bol gun- a betrayed spirit

8/7/2019 bol gun- a betrayed spirit

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Bol Gun: ecological dissolution in Thuong Nhat

commune, Viet Nam

dissolutionnoun

1.

the act or process of resolving or dissolving into parts or elements.2.

the resulting state.

3.

the undoing or breaking of a bond, tie, union, partnership, etc.

4.

the breaking up of an assembly or organization; dismissal; dispersal.

5.

Government . an order issued by the head of a state terminating a parliament and necessitating a newelection.

6.

death; decease.

7.a bringing or coming to an end; disintegration; decay; termination.

8.

legal termination, especially of business activity, with the final distribution of assets, the fixing of

liabilities, etc.

9.

Chemistry . the process by which a solid, gas, or liquid is dispersed homogeneously in a gas, solid, or,especially, a liquid.

The purpose of this chapter is partly to outline some of the differences between the more

developed thung nhat commune (ND district) to the north and the less developed

avung district to the south, and to try to provide some basis for an assessment of thecultural and ecological consequences this "higher level" of development has entailed.

unfortunately, i only had the opportunity to visit thuong nhat commune, but, in fact, not

only were the villages in thuong nhat tightly clustered (they were only spaced a shortwalk apart) but thuong nhat commune and all its villages were also adjacent to the centre

of the neighbouring commune XXXX.

But this chapter is also about Bol Gun. Bol Gun, it appears, used to be the primarysacred/forbidden hill of the entire area (thus recognized as such by all the villages in the

past) but has now lost its importance. The time i spent in Nam Dong was short, only

about a month. Unfortunately, the data I have about Bol Gun, and about other spirit

places in Thung Nhat commune, is only sketchy. I will have to make some inferencesbased on the scant material that I managed to collect. Nonetheless, I believe that I need to

include the story about Thung Nhat commune and Bol Gun here, because it representsone step further in the cultural evolution towards Kinhization, modernisation, and

ecological dissolution, as compared to what is the case in AVung commune (and

Kaleum, Laos).

* * *

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The district authorities did not let us (me and my interpreter) sleep in the villages for fearof our own safety. Nam dong, by anthropological standards, was not in any way

dangerous or even remote -- the villages I planned to visit were located only about 15

minutes by motorcycle from the district centre -- and all the villages of the commune that

I had asked permission to visit had been moved down from the high areas and beentightly clustered along the road. Nonetheless, I believe that the governments concerns

were honest, although almost certainly misplaced. It might very well be that thesecommunities had not been visited by any foreign anthropologists since the end of the

Vietnam-American war and, really, they were probably more concerned about me and my

behaviour than that of the villagers: they were probably afraid I would somehow

misbehave and upset the local villagers. The plan was to work together with myinterpreter for about ten days in Thuong Nhat ( liberation ) commune in villages 1 to 6

and then to meet up and work together with nicholas wilkinson, a UK biologist who was

researching about the saola in cooperation with the Vietnam forest protection departmentand WWF.

It is common practice that villages, for ease of administration, are labeled with numbersrather than names. Mostly, however, the villages do keep their original names, at least

insofar as the name can be pronounced and written in Vietnamese, but higher officials in

the district often do not remember these names). Previous to this field trip I had donevirtually all my fieldwork in quang nam province predominantly in the commune of

avung, which was situated directly south of nam dong district. Thus some of the villages

in thuong nhat commune (and the district as a whole) had either once been neighbours

with the villages I had visited in avung previously, or where actually originally fromwhat was now avung. Indeed the first time I heard of nam dong was when talking to

bling chen. Bling chen, who now lived in the most remote CAI settlement I ever came

across, in the higher areas of avung thus fairly close to the original area of the thungnhat villages (see map). Bling chen deserves some attention in this thesis; he represented

perhaps the only, and purest (ie the most unambiguous) voice of anti-modernistic

sentiment that I ever came across during my fieldwork with CAI peoples. Bling Chenexplained that after the end of the Vietnam American war (ie after Liberation), his group

