Rough Guide to Vietnam - Jan Dodd [367]
Vietnam’s ethnic minorities | Minorities in the central highlands |
Jarai (Gia–rai)
The largest minority group in the central highlands is the Jarai, with a population of roughly three hundred thousand. It’s thought that Jarai people left the coastal plains around 2000 years ago, settling on the fertile plateau around Plei Ku. Some ethnologists 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. Houses are traditionally built on stilts, facing north. The focus of village life is the communal house, or rong, where the council of elders and their elected chief meet.
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 ceremonies and other rituals. Funeral rites are particularly complex and expensive: each family maintains a funeral house which they ornament with evocative sculptures of people, birds and objects from everyday life. The Jarai also have an extensive musical repertoire, the principal instruments being gongs and the unique k’long put, 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 being resettled in Plei Ku; only in recent years are some slowly returning.
Vietnam’s ethnic minorities | Minorities in the central highlands |
E De (Rhadé)
Further south, towards Buon Ma Thuot, around 270,000 people of the E De minority live in stilthouses grouped together in a village, or buon. These longhouses, which can be up to 100m in length, are boat-shaped with hardwood frames, bamboo floors and walls, and topped with a high thatched roof. 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 earthenware jars used for making the rice wine drunk at festivals. Like the Jarai, E De 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 E De 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 Rhadé. Traditional swidden farming has gradually been disappearing, a process accelerated by the American War and the forced relocation of E De into permanent settlements.
Vietnam’s ethnic minorities | Minorities in the central highlands |
Bahnar (Ba–na)
Bahnar people trace their ancestry back many centuries to communities co-existing on the coastal plains with the Cham and Jarai. Now the Bahnar minority, numbering some 170,000, mostly live in the highlands east of Plei Ku and Kon Tum. The most distinctive aspect of a Bahnar village is its rong, or communal house, the roof of which may be up to 20m high. This is the centre of village cultural and ceremonial life, and also the home of adolescent boys, who are taught Bahnar history, the skills of hunting and other manly matters. Village houses grouped around the rong are typically stilthouses with a thatched or tiled roof, and are often decorated with geometric motifs.
The Bahnar people are skilled horticulturalists, growing maize, sweet potato or millet, together with indigo, hemp or tobacco as cash crops. Bahnar groups also erect funeral