What is Tây Nguyên culture and why is it seen as a cultural space?
Tây Nguyên culture is the system of material and spiritual values of the ethnic peoples living in the western region of Việt Nam, created, practised and passed down within the space of the forest and the institution of the village. The key approach here is to see Tây Nguyên culture as a space, not as a scattered list of artefacts. UNESCO recognised the Tây Nguyên Gong Culture Space as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity, a deliberate wording: not a recognition of the gong instrument or gong music alone, but of an entire space of practice in which forest and village are the two pillars.
The village in Tây Nguyên has different names depending on the people: boom in Mơ Nông, buôn in Ê Đê, plai in Gia Rai, veil in Cơ Tu. This is the basic unit of traditional society and its traces remain today. The communality of Tây Nguyên peoples, to be precise, is village communality, even stronger and more concrete than ethnic identity.
What role does the rông house play in community life?
The rông house is the central architectural work of the village, where collective activities take place, guests are received, festivals are held and the community's symbolic values are kept. In the Tây Nguyên cultural space, the rông house together with the long house, gongs, musical instruments, folk songs and folk dances forms a system of practice tied closely to forest and village. When people speak of Tây Nguyên culture, they usually mention the festival system, the rông house, the long house and gongs first, because these are cultural practices bound to the forest space and the village institution.
It should be noted that rông house architecture is not entirely the same across peoples and localities. Available sources describe the rông house as a symbolic community centre, but they do not agree on the level of architectural detail across groups. This article follows the convention of describing the rông house at the level of community function, without going deep into specific architectural comparisons between peoples.
What is special about the Tây Nguyên Gong Culture Space?
The special point of Tây Nguyên gongs is not the gong as an individual instrument, but the whole space of practice around it. That space is forest and village. When the space of practice is gone, gong culture and other precious cultural values will find it hard to be preserved and promoted. This is why UNESCO chose the name Tây Nguyên Gong Culture Space instead of recognising the gong alone.
Gongs appear in many activities: community festivals, agricultural rituals, weddings, funerals, village gatherings. In the chain of traditional agricultural rituals, gongs are part of the cultural performance space, together with folk songs, folk dances, decoration of the nêu pole, repair of the rông house, food and jar wine. Men take part in preserving traditional culture by playing gongs, weaving baskets, winnowing trays, nia and rá from bamboo and lồ ô, making bamboo instruments and singing folk songs.
How does the Tây Nguyên matrilineal system work?
The matrilineal system in Tây Nguyên has existed in clans and families for hundreds of years, formed from the features of early group marriage. At that time, people could only clearly identify the mother, who conceived and gave birth to them. The mother held an important role in managing and distributing food, broadly speaking in controlling the family's daily eating and clothing. Household matters were managed by the woman, while contact with society and the community was taken up by the man, even representing his wife as successor to the water wharf chief.
According to sources, Tây Nguyên matriliny before 1975 was clearly reflected in many customs and practices, with three main governing features:
- Wealth and titles pass down the female line.
- Marriage is initiated by the bride's family, and the man resides with his wife's family.
- Children are born with the mother's surname.
When parents die or a daughter marries, including adopted children, wealth is divided among them according to how much the family has. In any matter great or small, the final decision still belongs to the oldest woman in the house. Marriage and children's surnames still follow the old custom.
Among some peoples such as the Ê Đê, Gia Rai and Rơ Măm, marriage is still initiated by the bride's family, the man resides with his wife and children take the mother's surname. Even if the wife dies first, the husband may have to return to his own house empty-handed unless he remarries within the wife's clan, under the cuê nuê custom of tying the thread.
How is labour divided in a matrilineal family?
Under the traditional self-sufficient custom, every Tây Nguyên family has a clear division of labour between woman and man. Ritual offerings are performed by the man. Raising, planting and harvesting food such as rice, maize, pigs, chickens and jar wine for the family itself and for rituals is the responsibility of women. When swidden farming was still practised, there was a plot of rice used only to cook offerings to the sacred Yàng, which had to be sown by the oldest woman in the family with her own hands, through every rice branch, pounded into rice and cooked into rice to ensure purity and reverence.
