Viewing articles tagged 'dournes'

Books about the Dega A reading list for anyone who wants to understand the Dega properly — our own young people above all. It lists the books and articles we trust, what each is good for, and where it can be read. Many are free online. Reference 23 views Read More Films and recordings Where to see and hear the Dega: American wartime films now in the public domain, later documentaries, community videos made in our own languages, and the field recordings of our music held in Paris, some of them free to listen to online. We list what we have been able to find and check. Reference 19 views Read More The rice year For most of our history the year was measured by rice. A village chose a piece of forest, cleared it, burned it, planted it when the rains came, harvested it, and after a year or two let it grow back while it moved on to the next. Outsiders called this “slash and burn” or “nomadic farming” and set out to end it. This page describes the rice year... Explainer 17 views Read More Yang: the spirits and the old religion Before the missions, every highland people lived among yang: spirits of the rice, the water, the mountain, the forest, the house, the jar and the gong. Most Dega today are Christian. This page describes the old religion as the ethnographers recorded it, how conversion changed it, and how the state now stages parts of it as heritage while punishi... Explainer 15 views Read More The Jarai The Jarai are, on Vietnam’s census counts, the largest of the Central Highlands peoples: the people of the Pleiku plateau and the Ayun valley, and across the border in Cambodia’s Ratanakiri. Like the Rhade they speak a Chamic language and reckon descent through women. Their ritual masters of fire and water were known to the kings of Cambodia, an... Reference 14 views Read More Instruments beyond the gongs The gongs are the voice of the highlands, but they are not the only one. Our peoples made music from bamboo, gourds, stone and a single string: xylophones, mouth organs, tube zithers, one-string fiddles, jaw harps and panpipes. Most were recorded by outsiders in the 1950s and 1960s, and their names survive in those recordings. Explainer 10 views Read More Writing our languages Our languages were spoken for thousands of years before any of them was written. Between 1861 and the 1970s, missionaries, a French administrator, American linguists and our own teachers put them into the Latin alphabet. Each language got its own spelling, at a different time, for a different reason. Governments have since banned, changed and re... Explainer 9 views Read More