Montagnard (Vietnam)


The Montagnard are indigenous peoples of the Central Highlands of Vietnam. The French term Montagnard means "people of the mountain" and is a carryover from the French protectorate period in Vietnam. In Vietnamese, they are known by the term người Thượng —this term now can also be applied to other minority ethnic groups in Vietnam or Người dân tộc thiểu số. Earlier they were referred to pejoratively as the mọi. Sometimes the term degar is used for the group as well. Most of those living in America refer to themselves as Montagnards, while those living in Vietnam refer to themselves by their individual tribe.
The Montagnards are most covered in English-language scholarship for their participation in the Vietnam War, where they were heavily recruited by South Vietnam due to their antipathy to the strong centralized state offered by North Vietnam as well as communism's hostility toward religion, as the Montagnards were Christian at a much higher proportion than that of the Viet people.

Ethnic groups

Below is a list of officially recognized ethnic groups in Vietnam that are indigenous to the Central Highlands and nearby areas, with a total population of approximately 2.25 million. They speak Austroasiatic languages of the Katuic and Bahnaric, as well as Chamic languages. Population statistics are from the 2009 Vietnam Population Census.
Listed by province, from north to south as well as west to east:
In 1962, the population of the Montagnard people in the Central Highlands was estimated to number as many as one million. Today, the population is approximately four million, of whom about one million are Montagnards. The 30 or so Montagnard tribes in the Central Highlands comprise more than six different ethnic groups who speak languages drawn primarily from the Malayo-Polynesian, Tai, and Austroasiatic language families. The main tribes, in order of population, are the Jarai, Rade, Bahnar, Koho, Mnong, and Stieng.
Originally inhabitants of the coastal areas of the region, they were driven to the uninhabited mountainous areas by the Chams and Cambodians beginning prior to the 9th century. Since then, they lived independently in the mountains up until 19th century when the Vietnamese began to incorporate the territory.
French missionaries converted some Montagnard to the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century, but American missionaries converted more to Protestantism in the 1930s. Of the approximately one million Montagnard, close to half are Protestant, and around 200,000 are Roman Catholic. This made Vietnam's Communist Party suspicious of the Montagnard, particularly during the Vietnam War, since it was thought that they would be more inclined to help the predominantly Christian American forces.
In 1950 the French government established the Central Highlands as the Pays Montagnard du Sud under the authority of Vietnamese Emperor Bảo Đại, whom the French had installed as nominal chief of state in 1949 as an alternative to Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In the mid-1950s, the once-isolated Montagnard began experiencing more contact with outsiders after the Vietnamese government launched efforts to gain better control of the Central Highlands and, following the 1954 Geneva Accord, new ethnic minorities from North Vietnam moved into the area. As a result of these changes, Montagnard communities felt a need to strengthen some of their own social structures and to develop a more formal shared identity. When the French withdrew from Vietnam and recognized a Vietnamese sovereignty, Montagnard political independence was drastically diminished.
The Montagnard have a long history of tensions with the Vietnamese majority. While the Vietnamese are themselves heterogeneous, they generally share a common language and culture and have developed and maintained the dominant social institutions of Vietnam. The Montagnard do not share that heritage. There have been conflicts between the two groups over many issues, including land ownership, language and cultural preservation, access to education and resources, and political representation.
In 1958, the Montagnard launched a movement known as BAJARAKA to unite the tribes against the Vietnamese. There was a related, well-organized political and military force within the Montagnard communities known by the French acronym, FULRO, or United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races. FULRO's objectives were autonomy for the Montagnard tribes.
As the Vietnam War began to loom on the horizon, both South Vietnamese and American policy makers sought to begin training troops from minority groups in the Vietnamese populace. The U.S. Mission to Saigon sponsored the training of the Montagnard in unconventional warfare by American Special Forces. These newly trained Montagnard were seen as a potential ally in the Central Highlands area to stop Viet Cong activity in the region and a means of preventing further spread of Viet Cong sympathy. Later, their participation would become much more important as the Ho Chi Minh trail, the North Vietnamese supply line for Viet Cong forces in the south, grew. The U.S. military, particularly the Special Forces, developed base camps in the area and recruited the Montagnard. Because of their quiet resolve and skills in tracking, roughly 40,000 fought alongside American soldiers and became a major part of the U.S. military effort in the Highlands and I Corps, the northernmost region of South Vietnam.
In 1967, the Viet Cong slaughtered 252 Montagnard in the village of Dak Son, home to 2,000 Highlanders, known as the Đắk Sơn massacre, in revenge for the Montagnard's support and allegiance with South Vietnam. In 1975, thousands of Montagnard fled to Cambodia after the fall of Saigon to the North Vietnamese Army, fearing that the new government would launch reprisals against them because they had aided the U.S. Army. The U.S. military resettled some Montagnard in the United States, primarily in North Carolina, but these evacuees numbered less than 2,000. In addition, the Vietnamese government has steadily displaced thousands of villagers from Vietnam's central highlands, to use the fertile land for coffee plantations.
Montagnard and Chinese officers from 1976 and 1979 were purged from the Vietnam People's Army.
Vietnam's south and center highlands were subjected to systematic state backed settlement by ethnic Vietnamese Kinh people. The original peoples of the Central Highlands experienced ruin during and after the Vietnam War; in the worst cases, they were driven from their land and became refugees. In 2003, the group gained admittance to the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization as the "Degar-Montagnards", but this membership was discontinued in 2016.
Outside of southeast Asia, the largest community of Montagnards in the world is located in Greensboro, North Carolina, US. Greensboro is also the home of several community and lobbying organizations, such as the Montagnard Foundation, Inc.

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