Minorities of the Central Highlands
Nearly
all minority groups living in the central highlands are indigenous
peoples: most are matrilineal societies with a strong emphasis
on community life and with some particularly complex burial rites.
Catholic missionaries enjoyed considerable success in the central
highlands, establishing a mission at Kon Tum in the mid-nineteenth
century, and then early in the twentieth century Protestantism
was also introduced to the region. Most converts came from among
the Ede and Bahnar, though other groups have also incorporated
Christian prac tices into their traditional belief systems. Likewise,
Vietnamese influence has been stronger here than in northern Vietnam,
while the American War caused severe disruption. Nevertheless,
their cultures have been sufficiently strong to resist complete
assimilation.
Jarai (or Gia-Rai)
The largest minority group on the central highlands is the Jarai,
with a population of roughly 250,000. It's thought that Jarai
people left the coastal plains around 2000 years ago, settling
on the fertile plateau around Plei Ku, in Kon Tum Province. Some
ethnol ogists hold that Cham people are in fact a branch of the
Jarai, and they certainly share common linguistic traits and a
matrilineal social order. Young Jarai women initiate the marriage
proposal and afterwards the couple live in the wife's family home,
with children taking their mother's name.
Villages are often named for a nearby river, stream or tribal
chief and in the centre of each can be found a large stilt house
nha-rong, which acts as a kind of community centre where the council
of elders and their elected chief meet. Houses are traditionally
built on stilts, facing north. Jarai women typically propose marriage
to men through a matchmaker, who delivers the prospective groom
a copper bracelet. Animistic beliefs and rituals still abound
and the Jarai pay respect to their ancestors and nature through
a host of genies (yang) . Popular spirits include the King of
Fire (Po Teo Pui) and the King of Water (Po Teo La), whom they
summon to bring forth rain. Perhaps more than any of Vietnam s
other hill tribes, the Jarai are renowned for their indigenous
musical instruments, from stringed 'gongs' to bamboo tubes, which
act as wind flutes and percussion.
Animist beliefs are still strong and the Jarai world is peopled
with spirits, the most famous of which are the kings of Water,
Fire and Wind, represented by shamans who are involved in rain-making
cere monies and other rituals. Funeral rites are particularly
complex and expensive: after the burial, a funeral house is built
over the grave and evocative sculptures of people, birds and objects
from everyday life are placed inside. The Jarai also have an extensive
musical repertoire, the principal instruments being gongs and
the unique k'longput, made of bamboo tubes into which the players
force air by clapping their hands. During the American War the
majority of Jarai villagers moved out of their war-torn homeland;
many have been resettled in Plei Ku, and others are only now slowly
returning.
Ede (or Rhade)
Further south, towards Buon Me Thuot, in Dak Lak Province, around
200,000 people of the polytheist Ede minority live in stilt houses
grouped together in a village or buon. These longhouses, which
can be up to 100m in length, are beamless, boat-shaped with hardwood
frames, bamboo floors and walls, and topped with a high thatched
roof. Families allot about a third of the living space for communal
use, with the rest partitioned into smaller quarters to give privacy
to married couples. Like the Jarai, the families of Ede girls
make proposals of marriage to men, and once wed the couple resides
with the wife's family and children bear the mother's family name.
Inheritance is also reserved solely for women, in particular the
youngest daughter of the family. As many as a hundred family members
may live in a single house, under the authority of the oldest
or most respected woman, who owns all family property, including
the house and domestic animals; wealth is indicated by the number
of ceremonial gongs. Other much-prized heirlooms are the large
earthen-ware jars used for making the rice wine drunk at festivals.
Like the Jarai, Ede people worship the kings of Fire and Water
among a whole host of animist spirits, and also erect a funeral
house on their graves. Both the original longhouse and its grave-site
replica are often decorated with fine carvings. The Ede homeland
lies in a region of red soils on the rolling western plateaux.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries French settlers introduced
coffee and rubber estates to the area, often seizing land from
the local people they called Rhade. Traditional swidden farming
has gradually been disappearing, a process accelerated by the
American War and the forced relocation of Ede into permanent settlements.
Sedang (or Xo-Dang)
According to their oral histories, Sedang people once lived further
north but are now concentrated in the area between Kon Tum and
Quang Ngai, comprising a community of nearly 100,000. The Sedang
were traditionally a war-like people whose villages were surrounded
with defensive hedges, barbed with spears and stakes, and with
only one entrance. Intervillage wars were frequent and the Sedang
also carried out raids on the peaceable Bahnar, mainly to seize
prisoners rather than territory. In the past, Sedang religious
ritual involved human sacrifices to propitiate the spirits - a
practice that was later modified into a profitable business, selling
slaves to traders from Laos and Thailand. In the 1880s, an eccentric
French military adventurer called Marie-David de Mayrena, established
a kingdom in Sedang territory by making treaties with the local
chiefs.A few decades later, the French authorities conscripted
Sedang labour to build Highway 14 from Kon Tum to Da Nang; conditions
were so harsh that many died, provoking a rebellion in the 1930s.