Today, women no longer manage so much of the family economy, especially in the technical process of growing coffee, cashew, rubber or wet rice. The main role has gradually shifted to the men in the family, especially when they attend training and technical transfer courses. Even so, keeping the purse and buying and selling still require the woman's opinion and consent.
Where is women's role in preserving culture shown?
The greatest and most important role of matriliny is in preserving traditional culture. In the family, in keeping the language so that children, even when they grow up and leave the community, are not totally ignorant of their mother tongue, the mother is the first person to pass on and maintain the ethnic language with her children. When family members need traditional clothing, the mother must prepare it for her children, whether weaving it herself or buying it somewhere. They are also the ones who keep and teach brocade weaving to the women of later generations in the family.
In daily meals today, the mother cooks traditional dishes and teaches her daughters how to prepare them, from vegetables and fruits growing wild in forest and swidden such as lá bép, đọt mây, núc nác fruit or bitter melon and forest gourd. Grandmothers and mothers are also the ones who keep and pass on folk songs and lullabies. At night, holding her child under a warm blanket by the fire of the stilt house, the mother whispers folk tales and fables of her people about animals, sowing small seeds in her child's dreams and soul about what is good to do and what is bad to avoid from early childhood.
When asking for a daughter's hand or giving a son to the wife's house, it is the mother who must calculate the exchange of items such as buffaloes, cows, pigs, brocade, jar wine, gongs and traditional bronze bracelets, now converted into money, gold, blankets, pigs, chickens and bottles of wine as dowry brought to the groom's house or as betrothal gifts for the bride's family.
How are the elements of Tây Nguyên culture changing?
The change in the living space, the means of livelihood and the impact of introduced beliefs are the most important reasons for the breaking of an indigenous cultural space that formed in the environment of tribal social institutions and extended into modern society. Among these, socio-economic shifts have a deep impact on the preservation and promotion of many forms of folk culture.
The agricultural ecology of Tây Nguyên peoples was once rice. Under the vast space of mountains and forests, rice governed almost the whole of life. Rice and swidden farming defined the way of life, the style of living and the rules of conduct towards spirits, nature and community. Rice not only provided food but was also a constant notion of the Yàng. That notion became the identity of minority groups, who always took it as the centre for explaining natural phenomena and finding appropriate conduct: from choosing land to make fields, making farm tools, farming methods, protecting crops, good or bad harvests.
In their view, all is arranged by the spirits, so rice growers in Tây Nguyên share one gratitude: gratitude to the Yàng. Before the Yàng, people cultivate a grateful heart, deeply understand and love their roots, mountains, forests, fields and community. When growing rice, corresponding to the growth of the life-giving plant is a continuous chain of rituals: the agricultural ritual chain. Living in the notion of gratitude to the Yàng, the agricultural ritual chain is both a thanks and reliance on the spirits and a process of reviewing folk knowledge and practising indigenous culture. Through organising rituals, the old pass on ways of conduct to their children and grandchildren.
Now rice across Tây Nguyên is sparse, coffee and other industrial crops have taken over along with the gradual disappearance of ritual chains. That is why opportunities to practise gong culture and other cultural values are declining. The change in crop structure also causes the performance and teaching environment of traditional knowledge to fade.
Besides the change in means of livelihood, the village, the traditional social institution, is breaking up and the forest, the living space, is being destroyed, with no small impact on the fading of the old cultural capital. The village structure is at risk of breaking up. The forest is gradually disappearing. Rivers are blocked. The population structure is overturned. The custom of living on nature is fading along with changes in farming methods. These are the risks leading to an irresistible collapse of traditional indigenous culture.
What role do forest and village play in preserving cultural values?
For Tây Nguyên peoples the forest is not only a resource, not only an ecosystem, but the very origin of spiritual life. Deep in their souls there is a blood kinship and a sacred respect for the forest; they see forest trees as living beings, full of emotion, joy, happiness and suffering, with souls. Tây Nguyên peoples live by the ethics of the forest, reaching towards perfection and wisdom like the forest. Ethnographer George Condominas saw the forest not only as a living space but also as a social space, and as the origin of spirituality, the deepest part of human life. Losing the forest, people and community lose their broad, firm and deepest foundation, becoming rootless, alienated, cut off from their origins.
