To Dong Hai
Brau is one of the smallest ethnic groups in southern Vietnam with a population of only 231 people (according to the 1989 census’s figure) who reside in Bac Ke hamlet, Bo Y commune, Dak To district, Kon Tum province. The Brau ethnos has originated from its prototype group residing in southern Laos and northern Cambodia on the basins of the Sesane and Mekong rivers.
The Brau people live mainly on milpa farming practised with simple techniques and such rudimentary tools as axes, cleavers, holing sticks for seed sowing. According to Brau customs, strangers are not allowed to trespass the areas newly sown with seeds for several days even after the locals organize a ritual to worship deities. Cattle and poultry raising, hunting, stream fishing, as well as forest fruit and vegetable gathering have long become major sources of living. Their products such as bee honey, chicken, pigs… are exchanged for others with people of other ethnic groups, including Laotians, Cambodians, Kadong, Sedang, etc.
A traditional Brau hamlet is built usually on hill or mount surrounded by fence. The hamlet gate is made of wood or bamboo with spike-traps laid nearby against burglars and evil persons. Erected in the middle of the hamlet is the communal house called “Rong”, a venue for hamlet meetings to discuss production plans, settle cases of customary law violations or property disputes. “Rong” is also the place for entertainment activities of young people or for receiving the hamlet’s guests. All houses in the hamlet have their main doors facing the communal house. A Brau house is made on stilts with steep roofs and two-level floor. The upper-level floor of the front compartment is used for sewing, weaving, rest, while the lower one is for rice pounding. The back compartment is also made with two-level floor; the lower level is for cooking and storing water in bamboo sections while the upper level is for sleeping. Linked with the house through a bamboo bridge is an annex where food, foodstuff, working tools, household utensils are kept and where the aged people in the family stay.
Brau women often wear sarongs while men wear loin-cloths. It is customary that the females pierce their ears right when they are still very young, at the age of two. When grown up, they often put on earings made of ivory (for the rich) or wood (for the poor). The girls and boys as well shall have their four upper incisors filed and their faces or bodies tattooed with patterns, usually the figures of fish, beasts.
The Brau society has seen big differentiation between the rich and poor. Rich families often have many gongs, household utensils made of bronze, many clothings and even slaves who were prisoners captured in various wars or debtors incapable of paying their debts. The society is structured into small patriarchichal families where the fathers or husbands hold all powers, though the mothers and wives’ ideas are still highly valued; daughters and sons are equally treated; and daughters, when getting married, are given big portions of property as dowry. Each small family consisting of the parents and children lives in a separate house.
Brau girls and boys are free to find their intended before their marriage. If a boy’s parents baptize his choice, the marriage-proposing rite will be held first with the match-maker bringing offerings to the girl’s family. The wedding is held at the girl’s house and all expenses therefor will be borne by the boy’s family. After the wedding, the bridegroom shall have to stay at the bride’s house for 4 to 5 years in order to help his in-laws. After that period, the newly wed couple shall have to ask for the permission of the bride’s parents to let the girl officially move to live in her husband’s house. After that, the couple shall stay alternately at the husband’s house and the wife’s house for two to three years until their parents or parents-in-law die. By then, they shall stay permanently with their alive parents. However, the newly-wed couple may stay with either of their parents, to help them, depending on the specific conditions of their parents and parents-in-law.
According to Brau customs and practices, a widower can marry a younger sister of his deceased wife.
When a person dies, his/her family will beat gongs and drums in order to make it known to every people in the hamlet. The dead body is laid in the hamlet’s funeral house with his head turning to his/her home. The corpse is then put into a coffin made of a tree trunk and sealed with clay. The deceased family organizes alcohol drinking and dancing to the tune of gong and drum beats in order to bid farewell to the defunct. The coffin is half-buried with four deep holes around the swallow grave, signifying that the dead shall not return and trouble the living. Built on the grave is a miniature house where the property divided for the defunct by the family are kept, such as gong, jar, dosser, ax, bow…, which are all broken (because according to the conception of some ethnic groups in Central Highlands the broken things in this world mean the whole things in the dead’s world and vice versa). According to Brau customs and practices, persons who buried the dead person shall, before going home, spray alcohol mixed with chicken blood around the grave, throw chicken livers on the ground, cry and bow with joined hands to the dead for his/her support for the children and villagers.
People’s private ownership of property is well respected by the Brau people’s customary laws. The deceased parents’ property shall belong to their children, which are equally divided among them, including sons and daughters, the grown-up and the minor. Those who infringe upon other people’s private property shall be brought to trial before the customary law court and heavily fined. Basically, the Brau people have practised monogamy. The remarriage by a widower or a widow must be agreed upon by his or her in-laws after he or she worships the deceased, divides the property for his or her children and informs the hamlet community thereof. All cases of adultery, incest and pre-marriage childbirth… are considered violations of customary laws and shall be heavily fined with the payment of alcohol and animals as offerings to dieties in order to ward off all disasters that may happen to people, such as drought, flood, earthquakes, etc.
Though established by the Brau people under the conditions of an underdeveloped society and little knowledge about the nature, the customary laws of this ethnos prove to be appropriate for the development of the Brau society in a stable and sustainable manner. So, the selective absorption of positive factors of the Brau customs and practices in a way suitable to the present-day life is very necessary for building a new life full of Brau identity and suitable to the current development.-