Of Water, Crocodiles, and Kings: Co-producing Kuy history in the Prey Lang Forest, Cambodia

FAIN: RFW-299450-24

University of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI 96822-2216)
Courtney Work (Project Director: September 2023 to present)

Community-based ethnographic, oral history, and archaeological investigations of the pre-Khmer cultures of the Prey Lang Forest in northern Cambodia. (36 months)

In stories about the pre-Angkorian ruins that litter the Prey Lang Forest in northcentral Cambodia, Kuy residents include powerful nonhuman forces alongside their own prowess as builders and iron workers. Nonhuman force belongs to top predators, like tigers and crocodiles. It also belongs to ‘ancestors’. Ancestors can be potent animals like tigers or crocodiles, also termite mounds, ancient trees, or medicinal plants, but especially water and stone. They are important actors in Kuy history and the ways they infuse stories about kings suggest new ways to interpret the history of the region. Working with multi-species insights from the environmental humanities, with feminist attention to relations between objects, we engage with empirical questions about how oral histories inform written documentation and how they deepen archeological analysis, this project co-produces knowledge with Kuy citizen scientists whose desire to document their regional history drives this project.