(( lets call them the Bling Achieu )) and the groups closely related to his group, the Aurr

groups, as well as all neighbouring groups had all been invited by the government

officials to move down to begin a better life near the road in the lower areas of namdong (ie where the thuong nhat villages are currently located). This was around 1973 or

soon thereafter: during this time virtually all groups were invited, simultaneously to move

down to the roadside, lower areas, assigned by the government as suitable. Unfortunately,the life down near the road, did not meet ((motsvara)) his expectations. Bling Chen

explained that it was difficult to carry make a living there. I am not sure whether they

were legally allowed to carry out shifting cultivation in these new, resettled, villages, buteven if some shifting cultivation would have been tolerated by the government at the

time, it must have been rather problematic to do so since the area of the newly resettled

villages would have been the traditional land of other villages. But Bling Chen also

complained about the healthcare situation in the resettled villages, he claimed that somepeople even died due to the inadequate, often mandatory, healthcare procedures that were

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ordained. But what is most interesting is that he critisiced the cultural effects of the

resettlements; the new life there made people into thiefs. Some people would watchTV there until late, then be too tired to work properly the next day; and some of them

would even resort to stealing to get hold of cash. Bling Chen, his close relatives as well

as his affines in the Aurr kinship groups then all decided to move back into their original

village areas (which, was deep in the forest from the point of view of the officials). Thegovernment did not tolerate this. Evently, the government even sent police officers to get

the community leaders (the elders) of the aurr and bling achieu groups to settle at theplace appointed by the government. When they still refused, the government decided to

compromise: in a rare instance of flexibility, the govt agreed that the these two groups

could form an official village up in a place of their own choosing: provided that they

would continue cooperating with the government (and allow for the development processto continue). This village then became Aurr village in Avung district. But even though,

aurr village is both remotely located and small in comparison with the standard

government villages (which are .. as we have seen ??? often amalgamations of severalvillages ) it still was somewhat crowded by traditional standards Bling Chen thus

decided to move out of the larger Aurr village and create a separate settlement about twohours away from the official aurr settlement, in an even more remote area.

As we shall discuss in later chapters, there is no Katu who "rebels" against the

government. Nowadays, all Katu, including Bling Chen, regard themselves asVietnamese citizens. When they do disobey the governments rules, it is that does not in

any mean that they do not consider themselves Vietnamese, it is simply a matter of trying

to improve their livelihood situation, hoping that the government will not notice, or will

not care, about the infraction. In a face to face situation, however, the Katu would neverchallenge a government official, even slightly.

Moreover, as we shall see more evidence of, if the government is persistent, CAIcommunities will eventually always comply with its policies; even if complying with the

governments wishes/policy entails a complete breach of local customs and traditions.1

As for Nicholas Wilkinson, he had been in Nam Dong several times before me. His

research, primarily concerned the Saola, and according to the surveys he had carried out

in several districts (both in Quang nam and Thua Thien Hue, ie Nam Dong) the area

which promised most to still have living Saola was the forested mountains whichconstituted the border between Nam Dong district and Avung commune. Moreover, it

had become clear that most of the hunters that hunted in this area, even on the Quang

Nam side of the mountains, were in fact people from Nam Dong (or Kinh people arriving

1That is why the A'urr incident is somewhat unusual. there must have been many other communities facingthe same difficulties, but they chose to stay put in the appointed new village sites along the roads in nam

dong. the a'urr community disobeyed more than is the norm. in the end, of course, they wanted nothing but

to have access to their old fallows and forest, and to a certain extent, to their "traditional" fish and wildliferesources -- to have bountiful harvests and a far more easy life. in this instance, it turned out well: today

a'urr appears to be one of the villages which is thriving most in the sense that they appear to be well fed,happy and healthy (we did carry out surveys of rice harvests in many of the avung villages, and bling

chens isolated settlement and a'urr village had by far the best harvests).

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from the Nam Dong side). Wildlife trade was also clearly more rampant on the Nam

Dong side, with a much more convenient transportation route straight from Khe Tre(district capital of nam dong) to the coastal city of Hue.

* * *

map showing Thuong Nhat commune

Nam Dong district and Thuong Nhat commune: an overview

From the governments point of view:

Nam Dong (Vietnamese: Nam ng) is a district of Thua Thien-Hue Province in the NorthCentral Coast region of Vietnam. As of 2003 the district had a population of 22,333.[1] The

district covers an area of 651 km. The district capital lies at Khe Tre.Nam Dong is the southern gateway and key component in the economy of Thua Thien Hue

Province. (( ref )) It is located in highlands and bounded by Quang Nam province in thesouth, Huong Thuy in the north, Phu Loc in the east and A Luoi prefecture in the west. It hasthe least population of any district in Thua Thien Hue Province. There are 10,113 people ofthe ethnic minority (mainly Katu people) and 13,295 ethnic Vietnamese. Its population

density of 35.9 people/km2 is the least in the province.The population of working age is 11,589. Of these, 74.2% work in agricultural, forestry, andaquatic; 7.64% work in industry and construction; 9.13% work in service and trade; and10.19% work as civil servants. Nam Dong is the smallest prefecture of Thua Thien Hue

Province.