Soon after, the Viet Minh won many recruits among the Sedang in
their war against the French. In the American War some Sedang
groups fought for the Viet Cong while others were formed into
militia units by the American Special Services. But when fighting
intensified after 1965, Sedang villagers were forced to flee and
many now live in almost destitute conditions, having lost their
ancestral lands. Traditionally, membership of a Sedang village
was indicated by the use of a common watersource. Each extended
family occupies a longhouse, built on stilts and usually facing
east; central to village life is the communal house where young
men and boys sleep, and where all the major ceremonies take place.
Because villages historically had relatively little contact with
each other, there are marked variations between the social custorns
of the sub groups and so far seventeen Sedang dialects have been
identified. Agricultural techniques are more consistent, mainly
swidden farming supplemented by horticulture and hunting. Some
Sedang farmers employ a "water harp", a combined bird-scarer,
musical instrument and appeaser of the spirits. The harp consists
of bamboo tubes linked together and placed in a flowing stream
to produce an irregular, haunting sound.
The Sedang have relations stretching as far as Cambodia. Like
many of their neighbours, the Sedang have been adversely affected
by centuries of war and outside invasion. They do not carry family
names, and there is said to be complete equality between the sexes.
The children of one's siblings are also given the same treatment
as one's own, creating a strong fraternal tradition. Although
most Sedang spiritual and cultural ceremonies relate to agriculture,
they stiII practice unique customs such as grave-abandonment and
sharing of property with the deceased, and childbirth is conducted
at the forest's edge.
Mnong
The Mnong ethnic minority is probably best known for its skill
in hunting elephants and domesticating them for use in war, for
transport and for their ivory. Mnong people are also the creators
of the lithophone, a kind of stone xylophone thought to be among
the world's most ancient musical instruments; an example is on
show at the Lam Dong Province Museum in Da Lat. The Mnong have
lived in the southern central highlands for centuries, and now
around 67,000 people are concentrated in the region between Buon
Me Thuot and Da Lat. Mnong houses are usually built flat on the
ground and, though the society is generally matrilineal, village
affairs are organized by a male chief. Mnong craftsmen are skilled
at basketry and printing textiles, while they also make the copper,
tin and silver jewellery worn by both sexes. In traditional burial
rituals a buffalo shaped coffin is placed under a funeral house
which is peopled with wooden statues and painted with black, red
or white designs.
Bru and Ta-Oi
Two related minority groups had the extreme misfortune to live
on the Seventeenth Parallel, near the border with Laos: the Bru
(or Bnu Van Kieu), these days numbering around 40,000, and the
Ta-oi, with a population of only 26,000. Bru people were caught
up in the battle of Khe Sanh - both as refugees and as part of
an American militia force - while the Ta-oi, amongst others, helped
keep open the Ho Chi Minh Trail for the North Vietnamese Army.
During the worst years of fighting, refugees fled south to Ede
country or crossed over into Laos, and many never returned. Those
that did move back found Viet people settled on their best land
- the Khe Sanh plateau was declared a New Economic Zone - and
were forced into marginal areas. Of the two groups, Bru people
have always had greater contact with the outside world since the
ancient Lao Bao trade route passes through their territory to
Laos. Bru houses can usually be distinguished by their rounded
shape, likened to a tortoise shell, and are occasionally decorated
with carved birds or buffalo horns at each end. Both groups are
patrilineal, practise swidden farming and worship a huge range
of spirits, though ancestor worship is also central to their belief
systems.
Cham
As the Viet people pushed down the coastal plain and into the
Mekong Delta they dispbced two main ethnic groups, the Cham and
Khmer. Up until the tenth century powerful Cham kings had ruled
over most of southern Vietnam ; nowadays, there are less than
100,000
Cham people, mostly living on the coast between Phan Rang and
Phan Thiet, or on the Cambodian border around Chay Doc, with a
small number in Ho Chi Minh City. The coastal communities are
largely still Hindu worshippers of Shiva and follow the matrilineal
practices of their Cham ancestors; they earn a living from farming,
silk weaving and crafting jewellery of gold or silver. Groups
along the Cambodian border are Islamic and, in general, patrilineal.
They engage in river-fishing, weaving and cross-border trade,
with little agricultural activity. On the whole, Cham people have
adopted the Vietnamese way of life and dress, though their traditional
arts, principally dance and music, have experienced a revival
in recent years.
Ethnic Khmers are the indigenous people of the Mekong Delta,
including Cambodia. Nowadays only about 900,000 remain in the
eastern delta under Vietnamese rule, and some of these only arrived
in the late 1970s as refugees from Pol Pot's brutal regime in
Cambodia.
With extracts from the Rough Guide to Vietnam by C Jan Dodd
