Highlander ethnic groups living in Southeast Asia usually accumulate silver bars or coins as a saving and forge silver crafts for their own cultural consumption. But not many highlanders have succeeded in being ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ in which commodify silver crafts to serve the global needs. This paper presents Iu Mien or Yao, an ethnic group living in mountainous area of Nan Province, Northern Thailand, who conduct silver craft enterprises nationally and globally as a case study. These highlander entrepreneurs today are well recognized as the leading entrepreneurs, making Nan Province a source of high-quality silver craft products, shifting Thailand to be the top of 92.5 silver fabrications in East Asia and the world’s largest exporter in silver jewelry. While the Iu Mien or Yao among other ethnic groups in Thailand have been caught within the discourse of ‘hill tribe’, the low-educated and less developed narratives, this article raises two main issues to be discussed: 1) how the Iu Mien entrepreneurs have integrated their ethnic-cultural products into silver craft markets, and 2) Besides making a living, how their activism engaging within national and global craft economy has helped them to negotiate their ethnicity within structural power relationship. As for a case study, the Iu Mien entrepreneurs has illustrated not merely such economic agents, but they are also ‘craftivists’ who utilize silver craft economy to reposition the state of inferiority, shifting the power relation and ethnicity within Thai society.
