The Forest That Speaks, and the People Who Listen

For the Bahnar people of Vietnam’s Central Highlands, the forest is not a resource. It is a presence — sentient, watchful, and capable of guiding, nurturing, and punishing those who live within it.

In a new study combining ethnography and linguistics, VinUniversity researchers documented this remarkable worldview through extended fieldwork and analysis of Bahnar language, ritual, and craft traditions. What emerged is a portrait of a society whose daily life is inseparable from the forest’s agency: farmers invoke tree deities at harvest, travelers read bird calls as moral signals, and healers harvest bark with careful, one-sided cuts so the tree survives.

This is not folklore. It is a sophisticated, millennia-refined system of environmental intelligence — one that has quietly sustained biodiversity long before the word “conservation” existed.

Access the full article at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/02780771241277627

Check out the project video at: https://youtu.be/yjCWFi_0XI8?si=BcGuDxLwyuuK4EMi