08_ ETHNIC GROUPS IN TAY NGUYEN_ HOANG LAM_ GR11

1. Introduction
Good afternoon everyone, welcome to Hanoi, and welcome to the Museum of Ethnology.
It's my pleasure to be your tour guide this afternoon. My name is Hoang Lam, you can
call me Lam, spell L-A-M. It means 'the golden forest' in Vietnamese. And I've been
working as a tour guide in an Open Travel company for about 2 years, so I am sure that
your experiences with us are worth paying for. So, we've just discovered interesting
information about H'Mong ethnic people, right? Now, please follow me to understand
more about the life and culture of some ethnic groups living in Tay Nguyen, central
Vietnam.
Before getting going, I would like to give you some advice to avoid culture shock: To
preserve the beauty of the artifacts in this museum, please don't touch anything as much
as possible. As you can see, we are standing in a very big space, so please stick together
and take care of your belongings. And if you want to go somewhere else, please tell me
first for your safety. In case you get lost, try to enjoy the view yourself and we will group
up at the main gate at 5 pm, so don't worry.
2. Commentary
a. Gia Rai people
As you already know, 2 big territories in Vietnam that became the regions for
Vietnamese ethnic people, are Northwest and Tay Nguyen. But you know, Tay Nguyen is
in central Vietnam, and this land doesn't have many mountains and the land is much
flatter than the Northwest. So, the life of ethnic people in Tay Nguyen is much easier.
Talking about ethnic groups in Tay Nguyen, there are so many different kinds of ethnic
there, with more than 2 million people. But we only have limited time, so I will deliver to
you the most crowded groups with the interesting facts behind their daily life, that are
Ede and Gia Rai.
Just like other ethnic groups, Gia Rai people still live following matrilineal. In this
matriarchy, women have more rights than men, especially in marriage. Their opinion on
marriage is so different if I compare it to the Hanoi people under feudalism. The woman
has the right to freely choose their partner. After that, if 2 families agree, the bride's
family will give the groom some challenges that need to be done, to show how much he
loves the bride. That's just the beginning of nightmares for the men. After their marriage,
the man will move to live in his wife's house, but the main character who controls and
decides everything in the family is the woman. Moreover, the men didn't have any
inheritance and if they died by age or some other reason, they didn't get any place in the
women's graveyard. So pity, right?
Well, that's just some facts behind the marriage of the Gia Rai people, and this ethnic
group was also known for its handicraft products and spiritual activities. Gia Rai people
do economic mostly from wicker products and gardening. The elderly and women stay at
home and do easy work, while the males go outside to harvest in the middle of the sky.
So, how about castle raising? You know, they only raise cows, chickens, pigs for their
meals. Mostly they use cows and buffalos as an offering in the spiritual activities. You
can see on the internet, so many ethnic groups in Tay Nguyen celebrating and praying for
the greater season by killing their cows and buffalos. Because of that, the Cultural
Department of Vietnam decided to ban spiritual activities in their culture, and it caused a
big conflict between the ethnic groups and with Kinh people.
As you can see, here's the grave house built by the Gia Rai people, who were invited to
this museum. So, this house appears with a lot of hard-to-understand statutes, right? You
see, all of the statues have a posture that is pretty shy when it comes to public areas. But,
that shows their hope for fertility with a lot of kids and food. As you may not know, Gia
Rai people consider the other world to be similar to this world, so they built a house as
the living space for their ancestors. Especially, when a person in a family dies, they
organize a funeral ceremony in this house 3 days non-stop. But after that, all the
equipment and the house were left to waste.
b. Ede’s house
After some interesting information about the Gia Rai people's life and culture, now I will
introduce to you one of the signatures of every ethnic people in Vietnam, that is their
stilts house. If you don't know, Gia Rai house and Ede house are very similar and the
facts behind this house are very interesting.
In front of us now is a wooden house, right? 100% wooden and the men only use only 1
special hammer to build this whole construction. In the past, the whole Ede family lived
under one roof, so they needed to build their house long enough for all family members.
That's why in Vietnamese we call this house by a name "Longhouse"
Well, before we go inside the house we need to go on that stair, right? And on that stair,
you can find a round symbol standing for the mother's breast. Everybody, Ede people
consider that when we go on that stair, we must grab onto that round symbol or touch our
mother's breast to always remember the one who raised our lives.
So, Ede's house is divided into many parts. Half of the house was a guest room, and the
remaining areas were the living space. The living space also has many different rooms
and each room has a bamboo curtain. So, when the Ede woman doesn't get married yet,
the curtain in her room is always open. And when they have married, the curtain will be
closed for a whole year.
Inside this house, there is one more special thing relating to Ede people that I would like
to tell you. That is the long chair. You know, not only in this ethnic group but also in
every family in the world, we can not avoid getting angry and having conflicts with other
members of the family, right? So, the purpose of this long chair was to solve every
problem in their family. When the members of the Ede family have some problems with
each other, the whole members must sit on this long chair together while listening to the
taught of the oldest person in the home. Only that magical chair could solve every anger,
and confusion among them.
Everything must come to an end, right? So does the system of Ede Longhouse. When the
French colonial government invaded Vietnam in the 18th and 19th centuries, they brought
along 4 different kinds of trees. Rubber, coffee, cashew, and cocoa. At that time, the
ethnic people in Tay Nguyen had to do gardening for them, work, and live under their
control in a big camp. So, the Longhouse was left to empty.
Because the house on stilts stands for the simplicity and the poor living conditions of
ethnic people, when the country united in 1975, all Vietnamese people had more chances
to raise the economy and their wellness. That was also the time when the system of Ede
Longhouse collapsed. Nowadays, instead of living in a wooden house, some rich Ede
family built their own home by cement.