History

The Dega race was the first people to inhabit this region and we are the rightful owners of the land that the world knew as the Central Highlands of Vietnam during the Second Indochina War.

The Dega population was once estimated at between 3 and 3.5 million during French colonialism. Today, our race has shrunk to just a few hundred thousand survivors.

As residents of this once peaceful country, the Dega people were recruited and attacked by both sides of the Viet Minh and the French in the First Indochina War.

Throughout our existence we have been animists, although missionaries have converted many of us to Christianity over the past two centuries.

Before the Chams and Annam peoples invaded our coastal lands, our people in Southeast Asia were basically free to live in our peaceful village communities.

For over two thousand years before the year 1800, we Dega people lived freely and peacefully in our homelands with highland villages.