Tây Nguyên culture is forest culture. That whole cultural life, from its value system to small signals, expresses the tight, blood-bound relationship of people and community with the forest. When the forest is gone, forest culture will inevitably fade and disappear. The Tây Nguyên village is a forest-village structure, an ideal space for cultural and religious practice for the peoples, containing a residential community, an ownership and interest community, a spiritual community and a cultural community. Broadly speaking, it is a cultural space.
The Tây Nguyên village was once a stable and orderly social institution. The village was run by a council of elders, gathering the wisest people of the village. The council of elders once managed and ran all village activities through a special traditional legal system: customary law. To this day, Tây Nguyên customary law still exists alongside state law and its positive sides are still promoted in social management.
Which peoples still have a matrilineal system today?
Through many historical upheavals, with changes in production methods and cross-regional cultural exchange, many Tây Nguyên peoples have gradually shifted from traditional matriliny to a patrilineal role. To date, according to sources, only a few peoples such as the Ê Đê, Gia Rai and Rơ Măm still preserve the basic features of the matrilineal system. It should be noted that this is a record from sources, not an absolute figure for every locality and every group within the same people.
The table below summarises some comparative features between Tây Nguyên ethnic groups according to available sources.
| Criterion | Groups still matrilineal (Ê Đê, Gia Rai, Rơ Măm) | Groups shifted to patriliny |
|---|---|---|
| Inheritance of wealth | Female line | Male line |
| Marriage | Bride's family initiates | Groom's family initiates |
| Residence after marriage | With the wife's family | With the husband's family |
| Children's surname | Mother's surname | Father's surname |
| Decision-maker in the family | Oldest woman | Oldest man |
This table is only general according to the cited sources, and does not represent every locality and every group within the same people.
How is Tây Nguyên culture different today from before?
Tây Nguyên culture today bears the fragrant, colourful marks of many home regions and many peoples. The beauty of culture has brought communities closer together. Promoting regional and ethnic identity has created vitality, cohesion and lasting humane foundations in the new homeland. From waves of migration that chose this highland as a new home, people from many regions of the country brought the soul of their old land and the cultural identity of their peoples. Those values help adorn the majestic great forest in the west of the Fatherland into a brocade of many-coloured patterns. Exchange, acculturation and cultural harmony are easily felt in the image of this land today.
Yet it is worrying that the treasure of traditional Tây Nguyên cultural heritage is fading day by day. The forest, the living space, is being exhausted. Grave houses lie abandoned. There is a drain of gongs and antiquities. The old people in the villages pass away and take with them priceless epics and folk knowledge to the earth. The thread that binds a cultural community seems to be loosening, slipping away with the pace of modern life. On the other hand, young Tây Nguyên people are aware of preserving the traditional culture of their ancestors, and indigenous Tây Nguyên youth work as guides for forest experience tourism, a new direction for keeping and introducing culture.
Do schools and sources agree with each other?
It must be said clearly that sources on Tây Nguyên culture do not fully agree on some points. On the extent of the matrilineal system, sources name the Ê Đê, Gia Rai and Rơ Măm as peoples still preserving basic features, but do not give a full list for every local group. On the level of architectural detail of the rông house, sources also differ. On the degree of fading of agricultural ritual chains, sources all record a downward trend but give no unified quantitative data. This article follows the convention of presenting features at a general level according to the cited sources, without asserting an absolute figure for the whole region.
One methodological point: when speaking of Tây Nguyên culture, one must distinguish between indigenous peoples and peoples who migrated there later. Sources all stress that Tây Nguyên today is a meeting place of many regional cultures, with the presence of many peoples. Therefore, one should not assign a custom to the whole of Tây Nguyên when the source speaks only of one group or one locality.
Conclusion
Tây Nguyên culture is a cultural space tied to forest and village, in which gongs, the rông house and the matrilineal system are three typical elements. Gongs were recognised by UNESCO within a whole space of practice, the rông house is the centre of community life, and matriliny still exists among some peoples such as the Ê Đê, Gia Rai and Rơ Măm. These elements are changing strongly because of changes in farming methods, shrinking forest and the break-up of the village institution. Preservation must be placed in the context of the space of practice, not only the preservation of scattered artefacts.
