INTRODUCTION

​

FROM BATTLEFIELD TO REFUGE

​

2019 - Ongoing

​

​

From Battlefield to Refuge is a long-term storytelling project that explores human connections to nature in the Salween River basin, a vital ecosystem for indigenous Karen people whose natural and cultural heritage have been threatened by more than seventy years of civil war in Myanmar. By documenting local communities's ancestral knowledge, spiritual, and political arrangements that shape interactions with the environment, and how these coexist and clash with attempts by the Myanmar Army for control and capitalist development over indigenous Karen territory, this work aims to visualize the impact of fighting, displacement, and land commodification in the disruption of human-nature relations that are essential for the health, food, shelter, and identity of Karen people. Stewards of one of the most biodiverse, but also historically endangered areas in the Indo-Burman region. 

​

​

​

 

​

​