cambridge in 2009 with a specialisation in customary land tenure and Indigenous land rights. She completed her PhD at Cornell University in August 2020 and started an appointment at Yale-NUS College in January 2021. Asst Prof Lau hails from a small timber town in Sarawak, East Malaysia. Prior to pursuing postgraduate studies, she worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome.