Who are the Brau and where do they come from?
The Brau, also known as Brao, are one of Vietnam's 54 ethnic groups. According to information published on the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs portal, the Brau migrated into Vietnam about 100 years ago. Southern Laos and northeastern Cambodia are recorded as the homeland of the Brau; to this day most of this community still lives along the Xe Xan (Xe Ca Mang) and Nam Khoong (Mekong) river basins.
In the list of Vietnam's ethnic groups published by the Government Portal, the Brau rank 52nd, with the alternative name Brao, and their residence area recorded in Kon Tum. They are one of the three smallest ethnic groups in the country, together with the Ro Mam and O Du.
On population, sources from different periods give different figures. The Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs page on the 54 ethnic communities records 525 people based on the Survey of 53 Ethnic Minorities of 1 April 2019. The ethnic data page of Bao Tin Tuc cites the 2009 Population and Housing Census with 397 people. This difference reflects two different survey points, not a contradiction about origins or how the ethnic group is defined.
The Brau have a legend called Un cha dac lep, meaning fire rises and water swells, about a great flood. This legend belongs to the storytelling culture shared by many communities living along the Mekong basin, where memories of great floods are tied to community survival.
Where do the Brau live today?
The Brau live in Dak Me village, Bo Y commune, Ngoc Hoi district, Kon Tum province. This is the concentrated residence area consistently recorded by the reference sources.
In their traditional living space, the Brau lived in stilt houses with high, steep roofs. The floor was built on two levels to separate living functions. The main house connected to the secondary house by a floor bridge. Houses in the village were oriented with their gable ends facing and their main doors opening toward the centre, where the village house, the community's common house, stood. This arrangement made the village grounds circular, with the houses arranged like the spokes of a cartwheel.
According to the Committee for Ethnic Minority Affairs, houses in Dak Me today are all single-storey, plank-walled and tiled. The traditional Brau house style survives only in the kitchen house, and even that is rarely seen. It is a stilt house with a thatched grass roof and a door at the front. This is worth noting when studying Brau architecture: descriptions of the traditional stilt house describe a historical appearance, not the common state of the village today.
Which language group does Brau belong to?
Brau belongs to the Mon-Khmer language group of the Austroasiatic family. The reference sources cited here agree on this point.
Two scopes should be distinguished: Brau is the community's own language, while Vietnamese is the language used in dealings with neighbouring ethnic groups and in administration and education. In a context where the community is small and lives intermingled with others, using several languages side by side is common among ethnic minority communities, and this in itself does not mean Brau has lost its role in the community's internal life.
How is the traditional economy and livelihood organised?
The Brau's main livelihood is swidden farming to grow glutinous rice, ordinary rice, maize and cassava. The method is to clear, burn, then dibble holes and sow seeds, harvesting by hand. This is a form of swidden cultivation tied to the crop cycle and the recovery of the soil.
Hunting and gathering still hold an important place, providing fairly regular food for every family. The village has a forge for repairing farm tools. Many men know weaving. To have clothing, people usually trade forest and local products for skirts, clothes or cloth from neighbouring ethnic groups.
The main means of transport is the back basket woven from bamboo and rattan, carried on the back. The Brau have various types of baskets; the most beautiful is the patterned type with a lid, usually used to store valuables at home or to hold and transport rice. Examples of Brau baskets are kept at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology.
On food, the Brau mainly eat glutinous rice cooked in young bamboo tubes, that is bamboo-tube rice, followed by ordinary rice cooked in clay pots. Maize and cassava are used only to feed livestock and poultry. Food includes salt and chilli, vegetables and fruit, fresh bamboo shoots, stream fish, and hunted birds and animals. Drinks include jar wine. The young, the old, men and women all enjoy smoking shredded tobacco through a khan pipe.
On clothing, men formerly wore loincloths and women wrapped themselves in skirts. In summer, men and women often went bare-chested or wore short pullover shirts; in cold weather they usually added a blanket. Women had the custom of stretching their ears to wear rings of yellow bamboo or ivory earrings. Jewellery included necklaces and bracelets of bronze, silver or aluminium. Men and women aged 15 to 16 followed the custom of sawing four upper front teeth to formally join the community of adults.
What is notable about Brau social organisation and marriage?
Brau society had already divided into rich and poor at an early stage. The small patrilineal family had been established, with equality between men and women. Traces of the matrilineal family system still survived quite strongly. This is a summary description from the reference source, reflecting a society in transition between family organisation models.
