The Relationship between Society and Nature among the Hani People of China

Abstract

With a total population of approximately one and a half million people, the Hani tribes are comprised of some twenty subgroups (the Lopi, Goxo, Zalo, Yiche, Akha, etc.), each of which possesses its own distinct identity and speaks one of the Tibeto-Burman languages. Most of this population is centered between the middle courses of the Red and Mekong rivers of China; smaller groups can be found inhabiting areas bordering on Vietnam, Burma, Laos, and Thailand. The Hani are a farming people who live in densely packed, hillside villages. Their primary crop is rice, which they grow on irrigated terraces located between eight hundred and eighteen hundred meters above sea level. The focus of this paper will be on one of the soil gods of the Hani people of the Red river area. Studying this god, who is accorded a central role in the religious liturgy of the Hani, we will see how the appropriation of a natural space and the exploitation of its resources depend directly on the cult relation maintained with him.