Jan 2016 saw the best year yet in Karen traditional dance at Karen New Year in Western Australia. With widespread social media and community newspaper coverage for the AKO (WA) group last year, this year the team aims to go one better. Last year AKO (WA) had great feedback from the WA Karen community for the group, and this year they are aiming to take the next step in Karen culture performance.

The adult group will expand from 8 to 16 performers, and instead of using digital background music, the traditional format of drums, cymbals and the dancers singing will be used. The team also have the benefit of Saw Htoo Paung's experience instructing the adult men this year and the results are showing. This year AKO (WA) also has an under 18's team of 10 which will also dance to traditional drum, and singing etc, an under 12's team made up of 10 boys and 10 girls, and an under 10's team of 5 children.

Promoting Karen culture will continue to be a focal point for the Karen community in Western Australia, particularly as AKO continues to expand.

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AKO (WA) Traditional ''Done dance'' Team expands

Karen people are well known as the indigenous people of Burma and second largest ethnic group after the majority Burman. Karen people mostly live in the western Burma region (Delta), Rangoon, Pa Gu divisions and eastern Burma, along Thai Burma border. They can be found, also in northern and southern Thailand as well.

Karen people are very optimistic, love their land and value peace. However, they have been oppressed by the ruling Burmese military junta for over sixty years. They have been tortured, killed, forced to be military slaves, punished and otherwise mistreated. Moreover, their villages are attacked, burnt down to ash and women raped. Consequently, they have to flee to the neighbouring country of Thailand to seek protection in refugee camps. There are over 140,000 Karen refugees, currently residing in seven refugee camps in Thailand and larger numbers living in regions inside of Burma along its eastern border as internally displaced people after fleeing into the jungle to escape the random brutality of the Burmese military.

Karen refugees started arriving in Brisbane in 2006 after the Thai government allowed them to resettle into Western countries as part of the humanitarian resettlement program of the UNHCR. The number of Karen in Brisbane and Logan city is now over 700 persons. The Australian Karen Organization Inc, Queensland Branch (AKO-Qld) was formed in late 2006; a few months after some Karen families were resettled into Brisbane. The youth and women's sub committees were formed a year later. The AKO (Qld Branch) is committed to work as the representative of the Karen community in the Community Relations Commission and other cultural and social organisations.

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An overview of the Karen people

### Background
The establishment of the Karen Language program in Queensland is to advance the knowledge and understand of our young people the importance of our Karen tradition, culture and language. Most of the Karen people are from Thailand refugee camp, many of us have resettled in Brisbane since the year 2005 and our community has increasingly grown in numbers ever since. Living in a diverse multicultural society it is in our community interest to promote and create a harmonious community, promoting Australia cultural values by way of providing our children and young adults an opportunity to come together on a weekend during school terms to socialise, to learn and speak the language of our ancestors.

### Mission
The Karen Language program is for all Karen children and young adults who are keen and have a strong will to wanting to speak, read and write their mother tongue as well as having mastered the English language. Our ultimate goal of creating a Karen Language program in our community is to pass down our identity, cultural value and ancestor knowledge to our young generation. As a community our main concern is our children are becoming less able to communicate with parents and elders in their mother tongue. Undeniably, replacing our ancestor language with a more predominantly spoken one seems very reasonable for many but we believe that what makes Australia a nation is diversity and language diversity is as important in its way as national identity and as biological diversity.

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The establishment of Karen Language School classes in Queensland

The National Karen Youth Seminar is a biennial event which is held in Australia since 2000. The event has come about after the leaders of the AKO believed that there is a need for the youth in Australia to be exposed to the idea of culture maintenance, political awareness, being aware of Karen values and customs. It is to uphold and maintain Karen values and traditions and at the same time to adapt to Australian culture, values, and its rules and regulations.

The National Karen Youth Seminar was held alternatively between VIC and NSW in early years in a small group. But as the years progressed, the number of participants has increased due to the arrival of Karen refugees from Thai-Burma border across Australia under Australian refugee settlement program.

The aim and objectives of the seminar;
- To promote and facilitate networking among the Karen youth in Australia.
- To empower the Karen community in Australia.
- To equip and empower for future Karen leadership.
- To maintain and promote Karen tradition and Culture.
- To strengthen Karen national value and beliefs.
- To raise awareness about the Karen situation.

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8th National Karen Youth Seminar (Australia)

On the 5h of April 2017 the Australian Karen Women group held the Karen Women's Day in Victoria. As we have witness that women from all over Victoria came together to put on a wonderful celebration. We had so many people coming together to celebrate Woman's Day and making the event enjoyable.

Woman's Day isn't like any other celebration, it's bringing all Karen Women, young and old together and empowering them with encouragement and showing the younger generation of leadership. On this special day we had performances by our Karen women and lots of food made with love by the Karen Women Organisation.

