![Traditional Bunong house 2](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Traditional_Bunong_house_2.jpg)
The Bunong (alternatively Phnong, Punong, or Pnong)
[Smith, P. (2010). ''The Bunong Culture of Silence: Exploring Bunong perspectives on participation at the interface between Bunong culture and development organisations.''] are an
indigenous Cambodia
Cambodia (; also Kampuchea ; km, កម្ពុជា, UNGEGN: ), officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochinese Peninsula in Southeast Asia, spanning an area of , bordered by Thailand t ...
n
ethnic minority group. They are found primarily in
Mondulkiri province in Cambodia. The Bunong is the largest indigenous highland ethnic group in Cambodia. They have their own language called
Bunong, which belongs to
Bahnaric
The Bahnaric languages are a group of about thirty Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 700,000 people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Paul Sidwell notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Bahnaric and Katui ...
branch of
Austroasiatic languages. The majority of Bunong people are
animists
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, huma ...
, but a minority of them follows Christianity (Evangelical Protestantism or Roman Catholicism) and
Theravada Buddhism
''Theravāda'' () ( si, ථේරවාදය, my, ထေရဝါဒ, th, เถรวาท, km, ថេរវាទ, lo, ເຖຣະວາດ, pi, , ) is the most commonly accepted name of Buddhism's oldest existing school. The school' ...
. After Cambodia's independence in 1953, Prince Sihanouk created a novel terminology, referring to the country's highland inhabitants, including the Bunong, as
Khmer Loeu
The Khmer Loeu ( km, ជនជាតិខ្មែរលើ ; "upper Khmers") is the collective name given to the various indigenous ethnic groups residing in the highlands of Cambodia. The Khmer Loeu are found mainly in the northeastern pro ...
("upland Khmer"). Under the People's Republic of Kampuchea (1979-89), the generic term ជនជាតិភាគតិច (''chuncheat pheaktech'') "ethnic minorities" came to be in use and the Bunong became referred to as ជនជាតិព្នង (''chuncheat pnong'') meaning "ethnic Pnong". Today, the generic term that many Bunong use to refer to themselves is ជនជាតិដើមភាគតិច (''chuncheat daem pheaktech''), which can be translated as "indigenous minority" and involves special rights, notably to collective land titles as an "indigenous community". In Vietnam, Bunong-speaking peoples are recurrently referred to as
Mnong.
Language
Bunong language (sometimes spelled 'Mnong') is the native language of the Bunong people. It is a member of
Bahnaric
The Bahnaric languages are a group of about thirty Austroasiatic languages spoken by about 700,000 people in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Paul Sidwell notes that Austroasiatic/Mon–Khmer languages are lexically more similar to Bahnaric and Katui ...
branch of
Austroasiatic languages and is distantly related to
Khmer and other languages spoken in the Cambodian highlands (excluding
Jarai and
Rade Rade may refer to:
* E De people, a people group in Southeast Asia also called "Rhade" or "Rade"
* places in Lower-Saxony, Germany:
** Rade, Neu Wulmstorf, a village in the district of Harburg
* places in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany:
** Rade, S ...
which are
Austronesian languages closely related to
Cham). There are several dialects of Bunong, some even recognised as a distinct language by linguists, most Bunong dialects are spoken in neighbouring
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
, except for Kraol which is spoken within Cambodia.
Culture
The Bunong practice a very diverse, dynamic, unstructured and often secretive
traditional medicine
Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous medicine or folk medicine) comprises medical aspects of traditional knowledge that developed over generations within the folk beliefs of various societies, including indigenous peoples, before the ...
. Originally tied to the large
biodiversity
Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...
of their forest environment, the wars of the 1970s had a significant impact on the Bunong culture and knowledge of traditional medicine, when everybody relocated to either Vietnam or the Cambodian
Koh Niek district. New plants and practices were acquired by the Bunong in these new locations, but upon returning in the 1980s and 1990s, knowledge and use of plants native to their homelands had been forgotten by many. Adequate conventional biomedicine and healthcare can be difficult or impossible to obtain by the locals in the countryside of Cambodia - in particular during the rainy season - and it is therefore official policy of the Cambodian government (backed by the
WHO) to support the practice of traditional medicines. Research shows that, as of 2011, 95% of the inhabitants in two Bunong villages still regularly use medicinal plants. It is hoped that the Bunong culture of traditional medicine can help to build respect for the environment and halt the
deforestation
Deforestation or forest clearance is the removal of a forest or stand of trees from land that is then converted to non-forest use. Deforestation can involve conversion of forest land to farms, ranches, or urban use. The most concentrated d ...
and habitat loss of Cambodia on a local level.
Traditional agriculture
Highland rice varieties formed a staple for the Bunong, grown in slash-and-burn or swidden plots called 'mir'. These are typically on valley slopes.These plots are used for up to 5 years before being left to regrow into forest, recovering soil fertility and allowing use again in the future. Rice was traditionally supplemented with other items gathered from the forest including vegetables, plants, roots, and honey.