On marriage, the wedding is held at the bride's house but paid for by the groom's family. After the wedding, the custom of living with the bride's family lasts about four to five years, followed by a period of residence rotation for the young couple. This structure shows that marriage is not only an agreement between two individuals but a relationship between two family groups, with clearly defined residence stages.
How are worship customs and life-cycle rituals practised?
The reference sources cited here describe Brau worship customs and rituals mainly through life-cycle rituals and rituals related to housing and crops. It should be noted that these are cultural practices recorded in ethnographic materials, and this article recounts them as cultural description, neither affirming nor denying their spiritual efficacy.
On funerals, when someone dies, the bereaved family beats gongs and drums to announce the death. The body is placed in a coffin made from a hollowed tree trunk and kept in a newly built mourning house near the home. A coffin buried half above ground and half below is a distinctive feature of Brau funerary customs. A grave house is built over the grave to hold goods divided for the deceased; these goods have all been partly destroyed by breaking, piercing or chipping.
On new houses, when a house is completed, a fairly solemn house-raising ceremony is held, with the whole village joining the feast after the offerings to the deities. This ritual ties house-building to community relations and to asking the deities to witness, not merely a technical activity.
The sources cited here do not provide a full list of the Brau pantheon, nor detailed descriptions of the offerings for each type of ceremony. So for deeper study, specialised ethnographic materials should be consulted rather than inferring from brief summaries.
When are Brau festivals and New Year celebrated?
The new rice celebration after harvest is regarded as the Brau New Year. The New Year date depends on the crop season and each individual family, with no fixed common date. This is an important feature: the Brau New Year is not fixed to a shared calendar but tied to each family's swidden farming cycle.
On calendars, the Brau reckon their agricultural calendar by the lunar cycle and set months according to the rice swidden farming seasons of their ancestors. Thus time in community life is organised along two parallel axes: the lunar cycle and the crop season.
The table below summarises the main rituals and festivals recorded for the Brau by the reference sources.
| Ritual or festival | Timing | Main features |
|---|---|---|
| New rice celebration (New Year) | After harvest | Depends on the season and each family, no fixed common date |
| New house ceremony | When a house is completed | Solemn, whole village attends, offerings to deities and a shared feast |
| Funeral | When someone dies | Gongs and drums announce the death, coffin of hollowed tree trunk, half-buried, grave house built |
| Wedding | By agreement of the two families | Held at the bride's house, paid for by the groom's family, then four to five years living with the bride's family |
What folk arts, instruments and games are there?
On folk arts, the Brau have folk songs with lyrics, old stories about the creator deity Pa Xay, the legend Un cha dap lep, wedding songs and lullabies. Instruments include the klong put, called tap dinh bo. Most important of all are the famous bronze gong sets with three different tone types: coong, mam and tha.
On games, the Brau have entertainments such as spinning tops, flying flute kites or butterfly kites, swimming in rivers, tug of war, blind man's buff, and stilt walking.
On traditional learning, the village house at the centre also served as the school for young people, run by village elders. Children learned trades, the cultural traditions of their ethnic group and training in the spirit of fighting to protect the village's security and the customs of their ancestors. It should be noted that this description reflects the traditional education model in ethnographic materials; today Brau children study in the general school system, alongside cultural transmission within the family and community.
The Brau within the wider picture of Vietnam's 54 ethnic groups
On 2 March 1979, the General Statistics Office of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam announced that the country has 54 ethnic groups. Apart from the Kinh (Viet) majority, the other 53 are called minorities. Ethnic minorities live across all regions of the country but mainly in high mountainous, border, remote and far-flung areas, with the Central Highlands being one of the most concentrated areas.
The Brau belong to the group of very small ethnic groups, concentrated in a narrow area. This characteristic poses particular problems for language preservation, trade transmission and keeping the folk arts repertoire, because community size directly affects the number of people who can teach and practise cultural heritage.
The reference sources cited here describe Brau culture in overview, agreeing on the main features: residence in Kon Tum, Mon-Khmer language group, swidden farming, traditional stilt houses, ear-stretching and tooth-sawing customs, the custom of living with the bride's family, half-buried coffins, the new rice celebration and the three-tone bronze gong set. Differences between descriptions lie mainly in population figures by survey point and in the level of detail for each field.
