"AS A CHILD, Khang would eagerly look forward to Kachin State Day on January 10 and the accompanying manau dancing in the state capital, Myitkyina. This year, that feeling all but disappeared, said Khang, now aged 26. “I feel like Kachin State Day is just for show. The celebration doesn’t come from the bottom of our heart,” said Khang, who is from the Rawang ethnic group in Kachin. “We Kachin are lacking harmony… It’s like there is something between us, that we are not all the same.” The festival planned for January 5-12 this year was to be the first Kachin State Day celebration initiated by Kachin society, rather than the government, since conflict resumed between the Kachin Independence Army and the Tatmadaw in 2011. The event, commemorated with traditional dancing around the six pillars that stand in Myitkyina’s Kachin National Manau Park, is known popularly as the Manau Festival. Discord leading up to this year’s Kachin State Day event, however – including a cancellation and last-minute resumption – dampened the spirits of many Kachin. The dispute, which stemmed from disagreement over what to call Kachin State Day in Jinghpaw, the Kachin lingua franca, touched a nerve within Kachin’s diverse society and prompted a broader debate about Kachin identity and who gets to define it. Anthropologist of Kachin society Mr Laur Kiik describes Kachin as a multi-ethnic nation, integrating people from six or more ethnic groups to widely varying degrees. Debate over the names and boundaries of a Kachin identity, he said, has existed for decades; and Kachin State Day manau festivals have previously brought these debates out into the open. Though the Myanmar government recognises 12 Kachin “sub-groups”, the Kachin National Association of Tradition and Culture, or Wunpawng Myusha Htunghking Hpung Ginjaw (known by the clipped acronym WHG), represents six linguistically distinct groups – Jinghpaw, Lachid, Lhaovo, Lisu, Rawang and Zaiwa..."