This dissertation is an ethnography of inter-related ethno-national history and popular culture re-interpretation in a contested zone at the Thai-Burma border. Based on over two years' fieldwork amongst Shan former insurgent soldiers and stateless migrants, I focus on how concepts of nation and ethnicity encrypted in artifacts of popular culture are meted out and re-signified through the semiotic skills of this group of politicized and/or marginalized Shan people.