Word: tribalized
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...that extends across one-third of the country. They are darker and tougher than the lowland Vietnamese, who consider the montagnards racially inferior, and scornfully refer to them as moi, or baboons. To protect them from land-grabbing lowlanders, French colonial administrators in effect made the central highlands a tribal reservation. When the French pulled out in 1954, lowlanders once again drove the montagnards ever deeper into the jungle-and into the arms of the Communist Viet Cong...
...Tribal State. In an ambitious attempt to win over the montagnards, U.S. military advisers in 1962 started a program to train and arm them so that they could defend their villages from guerrilla attack. More than 9,000 were schooled by U.S. Special Forces instructors, who found them to be fierce, loyal fighters, extremely useful in cutting Communist Viet Cong supply lines in jungle-covered mountains; most came from the relatively civilized Rhade (pronounced Rah-day) tribe. However, when the hated lowlanders from the Vietnamese government gradually took over the program, racial tension mounted in the training camps, and montagnards...
They killed some 50 Vietnamese officers and men and seized a radio station, broadcasting demands for an autonomous tribal state. Finally, at the urging of U.S. Colonel John F. Freund, a French-speaking Special Forces adviser whom they trusted, the rebels withdrew and agreed to present their grievances to Premier Nguyen Khanh, who had immediately flown to the area...
Flatly refusing to discuss autonomy for the montagnards, Khanh said to an American: "That would be like your Sioux Indians seceding from America." But Khanh allowed that the tribes men's "righteous aspirations" - for better schools and medical facilities, tribal representation at the top government level, replacement by Americans of all Vietnamese officers in their training camps - would be met. Even so, the restive montagnards still remained a major threat...
...life has been as bitter as his father's darkest tragedies, and Shane O'Neill, 45, Eugene's disinherited son, believes he suffers from a tribal curse...