Cornell is at the forefront of assisting an influx of Karen people from Burma, many of whom were stranded for the past decade in refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border. There are an estimated 50 Karen refugees now resettled in Ithaca.

Cornell's Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) is working with local teachers and refugee sponsors on a Burma-Myanmar initiative to create programs and resources to better serve the Karen and other refugees from Burma and to share their culture with the wider community.

In October 2007, SEAP held a two-day workshop, "Burma, Border Zones and the Karen People," with more than 60 attendees, including teachers, refugee sponsors, members of the Karen community and Cornell students and faculty. The conference covered background information on Burma and the Karen, including history, current events, culture, ethnic diversity and conflict.

"The turnout was amazing," said Thamora Fishel, SEAP outreach coordinator who organized the workshop. "We had teachers from as far away as Utica and Rochester attending, and the concluding performance by the Karen Paw Family Singers was standing room only."

Like the waves of Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian refugees who emigrated to the area in the 1980s, these new arrivals face many challenges, and they bring rich cultural traditions with them. The Karen prefer to call their home Burma, which was renamed Myanmar in 1989 after the democracy movement was crushed.

The Karen are an ethnic minority group native to southeastern Burma and western Thailand. Political violence, instability and persecution by Burmese authorities have driven many Karen into refugee camps on the Thai border. Approximately 7 million Karen live in Burma and 400,000 in Thailand.

The state department only recently allowed Karen refugees into the country. Nearly 14,000 refugees arrived in 2007; more are expected. Many have settled in Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo as well as in Utica, N.Y., which now has one of the largest Karen and Burmese communities in the country with 1,000 refugees.

During the autumn workshop, Cornell graduate students Heather MacLachlan and Chika Watanabe shared their research on the Karen, much of it based on fieldwork conducted in refugee camps on the Thai border. Members of the Karen community spoke about life and education in the camps, and Rebecca Maung, a Karen, shared her harrowing experiences working for many years as a backpack medic on the border.

The event was co-sponsored by TST-BOCES and the Cornell Einaudi Center for International Studies, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education. A Burma-Myanmar explorer box and curriculum kit is under development for classrooms, and the SEAP outreach lending library has quadrupled its materials for teachers on topics related to Burma.

Future workshops are being planned for Syracuse and Utica, further extending the positive impact of Cornell's Southeast Asia expertise and outreach.

Another facet of the SEAP initiative focuses on cultural and linguistic preservation. Last spring Cornell became the only U.S. university to offer a language course on Sgaw Karen.

"In Burma, education in indigenous ethnic languages such as Karen was often prohibited," said John Whitman, Cornell professor of linguistics, who organized the course. "While living in refugee camps, the older Karen children had some exposure to Karen language writing and reading skills. But many of the younger ones only have oral language knowledge."

In collaboration with SEAP and interested community members, Whitman submitted a proposal to fund a language and literacy education in Sgaw Karen for refugee children and adults.

"Classes in Karen will help them acquire increased literacy in their native language, which also will help them as they acquire literacy in English," said Whitman. "The Karen came to the United States with very limited resources and without books or other materials in their language."

The project would make relevant resources available through schools, public libraries and community centers and provide computer training to help the Karen access online resources, he said.

Although the original proposal was unsuccessful, Whitman continues to apply for funds and is working closely with SEAP to help educate area English for Speakers of Other Languages teachers about the language spoken by their new students.

Whitman added: "The Karen people who have resettled in Ithaca are in a unique position to embark on this project because of their proximity to Cornell, one of the leading centers in the world for research and teaching on Southeast Asia."

For more information, contact Fishel at (607) 275-9452 or tf14@cornell.edu.

This story was adapted and rewritten with assistance from the Southeast Asia Program.