Between Village and City: How Ede Communities Navigate Urbanization in Vietnam’s Central Highlands

Since the 1950s, rapid urbanization has transformed the lives of Indigenous peoples worldwide, with increasing numbers becoming urban residents. Urban indigeneity has consequently emerged as an important lens through which scholars examine how Indigenous communities respond to the challenges of urbanization. Drawing on more than a decade of engagement with local communities, this talk examines how Ede communities in Buon Ma Thuot, the largest urban center in Vietnam’s Central Highlands, navigate the social and cultural transformations associated with urbanization. These transformations include the shift from traditional longhouse architecture to smaller household-based stilt houses, the diversification of livelihood strategies and the expansion of social networks, and the reconfiguration of cultural and religious practices. At the same time, Ede communities have sought to maintain community forests and other cultural connections that sustain their relationships with land and nature and their cultural and spiritual life. Situating these experiences within the broader historical and political contexts of Christianity, ethnic relations, and state-led development in Vietnam, I challenge the conventional understanding of Christianity as an assimilatory force in Indigenous communities. I argue that, where Christianity itself occupies a minoritized position within the dominant social order, Catholic and Protestant communities can become alternative spaces through which Ede people negotiate urbanization, cultural change, and collective identity.