Montagnard (Vietnam)
Below is a list of officially recognized ethnic groups in Vietnam that are indigenous to the Central Highlands and nearby areas, with a total population of approximately 2.25 million.
This study underlines the genetic diversity within the Central Highlands' native population, while further consolidating the Out of Africa migration of ancient peoples and refutes any challenge to the African origin of modern humans.
[5] The Old Book of Tang notes that the people of Champa have "black skin, eyes deep in the orbit, short stature, broad nose, and frizzy hair.
"[6] Surrounded by Indianized and Sinicized states from all sides, the Montagnard tribes however have preserved their distinct cultures dating back to the prehistoric era, thanks to the high mountains.
Unlike the Buddhist Vietnamese who are patriarchal, the Montagnards mainly practice traditional matrilineality, such as the Jarai and Rade, where head of the house is passed down from the mother to the oldest daughter, and women take charge of the leadership in tribal communities.
Under Emperor Tu Duc, in 1863 a Son Phòng (mountain defense) program was laid out to prevent Hre tribal revolt as well as to collect taxes from friendly Montagnard tribes.
European Jesuits such as Christoforo Borri reported tribes known as kemois (barbarians) dwelling in the mountainous areas of Cochinchina not yet subjected to the king.
Major contacts occurred in the next decades, with a stream of outsiders, mostly Vietnamese Catholics, coming to Kon Tum to escape violence by members of the neo-Confucian extremist Văn Thân movement.
Other Social-Darwinists pushed as far as proposing the colonization should be done with a large number of Vietnamese settlers, mainly Catholic, that would eventually outnumber the indigenous tribes and perform the tasks of "civilizing" them.
[17] L. Nouet, a French civil official, observed the Montagnards' swidden slash-and-burn style of agriculture and considered it a source of poverty, writing that "the Moi are always hungry."
The Meeting's resolutions declared that all ethnic groups had the right "to choose between adhering to the Union of Indochinese Soviet Republics and proclaiming itself a separate state.
The Soviet government of the workers, peasants and soldiers of Indochina will in no way interfere or create obstacle..."[19] The colonization of the Central Highlands became stalled in the 1930s due to a combination of many factors, including prolonged indigenous resistances of the Mnong led by N'Trang Lung and rubber uprisings; the Great Depression of 1929; decreasing global demand for rubber and coffee; and the mitigative policies applied by Leopold Sabatier, administrator of Đắk Lắk province from 1914 to 1926.
Sabatier openly opposed against further expansion of French industrial businesses and Vietnamese migration into the Central Highlands, which he believed to be the main threat to traditional Montagnard society.
Sam Bram distributed magic water (Jarai: la Iun) to his followers, and preached about how the expulsion of white people and Vietnamese from the highlands would fulfill a Biblical prophecy.
The French position of power also allowed them to decide which aspects of Montagnard culture should be preserved, and which ones changed; they were happy to celebrate harmless traditions such as ritual buffalo sacrifice, but continued discouraging shifting cultivation or the remnants of the Dieu Python movement.
Ho Chi Minh, in his letter addressing the Congress, recognized the multinational nature of his proposed Vietnamese state which would be a country of the Kinh majority and 'national' minorities alike.
Later communist Vietnamese historiography would glorify resistance from Montagnard populations including the Katu, H're, Bahnar, and Cor tribes that aided the Viet Minh.
[29] In the mid-1950s, the once-isolated Montagnards began experiencing more contact with outsiders after the Vietnamese government launched efforts to gain better control of the Central Highlands and, following the 1954 Geneva Conference, new ethnic minorities from North Vietnam moved into the area.
[31] Chief American advisor Wolf Ladejinsky who was the architect of Diem's policies applauded the South Vietnamese development program as having progressively transformed the wilderness.
US advisors, such as Price Gittinger of the US Operation Mission Agricultural Division, and Gerald Hickey, alarmed Diem that his Development Act would drive the Montagnard tribes to look for communists' support, further hurting efforts to contain communism in South Vietnam.
There was a related, well-organized political and (occasionally) military force within the Montagnard communities known by the French acronym, FULRO, or United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races.
On July 31, 1958, the BAJARAKA sent two representatives, Y-Ju and Y Nam, to the US Embassy in Saigon, where they attempted to reach and inform the United Nations Secretary-General and other world leaders about the unequal Development Act of the Diem regime, which they described as racist and neocolonial.
[38] Later, their participation would become much more important as the Ho Chi Minh trail, the North Vietnamese supply line for Viet Cong forces in the south, grew.
[39] The central highlands were greatly affected by American aerial bombing and herbicides during targeting of North Vietnamese materiel transportation on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
"[44] In October 1974, with guides from FULRO, the Montagnards staged an armed rebellion following cases of murders and mass arrests made by the South Vietnamese government.
According to University of Texas Professor Frank Proschan, Nate Thayer successfully constructed an impression myth circulating around international media about the "valiant, loyal Montagnard people who had been decades-long fighting against Vietnamese communists", captivating the colonial nostalgia of former US Special Forces personnel for an imagined past.
The indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands have deep knowledge of the local ecology and previously had life tied with forest, now strangled in impoverished separate hamlets.
[51] Uncontrolled Kinh migration from the lowland, deforestation, plantations, US bombings, defoliantation and prolonged warfare had clearing off many natural forests, pushing many rare species to extinction.
One Vietnamese anthropologist has described a typical pattern of this impoverishment process: Kinh settlers took the opportunities of exploiting imperfect laws and the judicial system to fraudulently legitimize their assets ownership that were once belonged to indigenous peoples.
[57][58][59] Human rights organizations have described this policy as a violation of Cambodia's international law obligation of non-refoulement (not forcibly returning refugees to a country in which they will be harmed).