Over the last two decades, there has been an increasing shift to cash crop cultivation in Bunong communities, especially
cassava
''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively ...
and
cashew
The cashew tree (''Anacardium occidentale'') is a tropical evergreen tree native to South America in the genus ''Anacardium'' that produces the cashew seed and the cashew apple accessory fruit. The tree can grow as tall as , but the dwarf cult ...
.
Spirit practices and religion
Bunong traditionally relate to spirit-gods (''brah-yaang'') who live in surrounding forests, on mountains, in rivers... The Bunongs' world is populated by spirits with whom people interact through rituals, offering them jar wine and sacrificed animals. No spirits are more powerful than those of the Spirit Forests.” - Chok Marel
[Vater, T. (2006). ''The Bunong: Caretakers of Cambodia’s Sacred Forests''. Phnom Penh: USAID, European Union.] Ancestors also hold an important place in Bunong ritual life and, like the spirit-gods, they are called to join every ceremony. During Vietnam war, in the early 1970s, number of Bunong converted to Christianity during their exile in South Vietnamese refugee camps. In more recent years, Christian missionaries of many different denominations have been trying to spread their religion in Mondulkiri, notably through concurrent development support.
Bunong spirit practices have also been blended with
Khmer Buddhism through proximity.
Documentation
Documentary movies
"Bunong guu oh / Bunong's birth practices: between tradition and change" (2011) by Tommi Mendel and Brigitte Nikles http://www.tigertoda.ch/BUNONG_GUU_OH.html
"The last refuge" (2013) by Anne-Laure Porée and Guillaume Suon https://bophana.org/productions/the-last-refuge/
"Last of the Elephant Men" (2015) by Arnaud Bouquet and Daniel Ferguson https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Derniers_Hommes_%C3%A9l%C3%A9phants
"Mirr" (2016) by Mehdi Sahebi http://www.mirr.ch/
Writings
Linguistics
Bequette, Rebecca. ‘Participant Reference, Deixis, and Anaphora in Bunong Narrative Discourse’. Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, 2008.
Butler, Becky. ‘Bunong’. In ''The Handbook of Austroasiatic Languages'', by Mathias Jenny and Paul Sidwell, 717–45. Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2014.
Butler, Becky. ‘Approaching a Phonological Understanding of the Sesquisyllable with Phonetic Evidence from Khmer and Bunong’. In L''anguages of Mainland Southeast Asia: The State of the Art'', by N.J. Enfield and Bernard Comrie, 443–99. Pacific Linguistics. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2015.
Vogel, Sylvain, and Jean-Michel Filippi. ''Eléments de langue phnong''. Phnom Penh: Editions Funan, 2006.
Oral literature
Publications by the International Cooperation Cambodia (ICC)
Vogel, Sylvain. ''Introduction à la langue et aux dits traditionnels des Phnong de Mondulkiri''. Phnom Penh: Editions Funan, 2006.
Vogel, Sylvain. ''Poèmes et chants des Phnong de Mondulkiri''. Phnom Penh (Cambodge): Funan, 2008.
Vogel, Sylvain. ''Aspects de la culture traditionnelle des Bunoong du Mondulkiri.'' Tuk Tuk Editions. Phnom Penh, 2011.
Vogel, Sylvain. ‘“Les maisons de pierre du village de Chiang”: Un point de vue Bunong sur les temples d’Angkor et la distinction entre peuples des collines et de la plaine’. Péninsule, no. 71 (2015): 149–95.
Vogel, Sylvain. ''Voix du Mondulkiri historique''. Phnom Penh: UNESCO, 2015.
Botany and ethno-pharmacology
Publications by Nomad RSI
Chassagne, François, Sovanmoly Hul, Eric Deharo, and Geneviève Bourdy. ‘Natural Remedies Used by Bunong People in Mondulkiri Province (Northeast Cambodia) with Special Reference to the Treatment of 11 Most Common Ailments’. ''Journal of Ethnopharmacology'' 191 (15 September 2016): 41–70.
Laval, Pauline. ‘Impacts de la raréfaction des plantes médicinales et stratégies villageoises. Cas de deux villages de la province du Mondolkiri, Cambodge’. Istom, 2010.
History
Bourdier, Frédéric. ‘De la Sésan à la Srépok, racines et destins des populations indigènes du Nord-Est du Cambodge’. In ''Khmer Studies'', by Sorn Samrang, 1058–79. Phnom Penh, 1996.
Guérin, Mathieu, Andrew Hardy, Van Chinh Nguyen, and Stan Tan Boon Hwee. ''Des montagnards aux minorités ethniques: Quelle intégration nationale pour les habitants des hautes terres du Viêt Nam et du Cambodge?'' Paris: L’Harmattan, 2003. https://books.openedition.org/irasec/1420
Guérin, Mathieu. ''Paysans de la forêt à l’époque coloniale : La pacification des aborigènes des hautes terres du Cambodge''. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008.
Scheer, Catherine. ‘Subaltern Soldiers: The Overshadowed Fight of Bunong Highlanders within the Khmer Republic (1970-75)’. ''Journal of Southeast Asian Studies'' 53, no. 1–2 (2022).
See also
*
Mnong people
References
External links
Ethnologue entry
{{Ethnic groups in Cambodia
Ethnic groups in Cambodia
Indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia
Bunong culture