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Montagnard Dega People’s Day, September 20

Exile Explainer 3 views 3 min read Back

North Carolina proclaimed September 20, 2026 Montagnard Dega People’s Day. What the proclamation says, why the date matters to us, and what came before.

What the proclamation says

Governor Josh Stein signed the proclamation on September 8, 2026, and his office published it on September 20, the day itself. It names September 20, 2026 “Montagnard Dega People’s Day” in North Carolina.

The proclamation calls us Montagnard Dega Indigenous tribespeople from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. It records that around 40,000 of our people contributed to and aided the United States armed forces during the Vietnam War. It calls North Carolina home to “the largest population of Montagnards outside of Asia.” It gives no count of that population. The figures that exist, and why they disagree, are on North Carolina. The figure the United States Senate uses for our men’s service, about 61,000, is on Our veterans in America.

We have not found an earlier proclamation for our people by a governor of North Carolina: a search of the governor’s website for the years 2016 to 2025 found none.

Why September 20

The proclamation does not say. For our people the date has its own meaning. On the night of September 19–20, 1964, the strike force camps around Ban Me Thuot rose, and by the morning of the 20th our men held the town’s radio station. FULRO had been proclaimed on August 1 that year; the rising was when it came into the open. See FULRO.

We do not know whether the governor’s office chose the date for this reason, and we do not claim it did.

Before 2026

The day did not come from nowhere. Our community has gathered in September for years. A “Dega Days” event in Asheboro, North Carolina, was reported in September 2012. Save the Montagnard People, the organization Special Forces veterans founded in 1986, holds a Day of Remembrance in September.

The United States Senate recognized our people’s service in resolutions of 2016 and 2023; see Our veterans in America.

If you mark the day

If your church, association or family marks September 20, send us the date, the place and a photograph, and we will add it to the record of the day.

See also: North Carolina, Our veterans in America, FULRO, What does Dega mean?, and the news of the proclamation in Updates.

Sources

Governor of North Carolina, “Governor Stein Proclaims Montagnard Dega People’s Day” (signed September 8, 2026; published September 20, 2026) — the name of the day, the 40,000 and “the largest population of Montagnards outside of Asia”
Robert W. Jones Jr., “A Team Effort: The Montagnard Uprising of September 1964,” Veritas 3, no. 2 (2007); and our pages FULRO and Timeline — August 1, 1964, the night of September 19–20 and the radio station
Cherokee One Feather, “Post 143 to kickoff Dega Days event” (September 18, 2012)
Save the Montagnard People — the organization’s own account of its September Day of Remembrance (accessed November 5, 2026)
US Senate, S. Res. 362 (February 4, 2016) and S. Res. 395 (October 4, 2023), as on Our veterans in America
governor.nc.gov proclamations, 2016–2025, searched November 5, 2026

Compiled November 2026.

north-carolina proclamation september-20 fulro diaspora montagnard

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