Viewing articles tagged 'rhade'

The tribes and their languages Around thirty peoples, in two language families that are not related to one another. The Chamic-speaking peoples, Jarai, Rhade, Raglai, Chu Ru and Haroi, are Austronesian, cousins of the Cham of the coast and, further out, of Malay and Indonesian. Most of the rest speak Bahnaric languages of the Austroasiatic family, related to Khmer; the Bru, K... Glossary 167 views Read More Language resources Our languages are the part of our inheritance most at risk and the easiest to lose without noticing. This page lists what exists to learn, teach and study them: the codes that libraries and software use to find them, how endangered each one is, the dictionaries and grammars that can be downloaded free today, the recordings of our elders’ speech... Reference 109 views Read More Y Bham Enuol A Rhade official from Buon Ale-A who led both of our movements, spent more than five years in the prisons of the government he was petitioning, put our own name for ourselves into the official record, was held under guard by his own allies for the last six years of his life, and walked out of the French Embassy in Phnom Penh on April 20, 1975, i... Spotlight 134 views Read More Gongs and epics Much of what the Dega know was never written down. It was played on gongs and sung through the night. In 2005 UNESCO recognized the gong culture of the Central Highlands as a masterpiece of the world’s intangible heritage, and in 2008 put it on the Representative List. This page is about what that heritage is, about the stone instrument at Ndut... Explainer 85 views Read More Sabatier, the oath of 1926 and the Rhade law code On New Year’s Day 1926 the French résident of Darlac stood in front of the assembled chiefs at Buon Ma Thuot and told them, among other things, that the peoples around us who had let strangers into their country had lost their law and were themselves lost. Ten times he told them to touch the bracelet. Six months later he was quietly relieved of... Explainer 95 views Read More Weaving and dress Before there was a flag, there was cloth. A Rhade skirt, a Jarai loincloth, a Maa blanket or a Bahnar skirt hung with seeds told anyone who knew how to read it which people the wearer belonged to. The cloth was woven by women on a loom tied to their own bodies, from cotton they grew and dyed themselves. In North Carolina it still is. Explainer 70 views Read More Roads, taxes and forced labor, 1899–1945 In 1899 the tribute our villages had paid every three years in wax, horn and ivory was abolished and replaced by a tax in cash, on people who did not use cash. Three years later came the days: ten a year of unpaid work on the roads, rising to fifteen, and eight to ten more spent walking to the worksite and back. A man who could not find the mone... Explainer 74 views Read More The Rhade (Êđê) The Rhade are the people of the Darlac plateau, the red basalt shelf around Buon Ma Thuot where the Krong Ana, the female river, joins the Krong No, the male river, and becomes the Srepok. They speak a Chamic language, cousin to Cham and more distantly to Malay. They count descent through women: a house belongs to its women, land belongs to a wo... Explainer 79 views Read More Jars, rice wine and the buffalo feast A jar has a soul. The Êđê call it mngắt cheh, and if a jar stands empty for a while someone will put a handful of rice and an egg inside to feed it. A jar is also money: among the Êđê Bih a tang pôk jar was worth a buffalo and a tuk navi jar was worth an elephant. And a jar is law — when a man was killed, the killer set one jar at the feet of th... Explainer 91 views Read More Customary law and the village court Our law was not a book. It was verse, held in the memory of men who could stand up in a village and recite the clause that settled the case. It priced a human life in gongs measured against a man’s own forearm, made failing to help the unfortunate an offense, and devoted more of itself to the wrongs a chief can commit than to theft. The French w... Explainer 95 views Read More Writing our languages Our languages were spoken for thousands of years before any of them was written. Between the middle of the nineteenth century and the 1970s, French missionaries, a French administrator and his teachers, American missionaries and linguists, and our own people put them into the Latin alphabet, one language at a time, each for its own reasons and e... Explainer 81 views Read More The bracelet A ring of brass or copper on the wrist is one of the oldest bonds among our peoples. It settles an engagement and ends one; it pays the midwife and the broker; it is heated in coals and dropped into a jar of blood and rice beer so that men who should be enemies can drink and be bound. In 1964, on the morning of a mutiny, a Rhade shaman put three... Spotlight 76 views Read More