narrate the various ethnic groups of the people of the Southern Highlanders
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Answer:
There are two categories of what are sometimes referred to as ‘highlanders’: those minorities and indigenous peoples concentrated in the central highlands of Vietnam, and those found in the country’s north highlands, located beyond the Red River to the north. Both are made up of a large number of quite distinct ethnic groups and have migrated into today’s Vietnam at various points in history. The former are collectively sometimes known as Degar, or Montagnards, a term which is a carry-over from the French colonial period. The latter are sometimes known by the Vietnamese word for highlanders but that term technically could be said to apply to both categories.
During the pre-colonial period, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples living in the highland areas maintained autonomy from the Vietnamese state, which did not consider them a threat. However, the highland population in both the north and the south was economically exploited by the ethnic Kinh. During the colonial period, the highland areas were targets of French missionary education and commercial activities. The French played the Kinh and highland groups off against one another, sometimes supporting Kinh settlement in highland areas, at other times prohibiting such settlement and encouraging local administration by highlanders
South Vietnamese authorities, however, embarked on what would later also be continued in a different form by Vietnam’s Communist government: after 1955, South Vietnamese President Ngô Dinh Diêm launched the first programmes to resettle members of the Kinh to ‘land development centres’ in the central highlands – in effect appropriating the traditional lands of the highland communities and handing them over mainly to members of the majority ethnic group, as well as to thousands of ethnic minority refugees from the north. These policies were eventually suspended, to try to assuage some of the highland groups who had resisted violently. North Vietnam also began its own resettlement programme during its first Five Year Plan (1961-65), setting up ‘New Economic Zones’ in northern highland provinces. By 1975, an estimated 1 million people, mainly ethnic Kinh, were relocated into areas previously the domain of various highland indigenous peoples.
Similar policies were put into place for the central highlands after reunification in 1975, with perhaps as many as 3 million moving into the area. The ethnic Kinh today represent around two-thirds of the population of the central highlands. In addition, efforts to end swidden agriculture (also known as slash-and-burn) and to sedentarize minorities and indigenous peoples meant the relocation of hundreds of thousands to the valleys to grow rice and other cash-oriented crops. Frustration at the loss of traditional lands, restrictions on the religious practices of some minority and indigenous communities, threats to the maintenance of their languages and cultures, as well as poor access to education and health all combined to spark large-scale demonstrations by some central highland indigenous peoples in 2001. There were further demonstrations in 2004 over land rights and freedom of religion issues, as well as over the migration of large numbers of majority Kinh. The 2004 demonstrations were much more violent than in 2001, with the People’s Committee building in one commune destroyed, as well as some Kinh migrants’ houses and farms. On both occasions, the government clamped down on all outside access to the central highlands.
After the 2001 protests by thousands of highland groups, a number of announcements and changes were made to address some of the grievances. Among these was a 2004 prime ministerial decision to allocate land to the country’s minorities and assist them in areas such as housing. However, other announcements indicate that aspects of policy detrimental to highland communities have not been abandoned. In March 2007, another prime ministerial decision on resettlement declared the aim of completely eliminating all swidden (slash-and-burn) agriculture activities of minorities and indigenous peoples by 2010. While it is too early to conclude how effective or even desirable such moves away from swidden agriculture are, early studies suggest mixed results: a 2006 report examining a remote upland village in north-central Vietnam where swidden agriculture was severely curtailed, concluded that the move towards wet-rice cultivation resulted in a lower rice production yield, and thus a lower level of food security. There was an increase in forest cover, but this was accompanied by greater use of lower areas for wet-rice cultivation and a reduction in the landscape mosaic resulting from swidden agriculture. Some reports indicate that swidden agriculture supports greater biodiversity than the binary system of forest and permanently cultivated fields.