Khmu Culture ID

The Khmu are an indigenous people of the uplands of Laos and the neighbouring highlands, speakers of an Austroasiatic language. They are considered among the earliest inhabitants of the region, predating the arrival of the Tai peoples.

Khmu communities lived chiefly by shifting cultivation in the hills, growing rice and other crops, supplemented by hunting, fishing, and the gathering of forest products.

Society was organised around village and kin, and religious life centred on the spirits of the forest, the fields, and the ancestors, propitiated through offering and ritual.

As one of the indigenous upland peoples of mainland Southeast Asia, the Khmu maintained a distinct identity beneath the later lowland states.