Tampuan people

Indigenous people of northeastern Cambodia

Community details
Khmer name	ទំពួន
Also known as	Tampuon; Tompuon
Community type	Indigenous people
Country	Cambodia
Subjects	Community & Civic Life; Religion & Spiritual Life; Music & Sound

The Tampuan people (ទំពួន) are an Indigenous people of northeastern Cambodia, with communities in Ratanakiri province around Banlung and Yeak Laom lake. The name is also written Tampuon and Tompuon. The Ministry of Planning and the Ministry of Rural Development count the Tampuan among the six Indigenous groups in Cambodia with more than 10,000 people each in 2013. From 1998 the communities around Yeak Laom, a crater lake that the Tampuan hold sacred, managed it under a 25-year agreement with the province.

History

A 2009 study of land and forest use in Ratanakiri by Jefferson Fox, John B. Vogler and Mark Poffenberger lists the Tampuen, as they spell the name, among the province's ethnic communities, citing Lebar and colleagues (1964). The study looks closely at Tuy, a mostly Tampuan village on Road 78 about 20 kilometers east of Banlung. The study reports estimates that outsiders had acquired more than half of the village's productive land. In a 2002 mapping exercise the villagers sought to set aside 27 percent of their land as protected forest.

At Yeak Laom, Ven Seyhah writes, the Indigenous residents elected six Tampuan villagers in September 1997 to a committee to manage the core of the protected area around the lake. In 1998 the provincial governor signed a 25-year agreement with the Yeak Laom communities to manage the lake. In April 2019 the Ministry of Environment approved the lake's registration as a community natural protected area. Jeremy Ironside writes that Indigenous organizations and networks see the community's management of the lake as a symbol of their struggle to have community tenure recognized.

Life and culture

Tampuan is a Bahnaric language of the Austroasiatic family. Glottolog lists it in Cambodia and Laos, and gives Moseley's 2010 rating of the language as severely endangered. Ven Seyhah notes that the Tampuan of Yeak Laom have a language and traditions of their own, different from those of the Khmer.

Ven Seyhah writes that the Tampuan hold the forest, the water and the land to be shelters for spirits. Ironside writes that tradition asks people to keep quiet at Yeak Laom, and that the belief that sacred spirits live there has made the Tampuan wish to keep the lake untouched. Cambodge Mag writes that the spirits of the lake still receive offerings at rice harvest, at planting time and when a family member is ill. It also tells a Tampuan story of the lake's origin: a giant dug into the earth to get back his daughter, who had run away with a suitor he did not accept, and the rain filled the hole.

In 2010, Ven Seyhah writes, 86 percent of the households in Yeak Laom commune farmed, and several households still lived by hunting and gathering forest products.

Sounds of Angkor, a site by Patrick Kersalé, presents a Tampuan set of five gongs recorded in March 2012, played at a funeral once the burial is over, when the mood turns joyful. It also presents a Tampuan set of twelve gongs, seven flat and five bossed, as one of the most extensive sets in the country. The flat gongs carry the melody and the bossed gongs the accompaniment, and the ensemble plays at folk events.

Organizations and places

Yeak Laom is a crater lake about 800 meters across and more than 50 meters deep, five kilometers from Banlung, the capital of Ratanakiri. In 2010 Yeak Laom commune had 2,486 people in five villages, and 81 percent of them were Tampuan. A path of about 3 kilometers circles the lake, and a small museum by the lake presents Tampuan culture.

Radio Free Asia Khmer, reporting on a 2013 assembly of Indigenous peoples in Ratanakiri, named the Tampuan first among the province's peoples, with the Kreung, Jarai, Kavet, Kachok, Brao and Lun. Into Cambodia also names the Tampuan among the Indigenous groups of Stung Treng.

References