“Life and land are the same. We are the same as land. We come from land. We go back to land. But we don’t understand this, we think land is our possession, but really it is we that belong to the land.” – Joni Odochao

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Recorded in Ban Nong Tao, Northern Thailand, The Crying Place features a practice of rotational farming within the Pgak’yau (Karen) community, speaking about slowing down for the earth and taking accountability for our world.

 

In Pgak’yau, Haku (ฮากุ) means the crying place. That is what we call the earth. In all important moments, we cry. When we are born we cry, when we feel happy we cry, and we cry because we suffer. Pgak’yau philosophy expresses the need to slow down for the earth, and the need to take care and take accountability for our world.

 

This episode is narrated by legendary activist and campaigner Joni Odochao and his son Siwakorn Odochao on the ongoing land rights of the Pgak’yau community and their advocacy for traditional rotational farming. Both land rights and advocacy are realised “heu”, meaning little by little, step by step.

 

Each episode is paired with another side of the same story – a B-side where the landscape, then, speaks for itself. Sounds captured in the environment are turned into sound art, and musical expressions unearth from the land.