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

Like many countries in Asia, China does not recognize the existence of Indigenous people within its borders, insisting instead on the category of ethnic minority. This denial of Indigeneity forecloses discussions about Chinese colonialism and limits transnational solidarity with Indigenous communities elsewhere. Pushing back against state-sponsored discourses, I propose understanding so-called ethnic minority people in China as Indigenous to connect their experiences to broader questions of colonialism and Indigenous dispossession. I focus my analysis on Indigenous Lisu subsistence farmers on the China-Myanmar border and their experiences of Chinese development. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that Lisu experience Chinese development as colonialism. Through storytelling, care, play, and prayer, Lisu practice decolonial world making that enables them to endure colonial erasure by sustaining relationships with the land, refusing assimilation, and proposing alternative futures. This paper contributes to discussions about Indigeneity in Asia and decolonial endurance in Asia and beyond.