The Khmu are the indigenous people of Northern Laos. Their rich culture dates back thousands of years. Some scholars believe it to be 5,000 years old, which would make it among the most enduring.
Some Khmu continue to live at a subsistence level, searching the forests for their basic needs — food, medicine and fiber for clothing and shelter to protect from environmental elements. Many have no monetary income.
Their bags offered to the world on this website have been crucial to their survival, allowing for the gathering of essentials for subsistence. Today, as it was thousands of years ago, the loss of a day’s harvest if a bag were to slip off a shoulder and fall from a steep mountainside could be critical. The availability of the Nature Bag worldwide is perfectly timed with the current urgency for sustainability in all lifestyles and combating global warming..
During the past 25 years, basic educational opportunities have been extended to most Khmu children. This has allowed many an option to leave the traditional villages and integrate into mainline Lao culture. Most of those who have left maintain strong ties to their families and continue to celebrate Khmu traditions. Those who remain prefer traditional life and to pass traditions on to their children.
Since 2004 many of those remote villages have been reached by electricity and mobile telephone service. Some have vehicular access for the first time. Opportunities for more efficient linkages between the ancient culture and the rest of the world have emerged.
Our poverty reduction, cultural preservation and environmental protection project is designed to strengthen and extend those links, giving the traditional a means to progress technologically and economically while remaining rooted in and preserving the ancient ways. Our mission can be summarized as being a means of strengthening in depth and economic power the inevitably evolving links between the Khmu and general society. We hope to enhance the empowerment of the Khmu as important participants in the rapidly progressing Laotian nation.