Community

Kuy people

កួយ

Indigenous people of northern Cambodia

The Kuy people (កួយ) are an Indigenous people of northern Cambodia, with communities in Preah Vihear and Kampong Thom provinces.[1][2][3] The name is also written Kuay and Kouy.[4][5] The Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Rural Development count the Kuy among the six Indigenous groups in Cambodia with more than 10,000 people each.[6] Kuy smelters made iron in the Phnom Dek area, east of Preah Khan Kampong Svay, until the middle of the 20th century.[4][7]

History

Phnom Dek, a hill rich in iron ore about 30 kilometers east of Preah Khan of Kampong Svay, lies in a historic homeland of the Kuay, as the archaeologist Thomas Oliver Pryce and his colleagues spell the name. They write that the Kuay went on smelting iron there from local ore into the 1940s.[4][8] In a 2012 interview Pryce said that the hundreds of smelting sites around the hill appeared to be the work of Kuy families and communities. He added that the masters of the craft were called chhay and that the tradition ended around 1950.[7]

Whether Kuy ancestors also made iron for Angkor is an open question. Cambodia's 2020 submission of Preah Khan to the Tentative List of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) describes the Kuy as skilled makers of iron tools for the Khmer kings over a long period.[9] Pryce's team wrote in 2014 that this idea could be neither confirmed nor ruled out yet.[4] In a 2025 study, Keishiro Azami and colleagues summed up earlier work: the identity of the Angkor-period ironmakers remains uncertain, and Kuy ironmaking around Preah Khan is known from after that period.[8]

Life and culture

Kuy is a Katuic language of the Austroasiatic family. Glottolog lists it in Laos and Thailand as well as Cambodia, and gives Moseley's 2010 rating of the language as severely endangered.[10][11] In 2011 the director of a Kuy culture organization in Preah Vihear told Radio Free Asia Khmer that Kuy has no script of its own and is written by sound in Khmer letters, and that it mixes in many Khmer words. He said young Kuy seldom chose to speak it, while many older Kuy spoke little Khmer.[1]

Officials told Radio Free Asia Khmer in 2011 that the Kuy are Buddhist, like the Khmer.[1] The anthropologist Neal Keating wrote in 2012 about a Kuy village in Preah Vihear, where people also honor local spirits of the forests, the hills and the villages. The spirits go by names such as Ah'ret, Neak Ta or Phi, and Keating found that most Kuy see no conflict between these beliefs and Buddhism. At a village shrine people wash a sacred stone and bring it gifts of tobacco, food, juice and incense, while musicians play flutes and drums for the spirits. Villagers consult the spirits before preparing fields, taking things from the forest or marrying, hold ceremonies before cutting down trees, and gather medicines in the forest when someone falls ill.[2] The same director said in 2011 that the Kuy language, offerings to spirits and neak ta, and the traditional Kuy wedding were all being lost.[1]

Into Cambodia cites the Stung Treng provincial Department of Culture and Fine Arts on a temple ritual at Preah Ko, held in March or early in Khmer New Year. Villagers play folk games there, among them the Veay Khel game of the Kuy.[12] In Kampong Thom a Kuy teacher, awarded a Cambodian Living Arts scholarship to research Kuy dance, planned to expand a Kuy youth troupe with community elders and the provincial Department of Culture and Fine Arts.[13]

Organizations and places

In Preah Vihear, Radio Free Asia Khmer wrote in 2011, an organization for Kuy culture had worked since 2006 in 47 Kuy villages. In Bos Thom village, in Tbaeng Meanchey district, older Kuy still used Kuy in daily life.[1] The village Keating visited, Svay Damnak, lies in southern Preah Vihear at the edge of the Boeng Per Wildlife Reserve, part of the wider Prey Lang forest.[2] Cambodia's UNESCO submission notes that the Kuy ethnic group is still present around Preah Khan of Kampong Svay.[9]

Into Cambodia counts 3,284 Kuy families, or 14,767 people, in Kampong Thom province.[3] It names the Kuy among the Indigenous groups of Stung Treng,[12] and Tourism of Cambodia lists them among the peoples of Kratie.[14] The sources cited here give no official count of the Kuy alone. Open Development Cambodia passes on a count by the Cambodia Indigenous Peoples Organization, in which the Kuy were the largest group, 20.12 percent of 276,878 Indigenous people, living in 135 villages; the count's year is not given.[5]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Radio Free Asia Khmer, ជនជាតិភាគតិចកួយ បារម្ភបាត់បង់អត្តសញ្ញាណ (October 23, 2011)
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Cultural Survival Quarterly, Neal Keating, Spirits of the Forest: Cambodia's Kuy People Practice Spirit-based Conservation (May 14, 2012)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Into Cambodia, Kampong Thom Province (undated)
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Thomas Oliver Pryce, Mitch Hendrickson, Kaseka Phon and others, The Iron Kuay of Cambodia: tracing the role of peripheral populations in Angkorian to colonial Cambodia via a 1200 year old industrial landscape, Journal of Archaeological Science 47 (2014)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Open Development Cambodia, Ethnic minorities and indigenous people (updated March 3, 2023)
  6. ↑ Ministry of Planning and Ministry of Rural Development, National Report on Demographic and Socio-economic Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Cambodia: Preface and Report Summary, English unofficial translation (2021)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Wenner-Gren Foundation, Interview: Oli Pryce and the Iron Kuay (September 10, 2012)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Scientific Reports, Keishiro Azami, Etsuo Uchida, Aoi Mizumori, Yoshimitsu Kobayashi and others, Temporal changes in Angkorian ironmaking technology in Northern Cambodia during the 10th–14th centuries (December 12, 2025)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 UNESCO World Heritage Centre, The ancient complex of Preah Khan Kompong Svay, Tentative List (March 27, 2020)
  10. ↑ Glottolog, Kuy (undated)
  11. ↑ Glottolog, Kuy, classification record (undated)
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Into Cambodia, Stung Treng Province (undated)
  13. ↑ Cambodian Living Arts, Arn Chorn-Pond Living Arts Scholarship (undated)
  14. ↑ Tourism of Cambodia, Kratie (undated)


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This page was last edited on 9 October 2026, at 15:17.