Organizing Villages of some Ethnic Groups in the Northern Mountainous Areas of Vietnam

Abstract

Villages are a crucial form of social community in ethnic minorities in the mountainous areas of Northern Vietnam. Each village has an Earth Shrine, located either inside the village or in a forbidden/ sacred forest, which is the venue for annual peace prayers for the community. The village festival has been part of the spiritual life and the environment for preserving ethnic culture. The paper analyzes the “village” characteristics of some ethnic minorities in the northern mountainous region of Vietnam, including place names, local borders, traditional and current management modes, identifying the role of village leaders in production management, land distribution, water sources and forest protection, order and security maintenance...