The Moken move from island to island, living from and on their boats. On the one hand, they, and nomadic or indigenous peoples like them, have to contend with modernity; while on the other, they are expected to act as representatives for a traditional way of life, of a time when things were simpler.
The threats to the Moken’s traditions read like a roll-call for the perils of globalization. Interest in oil and gas exploration beneath the Andaman Sea is on the uptick; the lucrative nature of the resources make maritime borders precious and contested, so the movements of these sea nomads – most of them without citizenship – are prey to harassment by border patrols, particularly by the Myanmar navy. Real-estate developers buy up the coastlines while industrial fishing strips the fish of sea, leaving the Moken to catch only tourists. An elderly Moken lady spoke of her early years as a refugee of the Myanmar civil war – a series of ethnic conflicts that have occurred since 1948 – using discarded oil cans as cooking pots and plastic fertilizer sacks for makeshift clothing. This is not to mention climate change and the rising sea levels that lap at Moken villages around the region.
