ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses case of non-succession, which is at the intersection of a number of related, sometimes conflicting discourses and policies concerning Vietnam’s Montagnards. It is about ‘New Economic Zones’ and traditional land rights and sedentarization of ‘semi-nomadic’ people. At the village level, sedentarization implied that the old village structure was abandoned, and a new site was selected for habitation. Many publications by Vietnamese anthropologists and policy makers extol the multi-ethnic character of Vietnamese culture, and the – mostly aesthetic – value of minority cultures. The chapter shows that a cultural conflict in an area which has been ravaged by the some Indochina Wars and which knew armed resistance against the communist regime until 1992. The Indochina War saw a competition for the allegiance of the Montagnards between three parties, the Vietnamese communist movement, the Americans, and – rather clumsily and unsuccessfully – the South Vietnamese regime.