The terrain is rugged with hills and mountains. The lifestyle is difficult with a poor economyand the lack of material necessities. Total production value in 2007 is 280.389 millions VND.

Agriculture, forestry and aquaculture comprise 107.638 millions VND (38.32%), mainly byplanting fruit-trees, industrial crops, food crops, breeding, foresting such as rubber plant and

exploiting forest products. There are 664 households living below the poverty line (13.98%).Nam Dong had universal compulsory education in to the completion of secondary school

until 2006, and the education rates were higher than in neighbouring districts. The region isnow connected with internet access.

Most of the houses in Thuong Nhat commune were made of concrete rather than the

traditional materials, ie instead of houses having wooden frames, bamboo walls, and

grass (xxxx) roofs. (Indeed, for reference, even in Avung, grass roofs almost

disappeared and were replaced by metal sheet roofs provided by government programmes( ) within the timespan of my research [2003-2010]. But the Avung villages

appeared to be quite content with bamboo walls and did not display the urge to buildcement houses that had emerged in some other places (( )).

What was perhaps even more interesting, however, was that all the communal houses inThuong Nhat were also made of concrete and had built by a programme called cbrip

(which is somehow connected to the world bank? is part of a government infrastructure

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_%C4%90%C3%B4ng_District#cite_note-Statoids-0http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nam_%C4%90%C3%B4ng_District#cite_note-Statoids-0


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development programme ...?). despite being infested with cockroaches, these concrete

communal houses had no fireplaces which in itself must have made it virtuallyimpossible to use them for ritual purposes. not suprisingly then, these communal houses

did not serve any ritual purposes at all, and were only used for village meetings of a non-

spiritual nature. all of this stands in quite stark contrast to the situation in the villages in

avung, were virtually all the communal houses were regularly used for communityrituals (as well as more mundane activities ).

our interviews soon confirmed that in the villages we visited, these gual houses were not

used for communal rituals. nonetheless, rituals were still carried out, even large ones

involving buffalo sacrifices, but in these cases they would be carried out adjacent to the

house of the officiating family.

Population

Names

Another interesting difference between thung nhat commune and avung was that the

locals almost always were registered with, and introduced themselves with,predominantly Vietnamese names, such as Thuy, Bao etc. Thus, both their given

names and family names would be Kinh names. As concerns these Kinh family names,

they would sometimes be chosen randomly (so that each generation ) but in at least

one village the vietnamese names were used according to a rather intricate code systemby which each of the x Vietnamese family names represented a particular Katu name.

Poverty

- from article?

Thuong Nhat livelihoods

.. see wilkinsons report

()

Map XX illustrates the approximate traditional areas of the 6 villages of thung nhat

commune, based on interviews and participatory mapping carried out in villages XXX.Thus, we can immediately appreciate that the traditional areas of the respective villages

are quite far away from the current village locations.

The traditional areas designated are thus those areas which the villages themselvesconsidered to be their land. The bulk of the traditional village land is composed of land

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that was previously used in the swidden-fallow production systems. In the past, as we

have seen (( ???? )) villages also moved at different intervals ( on average perhaps every3-10 years ) to a new within the traditional land area: thus these traditional areas are

dotted with nang donng ( old village sites; literally village yards) [[ cf map XX]].

, but some forest areas appear to have been left continuously unused from as far back asthe elders could remember, but which would nonetheless be considered an integral part of

the traditional village territory. These could be forests that were considered to behaunted/controlled by spirits, but many of the old forest areas had never been cleared

despite not being referred to as spirit forests. Villages 5 (a sech) and 6 (la vn) were once

a single village called A Verr, that split up in the 1940s. The elders claimed that a verr

village came over from quang nam in the distant past.

Some of the elders talked about inter village warfare in past ( in particular during and

before the French period ). He refers to the villages in Avung as particularly cruel andbloodthirsty (!) and claims that apat and aroi were two of the most famous blood

feuding villages. But even more horrible than the blood feuds, some elders ascertained,were the medicine wars that sometimes took place between villages. Due, in part tothese dangers (and also probably due to the presence of tigers in the past) villages in the

past were generally located on hill tops and surrounded by fences .. (( )).

((map with nang dong indicated))

During war?

