The author found three principles from the practice of local knowledge to claim community rights of the Hmong under the context of competing for highland resources. First, the community uses its local knowledge in the form of customs and traditions as a powerful tool to create a legitimacy in order to claim their rights by redefining their knowledge to enable them to negotiate for power. Secondly, the community does not try to monopolize power, but attempts to present a collective management pattern to all stakeholders despite being non-legal. Thirdly, community rights are not legally recognized by the state because resource management is an eco-political issue, the problem of institutional structure. Consequently, the community is aware of social practices and movements at all levels in order to seek a negotiation position for legal community claims (pp. E-F).