Christian Conversion, Indigenous Bunong Animism, and Environmental Conservation in Cambodia.

This paper will present the initial findings of my thesis research, for which I will collect data over the summer of 2024. This research involves a case study of the Bunong, an indigenous ethnic minority group whose ancestral land is in the densely forested Cambodian province of Mondulkiri. The case study will focus on how the Bunong relationship with the land and environmental conservation is affected by Christian conversion, and how conservation INGOs that partner with Bunong communities navigate and negotiate the boundaries of secular and religious values in environmental conservation. The research methodology is qualitative and inductive, using methods from grounded theory. Data will be collected through semi-structured key informant interviews and site visits to take place in June 2024. The main research question is:

• How does the Christian conversion of the Bunong affect the environmental conservation partnerships and programs in Mondulkiri?

Three key areas of questioning of this research are:

• How does Christian conversion affect the Christian Bunong’s relationship with the land and Animism spirituality?
• How are INGOs responsive to religious conversion and its effects on their conservation programs? How do secular or religious identities of INGOs shape their engagement with religious conversion and its effects in their programs?
• How has the introduction of the market economy mediated the Christian conversion of the Bunong? And how does Christian conversion mediate the Bunong’s relationship with the market economy?

Present scholarship on the Bunong seeks to document and preserve indigenous Bunong Animist spirituality while investigating how the incursions of outsiders and their political, economic, and religious mores have radically and rapidly disfigured Bunong ways of living. Much has already been written of the historical accounts of these incursions, including the French colonizing missions late in the 19th century; the post-independence nation building campaigns to assimilate indigenous groups; the displacement, cultural erasure, and forced labor under the Khmer Rouge regime; and  post-war resettlement and ongoing struggles to assert rights to ancestral lands (Hickey, 1982; Chandler, 1993; & Smith, 2010). Contemporary scholarship focuses on how Khmer political and economic hegemony has facilitated the market economy’s incursion into Bunong lands, having made the material wealth of the mountains and forest commercially accessible to prospecting ethnic-Khmer and foreign investors (Chandler, 2010). Of particular concern is the vulnerability of the Bunong traditional Animist faith, which views the forest itself as sacred and comprised of spiritual beings, as the Bunong’s spiritual impetus to live in harmony with the forest is giving in to economic pressures and Christian proselytization (McCann, 2011).

The story of Christianity’s spread to the Bunong community is generally grouped among the many foreign influences that flowed in as Bunong lands and communities were made more accessible to the outside world. Otherwise, the relationship between Christianity and the market economy is still understood superficially and is lacking the perspectives of Bunong Christian converts themselves. Because environmental conservation and its degradation of this incredibly biodiverse landscape, are so closely tied to Bunong indigenous spirituality, the relationship between Christianity, the market economy, and environmental degradation warrants deeper analysis. My research aims to contribute to scholarship on the Bunong, how Christian conversion is experienced and understood alongside the introduction of the market economy to the Bunong.

Foreign INGOs working in Mondulkiri, particularly those who are working for environmental conservation, regularly seek the participation of Bunong communities and thus represent a frontier where secular development values, market forces, and religious values of conservation all converge. My research will also explore how INGOs who partner with the Bunong community, navigate and respond to the effects of Christian conversion and proselytization. Many INGOs partner the Bunong for their intimate knowledge of the forest and their shared values of ecological conservation. However, the proliferation of Christianity in the region presents a potential ecological threat to the conservation efforts of INGOs working alongside Bunong communities. Secular INGOs are caught having to navigate proselytization and conversion, a potent taboo in secular development circles, as it directly and indirectly affects their conservation programming. 

Works Cited

Chandler, David P. (David Porter). A History of Cambodia / David Chandler. 4th ed., Westview Press, 2008.

Hickey, Gerald Cannon. Sons of the Mountains : Ethnohistory of the Vietnamese Central Highlands to 1954 / Gerald Cannon Hickey. Yale University Press, 1982.

McCann, Gregory. “Animism in Cambodia: Bioregional Living in Practice.” The Trumpeter, vol. 27, no. 1, 2011, pp. 8–22, https://www.proquest.com/docview/1959179285/abstract/B48046E8910D4D53PQ/1.

Smith, Philip. The Bunong Culture of Silence: Exploring Bunong Perspectives on Participation at the Interface Between Bunong Culture and Development Organizations. 2010. Lund University.