Studies into Isaan's past, culture get boost

The MoU highlights the importance of the Khon Kaen/ KKU Sinsai initiative, including the learning of tai noi, both to understand Isaan’s past and to write new literature, as well as promote indigenous arts such as moh lam.
It covers museum management and training, as well as consultancy and human resources. The Department of Culture’s palm leaf manuscript collection will be opened for use by the Department of Education at Khon Kaen Municipality, a semi-devolved municipality under the 1999 Decentralisation Act.
The agreement will be signed at a celebration at the Arts and Cultural Gallery of the university at 5pm on Friday.
It follows a series of training workshops on teaching Isaan using the tai noi orthography, an aspect of the Isaan Culture Maintenance and Revitalisation Programme (ICMRP). The workshops and the MoU are an attempt to sustain the project beyond February 2016, the end date of the ICMRP, and beyond the target area, 18 schools in Khon Kaen province.
Officials said the success of this project depends on the passing of the Royal Institute’s draft Thai National Language Policy and the defining of Thai Lao as a regional language to be taught and studied as a mandatory subject in mainstream formal education.
‘Thai Lao’ has been used for some time by Thai institutions such as Mahidol University’s Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia. Officials said although it has been recognised as an identity for long in the West, the interim military government’s stance on pluralism and multiculturalism in Thailand, is as yet unclear. – The Nation