Talk:Lao people

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Page scope

Lao people is the page for the Lao (ລາວ; Thai ลาว), the Tai-speaking people of the middle Mekong who are the largest ethnic group of Laos and the majority people of north-eastern Thailand. It covers the name and its civic and ethnic senses, population, language, the settlement of the Khorat Plateau, the removals across the Mekong after 1827 and the border of 1893, the Lao of Isan, society, religion, culture, livelihood, plant use and the cannabis record, and lists the accessions collected among them. The Lao of Isan are covered in the section Isan, to which Isan people redirects. The cannabis history of the country is on Laos.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Sources

For Laos the page draws on the census reports of 2005 and 2015 of the Lao Statistics Bureau, read in the copies held by Open Development Mekong; papers in The Journal of Lao Studies (Goudineau 2015, Easum 2015, Ford 2011, Wolfson-Ford 2024, Schenk-Sandbergen 2012, Hongsuwan 2018, Elkington and others 2012); the Library of Congress country study of Laos (Savada, ed., 1995), read on the countrystudies.us mirror, whose sections are cited by name; Glottolog; and the UNESCO inscription of khaen music. For the Lao of Isan it draws on Keyes (1967), Alexander and McCargo (2014), Murdoch (1974) and village studies from Roi Et and Khon Kaen. Alexander and McCargo was read in the accepted manuscript deposited at White Rose Research Online, whose page numbers differ from the journal's, so it is cited without page numbers. Passages from Thai-language sources are paraphrased from the Thai text.

Several statements reach the page through a later writer: the remark of Kaysone Phomvihane (1981) through Goudineau, who quotes it from Grant Evans; the words of Justin McDaniel through Easum; the Fa Ngum resettlement through Keyes, who reports Maha Sila Viravong; the 1899 naming of Isan through Alexander and McCargo, who cite Wongthes (2000); and the findings of McCargo and Hongladarom (2004) through Alexander and McCargo. None of these works was read in the original. The article attributes each to its writer.

Where the sources disagree

• Share of the Lao in Laos. The 2015 census gives the Lao ethnic group 53.2 per cent and the Lao-Tai family 62.4 per cent. Goudineau (2015) writes that by the latest census the Lao-Tai family is under half of the population; he does not name the census, and calls any such calculation largely arbitrary. The country study of 1995 gives 66 per cent for the Lao Loum and "just over 50 percent" for the Lao proper. The article gives the census figures and Goudineau's view, attributed.
• The three-part classification. Goudineau calls the Lao Loum, Lao Theung and Lao Soung scheme common but unofficial; the country study states that the 1985 census used three general classifications; Schenk-Sandbergen writes that the terms gave way in 2000 to 49 officially recognised groups in four families. The article reports the scheme and the 2000 recognition.
• Dating the removals. The country study dates annual Siamese raids on the left bank to 1837–1847 and the policy of depopulation to as early as 1779; Wolfson-Ford dates the campaigns to the 1830s–1850s. Both are given.
• The naming of Isan. Keyes (1967) records a Lao Isan division under a commissioner at Ubon before 1893 and a monthon Isan after it, without a date for the change. Alexander and McCargo, citing Wongthes, give 1899. Murdoch shows a Monthon Isan with a high commissioner in 1901. No primary source for the renaming was read.
• Size of the Lao population of Isan. Thai censuses do not count the Lao. The article gives Keyes's estimate for 1960, Sharp's comparison with Laos (1967), the 2010 census count of residents of the region and Alexander and McCargo's estimate of speakers of phasa isan. Goudineau (2015) describes the population of Isan as three times that of Laos, without a figure or year. A figure of about 16 million attributed to Minority Rights Group could not be checked, since its page refused access.
• Two forms of one name. The Lao Isan of Na Ngam write the plant name กัญซา; the usual Thai spelling is กัญชา. The article gives the form printed in the study.

Cannabis

No source read joins the Lao as a people to cannabis, apart from a seed seller's statements. Martin (1975), the main scholarly account of cannabis in Laos, writes of Laos and its markets and villages, not of the Lao as a people; the article takes from her the Lao plant names and her market observations in Laos, and the full account stays on Laos. Niamngon and others (2024) list Cannabis sativa among 317 plants used in one Lao Isan village in Roi Et, as a cultivated plant used for food or spice and as medicine; the study names no dish or ailment.

The statements of The Real Seed Company on its listings for Central Lao and Lao Gold carry no source. The article attributes them to the seller in the text.

The texts used were searched for "cannabis", "ganja", "marijuana", "hemp", "kan xa" and กัญชา. Westermeyer (1988), on drug use among ethnic groups in Laos in 1965–1975, lists cannabis among the substances consumed; only the abstract was read, and it does not say which groups used it. Creak (2011) reports that a Lao teachers' magazine of about 1961 advised against "eating cannabis" as part of good health; the line concerns Laos at large and is not used. The medicinal-plant studies of Souladeth and others (2025) and Soejarto and others (2012), the palm-leaf study of Elkington and others (2012) and three studies of palm-leaf medicine from Maha Sarakham have no cannabis in their text. Keyes (1967) has no mention of cannabis.

The hemp of the PuYer-YaYer figures in Luang Prabang (Hongsuwan 2018) is a fibre; the source does not name the plant botanically.

Not used, and why

• Ford (2011) on the war of 1827–1828. Ford quotes an account by Mayoury and Pheuiphanh Ngaosrivathana of Lao soldiers sorting the people of the plateau as Lao or Thai, and comments on it critically. The episode rests on one contested account and is not reproduced.
• Lao Statistics Bureau religion tables. The census figures for Buddhists (64.7 per cent in 2015) and people of no religion are national, not by ethnic group.
• Marui and others, on pa daek in a village of Vientiane Province. The JIRCAS working report does not name the people of the village, and its year was not confirmed.
• Laws on cannabis in Laos. A law-firm summary of 2023 and reports in the Vientiane Times concern the country, not the Lao; the statutes are on Laos.
• Hongsuwan and others (2022), on sexing cannabis in Sakon Nakhon. A study of six licensed growers that names no people.
• Lempert (2020), Enfield (2010), Hartmann (2012), Cawthorne (2015), Trongdee (2015) and DeSantiago (2020), papers in The Journal of Lao Studies read during research, deal with other peoples or questions.
• McCargo and Hongladarom (2004), Draper and Nilaiyaka (2014), Draper (2015), Hesse-Swain (2006), Lefferts (2005) and an ethnobotany of the Lao Isan of Na Chueak District (Saensouk and others 2025) were not obtained.

Open content questions

• No count of the Lao of Thailand with a stated year and method has been found.
• The year in which the north-eastern monthon took the name Isan is not settled by any primary source read.
• Whether the Lao of Isan, as distinct from the region, have a cannabis tradition of their own is not settled by any scholarly source read.