Cultural institutions of Dong Nai’s native ethnic minorities built

Gongs Culture of Chau Ro ethnic minority

Although lives of Dong Nai’s ethnic minorities of Chau Ro, Chau Ma and S’tieng have somewhat improved, their living standards are still low. A survey on 316 native ethnic households shows that 220 households (70.25%) are poor, 72 households (22.78%) have average living standards and only 33 ones (10.44%) lead a relatively better lives. Their intellectual standards are also low. Among 1654 mouths to feed investigated in 7 communes, as many as 681 people  (59.55%) are illiterate, 637 people are of elementary level, 316 people are of secondary level, 138 people are of high-school level and as few as 12 people are of college/university academic standard.

Their cultural lives are yet very rich and have retained some of old customs and rituals. Dong Nai’s native ethnic minorities have special traditional popular arts with treasures of folk songs, proverbs and so on, and with plastic arts, decoration arts and diversified musical instruments (gongs, bamboo flutes, tintinnabula etc). However, communication with the Viet (Kinh) people and particularly the urbanization have greatly changed their cultural lives. The traditional culture gradually tends to lose its character and new cultural products which most of the youth are interested in are replaced.

Therefore, it is necessary to build cultural institutions which are both modern and of the ethnic character, helping them to have a rich spiritual and material lives. At the present, the whole province has as few as 6 ethnic cultural houses and are still short of a large number of cultural institutions.

The research has given solutions with principles: preserving traditional cultural values; building a cultural life with practical quality; coordinating the ethnic character and modernity; using Soc, Bon, Plei (generally called village) as primary subjects to build cultural institutions. The solutions include solutions to economic, social and labour matters, solutions to education; solutions to religions and solutions to traditional culture preservation, cultural-life building, cultural institution building and particularly ethnic cultural village sample building. This village sample must encourage the sense of community, speed up the national and ethnic integration, preserve traditional values, remove unsound customs and satisfy the residents’ needs for cultural enjoyment and creation.

Reported by Lien Huong, Translated by THKC