1973

1995

Ojojoj nstan ord fr ord samma som wilkinsons rapport!! P5

Unfortunately (??), the traditional village territories are today almost entirely within the

Bach Ma national park extension area. As we shall see, these villages still use their

traditional areas for the collection of forest products (NTFPs). Unfortunately we were notable to get hold of any map showing the official village boundaries (often such maps

do not exist). But even if the official village territories would happen to coincide, to some

extent, with the traditional boundaries, the fact that the traditional territories are withinthe Bach Ma extension means that the villagers are in fact legally forbidden to carry out

any NTFP harvesting (as well as hunting etc). although all CAI peoples on both the

Laotian and Vietnamese side of the Annamite mountain range are generically forbidden

to hunt (( different interpretations exist )) the presence of the Bach Ma extension adds

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an extra layer to this illegality and naturally enforcement [vis a vis villagers] is far

more likely in a national reserve area such as the Bach Ma.

this cont from prev part

the livelihood situation in thuong nhat (and nam dong as a whole) was also markedly

different from that of a'vung commune. Very few households seemed to be involved in

swidden farming of rice, or it might have been more sensitive to talk about it than it wasin a'vung, were swidden cultivation was the the main agricultural activity of virtually all

families. in the thuong nhat villages we were told that there were only a few households

who engaged in swidden cultivation; a few of the poorest families. So what did they doinstead? the period when we were there happened to be the time for harvesting keo (), which is fast growing tree that the vietnamese government is now encouraging all katu

to grow instead of carrying on with dry rice cultivation. according to the villagers, the

government had insisted on them growing keo because they were "destroying the foresttoo much" (sic ??). The keo tree, as opposed to swidden rice "would keep the soil" and

"reduce storms" (( )). The villagers should thus concentrate on keo and

"lam vn" ("garden agriculture"). How well the keo trees grew depended on where theyhad been planted; those trees planted "near the road where there is water" could be

harvested after only three years but keo planted in the forest were still not ready for

harvesting after five years. Thus, the land were they had previously done shifting

cultivation has now been turned into keo land

"that land is forest land; we used to farm there before. One day the government officials

came and told us that that was very bad. they measured up the land and issued red cardsto plant keo instead. now they have opened the road that leads into the forest to the keo

fields"

-->keo discussion?

There was also, of course, wet rice farming, but the wet rice plots were overallinsufficient and unequally distributed. for most families wet rice requires a monetary

investment of several million VND for the irrigation pipes. Since cash is not readilyavailable, the wet rice yields remain insufficient. note, that the incomes of the villagers in

the thuong nhat commune were highly unequally distributed, some had managed to goahead with many of the new schemes, and thus in the process landed property rights of

the most productive land around the village. Others, including virtually all the

youngsters, would be labelled "poor households" by default, since they would haveinsufficient efficient wet rice land even for their domestic consumption. Cash is the

solution to this equation of food insufficiency, these poor households use cash to buy the

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extra rice that they need. But how do they get the cash? Cash in thuong nhat commune,

for the bulk of the households (which had little or no cao su, and little or no keo [alsoconsider that keo can only be harvested once every 3-5 years] was thus acquired through

the selling of forest products. The true picture which is emerging in Vietnams CA

landscape thus differs quite a lot from the picture of the policy makers ... as well as from

the village portraits that routinely emerge in Vietnamese media (which is part of the stateapparatus): the cash income of the ethnic minorities comes from the forest and notfrom

agriculture. Of course, the idea is that this dependency on forest products is onlytemporary ...

So what are the products from the forest?

Rattan

according to our interviews in thuong nhat, rattan is primarily harvested in secondary

forests, ie on fallows, but not all fallows have rattan. when speaking vietnamese, katuinformants would refer to this type of forest/fallow as rung bim (( katu )). rattan

must be considered one of the most important of the forest products in that it can yieldrelatively high profits, while also being legal; a hardworking villager could perhaps makeVND 800 000 in a week from rattan. Rattan is normally sold for VND 3000 to 4000/kg

and on a week's trip to the forest one can collect 200kg. Villagers often go in groups to

collect rattan. Bringing the rattan back to the village may require another week of labour.(( see NW Map )) As can be seen from the map below, the rattan collection of a single

village (thon 3) covers an area of 18km2. Note also that virtually the same area where

rattan collection takes place can be regarded as part of the "traditional" agricultural land

of the same village; ie the area where swidden cultivation was carried out in the past (andis still carried out by a few families). In fact the overall traditional swidden area is larger

than this area, since it also covers some areas where rattan cannot be found ... As opposed

to hunting and honey gathering, rattan collection is undertaken by most families in thevillage, with the exception perhaps of the richest.

