Viewing articles tagged 'kon tum'

BAJARAKA, 1958 Four peoples in one acronym: BAhnar, JArai, RAde, KAho. A movement that asked for our country with letters and demonstrations, whose leaders were arrested for it and held for five years, and whose survivors came out of prison in 1964 to found something that carried weapons. Changelog 54 views Read More Before history: the stone and bronze ages of the plateau People lived on the plateau for hundreds of thousands of years before anyone wrote about it. Stone tools, bronze-casting molds and a set of stone musical instruments are all that survive of most of that time. This page sets out what archaeologists and linguists have found, how sure they are, and who did the digging. Explainer 7 views Read More The first outsiders: Cham, Annam and the missions Four arrivals over a thousand years, each of which moved the Dega further from the sea, and a fifth — the missions — which moved nobody but changed everything by writing us down. This is the sequence as our records hold it, with the dates the outside chronicles give. Reference 32 views Read More A map of the highlands Our country is the high plateau between the Annamite mountains and the Mekong, in what Vietnam now calls the Central Highlands and across the borders in Cambodia and Laos. This map shows the main towns and rivers and, roughly, where the larger Dega peoples live. Reference 8 views Read More February 2001: the highlands stand up In February 2001 several thousand Dega walked out of their villages into the provincial capitals of the Central Highlands. They asked for three things: their ancestral land, the freedom to worship, and a homeland. It was the largest open protest by an indigenous people in Vietnam since 1975, and it was answered with thousands of troops, twelve-y... Explainer 38 views Read More The Kon Tum mission, 1851 On January 1, 1851, a French priest reached a Bahnar village called Kon Phar, having walked in from the coast. The mission that followed produced the first written form of any of our languages, the first dictionary, the first school, and the first outside description of who lived in the highlands and where. It is the beginning of the written rec... Explainer 40 views Read More The "Kingdom of the Sedang," 1888 On June 3, 1888, at the village of Kon Gung north of Kon Tum, chiefs of the Bahnar, the Rengao and the Sedang proclaimed a Frenchman their king. The Kingdom of the Sedang lasted about two years, issued stamps and orders of chivalry, and is usually told as a comic episode. It is worth telling from our side, because it was the first time highland... Explainer 16 views Read More The prisoner records: what they are and how to search them 337 Dega recorded by name as imprisoned for their faith, their land or their people, across five provinces, with arrests running from 2001 to 2006. This page explains what the records are, where they came from, what the gaps mean, and how to search them for somebody — including the spellings you have to try. Reference 41 views Read More The battles fought on our land Both armies agreed that whoever held the Central Highlands would decide the war. So the largest battles of the American war, and the offensives that ended it, were fought on the plateau where our villages stood. This page lists them, with the figures that are usually given — and notes, each time, that almost nobody counted the highlanders caught... Reference 18 views Read More Prisoners of conscience: Kontum 11 Dega from Kontum province recorded by name as imprisoned for their faith, their land or their people. The arrests recorded here run from 2004–2005. This is a record, not an argument — every line is a person somebody is waiting for. Reference 11 views Read More The missions and the doctors Protestant missionaries came to the highlands in 1929, and within forty years a large part of the Dega had become Christian. They also brought the first hospitals many of our villages had ever seen. During the war the mission compounds and the clinics were on the same ground as everything else, and some of the people who ran them died there. Explainer 24 views Read More Four highland towns The four towns of the highlands that the world knows — Buôn Ma Thuột, Pleiku, Kon Tum and Đà Lạt — all carry highland names, and all grew up on highland land as posts of someone else’s government. This page gives each one’s name, its origin, and the few dates that matter. Reference 20 views Read More Tet 1968 in the highlands In the early hours of January 30, 1968, the Tet Offensive reached the highland towns of Ban Me Thuot, Kontum and Pleiku; Dalat was attacked on February 1. For a week or more the fighting was in the streets. The towns were our market towns and provincial capitals, and the villages around them carried the war before, during and after. Explainer 12 views Read More Highland refugees of the war years Between the early 1960s and 1975 most of our people were driven from their villages at least once. The anthropologist Gerald Hickey estimated that at least 200,000 highlanders were killed in the war and that more than 85 percent were displaced as refugees. This page gathers what the record shows about how that happened, and what it leaves out. Explainer 8 views Read More Hà Mòn: the Catholic movement the state calls an “evil way” Hà Mòn is a Catholic movement among Dega in Kon Tum and Gia Lai that grew from reports of the Virgin Mary appearing at a village that was to be flooded for a dam. The state treats it as an “evil way” religion, and since 2010 its followers have been pressed to renounce it, arrested and given long prison sentences. Explainer 13 views Read More The highland Catholic Church under the Socialist Republic The Catholic Church came to the highlands with the Kon Tum mission (see The Kon Tum mission), and today many tens of thousands of Bahnar, Jarai, Sedang and other highlanders are Catholic. After 1975 the church lost most of its priests and has worked since under close control. It has been treated more gently than the house churches, but not left... Explainer 10 views Read More The Bahnar The Bahnar live around Kon Tum and east of Pleiku, and in the mountains running down toward the coast of Bình Định. They speak a Mon-Khmer language, not a Chamic one; they do not have the matrilineal clans of their Jarai and Rhade neighbors; and their villages are marked by the communal house with its high, sweeping roof. Kon Tum’s Catholic chur... Reference 11 views Read More The Sedang (Xơ Đăng) The Sedang live in the mountains north of Kon Tum and across into Quảng Nam and Quảng Ngãi. They speak a North Bahnaric language, and gave their name to the short-lived “Kingdom of the Sedang” that a French adventurer proclaimed in 1888. They strongly resisted French rule. Reference 15 views Read More The smaller peoples of the highlands Beyond the large peoples — Rhade, Jarai, Bahnar, Sedang, Mnong, Koho — the highlands are home to many smaller peoples, some of only a few tens of thousands, whose names rarely appear in the record. This page gathers what the sources say about ten of them, so that each at least has a place in our library. Reference 9 views Read More