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KWO day celebration, Victoria

The 2756 Karen New Year celebration in Werribee Victoria was celebrated successfully on the 29th December 2016. This Year, the event was held at Werribee Baptist Church, with over 500 attendees. Karen New Year is an annual event celebrated on the first day of the month Pyathoe (Therlay in Sgaw Karen or Htike Kauk Po in Pwo Karen) on the Karen calendar. This was an opportunity to proudly showcase varieties of the Karen Cultural traditions. Nonetheless, it was no exception this year.

In Karen culture, music and dance plays a vital role, therefore, during this event these attributes were proudly demonstrated. This included the Don Dance performances by AKO (Australian Karen Organisation) and AKP (Australian Karen Preserving) Youth. Also, a Bamboo Dance by Geelong Youth was presented. There was a song by Geelong Youth that demonstrated the importance of Karen people uniting. A special guest who is a singer from Melbourne Mr Eh Mwee, sang a song called "welcome to Aussie" a beautiful yet meaningful song that highlights the beautiful body of Karen and Australian cultures.

There was a Karen Culture Show that showcased traditional clothing and baskets. This opportunity displayed the uniqueness of traditional costumes, with admiration of the workmanship put into each handcrafted pieces.

An award ceremony was included for students who had attended Karen School. The students had recently participated in a poem competition, which required them to write about Karen New Year. This was in honour of the event. Other events that took place was the Karen New Year soccer tournament, featuring various teams from around Victoria.

As always, the Karen Women's group worked tirelessly to prepare tasty and delicious Karen traditional food. This was served by AKO Youth to conclude the celebration, and was enjoyed by all attendees.

This event was passionately organised to ensure that no matter where Karen people live, important traditions are upheld for future generations.

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The celebration of Karen New Year (era 2756) Melbourne, Victoria

Among many of the Karen's ceremonial events the Karen New Year Eve is considered to be a very significant social and traditional event, widely commemorated around the world by the Karen people. Historically, the Karen New Year Eve is relative recent and it was first officially celebrated in the year of 1938. The occasion is held on the first of the month of Therlay (January) in accordance with the Karen calendar year.

For the Karen community living in Queensland, united under the leadership of the Australian Karen Organisation (AKO), the event is held every year in a most fashionable way. As the number of our Karen community members grow in size every year the event has become a very vibrant and elaborate ceremonial event which attract many other community members to join us in the celebration. Each year the celebration is held at a different location since the Karen community in Brisbane is geographically expanded between North and South, therefore the event is routinely held between the Northern and Southern suburb of Brisbane yearly.

This year, 2017 the event was held at North side of Brisbane and there were over 600 attendees including guests from other community members and community organisations, such as MDA, QPAST. This year it had been a successful year for our Karen community living in Brisbane and we took pride in making this event ever grow bigger and stronger. This year celebration agenda includes several activates, such as Karen traditional dance called Doe Dace organised by South siders and the children Doe Dace initiated by the North siders. Doe Dace is a form of performance which has widely known as traditional and symbolic for the unity of the Karen people across the globe.

In the ceremony there were several guest speakers from other community leaders and community organisation representatives, songs performance presented by youth department, women department and other talented individual youngsters from the community. There were also award presentation, mainly sport activities that usually happened one to two weeks prior to the actual celebration date. In the sport competition there were many groups and various sport activities, such as man and women soccer groups, cane ball and men and women volleyball teams. As always, refreshment and food prepared by community members and served by youth followed after the celebration.

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The celebration of Karen New Year (era 2756) Brisbane, Queensland

On the 29th March our AKO Australia Karen Organisation in Victoria members were invited to participate in an event called Global Pathway at Trinity College. We were able to show primary school children our traditional performances, instruments and our way of living in our Karen State. There were over 248 teachers and students that can to our station showing interest in our culture. As we engaged with the students and teachers, we realised many of them were surprised.

We were able to get to teachers and students to participate in dancing and playing the drums. In the end the organiser of the workshop came and reported back to us on how the majority of students was mesmerised by our culture display and performances.

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Multicultural celebration event participation, Victoria

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Since Karen people came to live in Australia, they have seen that organisation is very important for the community in this country. Even though they were less in number, they started organising themselves as a group. After the Karen people started growing in number, in 1996 they started organising a committee.

The purpose for this committee is to work for the Karen people who had resettled in this country especially in socio-political perspective. For the Karen organisation to be recognised in this country, this committee started writing basic constitution for the first time on February 17, 1997. The same year, the Karens in different states started organising committees for the first time through Teleconference.

On February 14, 1998, the Australian Karen Organisation's constitution was recognised by the Australian government. And in April, 1998, the Australian Karen Organisation's committees from all over Australia held the first national conference in Sydney. On July 16, 1998, the Australian Karen Organisation was recognised by the Australian government.

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AKO (WA) Traditional ''Done dance'' Team expands

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An overview of the Karen people

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The establishment of Karen Language School classes in Queensland

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