How many trips per year?

problems

Honey

Timber

Hunting and poverty

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fruits

there was also rubber (cao su), but here again, some families had ended up with sufficient

land for cao su whilst others had no land at all for it.

then there was the question of poverty. clearly the issue of poverty, as concerns the katu

is generally a cultural issue -- as will be explored in chapter x.

-- the workers that go to saigon factoryelaborate the meeting with the hunter and his son

Bol Gun

Bol Ong was a spirit hill that was mentioned by many different villagers in the commune,

when asked about current or past "spirit places". Based on the information we got from

the community mapping exercises, NW located this hill to around (785000,1777000UTM-WGS84). On government maps it was indicated as "Nui Kam" which in

all likelihood, is a derivation from nui cam -- ie forbidden mountain/taboo mountain 2. the

local people, as we have seen, called it bol ong, or bol Gun. "Bol" means hill while "ong"is almost certainly vietnamese and means grandfather/master/sir/mr. Gun, an alternative

name used for the same hill, was the name of the most powerful spirit of the hill; the

master spirit. The spirit Gun was intimately connected to snakes, which were said toabound (at least in the past) on the hill.

According to the government map, the hill is not particularly high (648) but "is quite

distinct from other nearby hills and looms large in the minds of local people" (NWXXXX; pXX). However, the truth is that we have no idea of the reason why it looms

large in the minds of the people; it does not seem necessary for a hill to have a

remarkable shape to be considered a spirit hill. rather, as we have already seen, the spiritof a hill reveals itself to the villagers by making things happen; be it by making villagers

ill or revealing itself to villagers in dreams and through possession. Somewhere on the

hill, the villagers alleged, was a "pool" of the kind called trrlahh in Katu. A trrlahhappears to be some form of hill top pool which is not connected to a stream and has water

all or most of the year. Trrlahh are places where animals come to drink and bath in the

2 vietnamese also label certain mountains "nui cam"; most famous is perhaps the Nui Cam of angiang

province ...

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mud (NW), but are also often considered to be haunted by dangerous spirits. They were

also considered to be potentially good places for hunting should someone dare to try.

Thus, various villagers told us stories about Bol Ong. However, interestingly, much of

the stories probably reflected more what bol gun had once been than what it was in its

present state. To the older generations bol gun still clearly represented a powerfulspiritual entity (whether now destroyed or not) but to the younger generations it might

well have lost these connotations. Thus we were told that there were many strangeanimals their, ie animals who somehow defied animal normality. Some villagers even

claimed that there was a tiger ( ??? ) there, white monkeys [we were not able to ascertain

what kind] and that if a hunter would try to shoot these monkeys he would immediately

fall ill.

the defining feature of this spirit hill, was perhaps the association with snakes; not only

was the hill full of dangerous [normal] snakes but the mountain was also haunted bylarger spirit-snakes, which were referred to as either bngaa or gerykk h. It is possible

that Gun was the name of this master snake. Gun was considered an evil spirit, but notethat this does not really necessary have the implications that we might expect: In othervillages, XXX, evil or dangerous spirits would often be "invited" for village feasts. as

concerns CAI spirits, the denomination "evil" or "dangerous" is more an indication of the

potency of a particular spirit, and of its inflexibility in case of infractions. In the case ofbol gun, this spirit had forbidden people to hunt and cut trees in the past. But, as is often

the case, there was also a "secondary" story about the hill; a story told to us by one of the

oldest individuals in the village, claimed that a hunter had once gone to the hill top pool

to hunt where he had seen a single large fish (( a'urr ong gialang also talks about this ))

conclusions:

the role of the local govt and the kinh settlers

the fpd subsequently forbade all the vilagers to use their traditional land for ntfp

collection. how is it possible that something like this can be done without stirring up asingle emotion in the local communities?

we need to assess all the pieces given in the bol gun puzzle... but before doing this weshould look at some cases from laos, maccoih and the countercase from dvil.

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kaleum district, laos

-- might illuminate the bol gunn case, who a particular area is desacralised

maccoih commune (quang nam, vietnam)

to have or not to have a gual house

- life in the local mode,

- korta feedbacks, man fr omedelbart terkoppling frn lokala miljn,

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bol gun- a betrayed spirit

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