Co Tu Van Kieu Society

6.2.1 Co Tu and Bru – Van Kieu society Both the Co Tu and Bru – Van Kieu people speak a language belonging to the Katuic Mon-Khmer linguistic group (Thomas 1966; Hickey 1967). In traditional Co Tu society, the village was the grassroots unit, with boundaries that were well-defined by traditional institutions. Co Tu society was based on clan and kinship with social ties between other villages. A typical Co Tu village consisted of 30 houses, with a communal longhouse that was the social, cultural and religious centre of the village (Tuan 2004). Traditionally, Co Tu villages consisted of different clans and families, and the exchange, inheritance and transfer of land and forests usually took place within the clans (Tuan 2006; Arhem 2009). Each

The Bru-Van Kieu and Co Tu buried their dead in these places, and anyone caught violating these forests by exploiting them faced a fine imposed by the village patriarch and the village elders. The violator usually had to sacrifice a pig or a buffalo to escape the wrath of the spirits. According to Bru-Van Kieu cosmology, like that of the Co Tu, the entire village could be collectively punished by a spirit if the ghost and spirit forest was exploited, so it was of the utmost importance that the traditional rules and customs were observed. According to Arhem (2009), the Co Tu and Bru-Van Kieu believed that their entire landscapes were inhabited by as many spirits as there are humans, animals and plants. Some of these spirits could be benevolent, while others were considered to be

There were three levels of common property: that belonging to the community, to a clan or family, or to a household. Ghost, spirit and watershed protection forests, as well as grasslands, were owned by the village, so they were common property. Land for swidden cultivation, gardens and residential land were considered private property, managed by individual households. This land would first be distributed to the clans by the customary institutions, who in their turn would re-distribute it to its member-households (Tuan, 2006). While NTFPs could be collected by anyone who found them, swidden plots were owned by, and were part of the overall rotational systems of, individual households – so land was still privately owned when it was fallow. Conflicts over forest use within villages or between villages were resolved by village patriarchs through negotiations and punishments meted out to wrong-doers. Every villager was expected to abide by the rules, norms and laws of the village, and the village patriarch always had the final