Gerald Hickey
From: Maxner, Steve
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I write to share the sad news that Gerald Hickey died two days ago.
Respectfully,
Stephen Maxner, Ph.D.
Director
The Vietnam Center and Archive
The Vietnam Center and Archive
Texas Tech University
PO Box 41045
Lubbock, TX 79409-1045
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From: JKirkpatrick
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Any obits in the offing--like NYT?
Thanks
Joanna K.
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From: David Brown
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Many years ago, I was among the young US Embassy and CORDS officers who were privileged to be mentored by Gerry Hickey as we sought to understand the world of the Vietnamese and highlanders, to plumb the impact of the 'American war' on their lives, and find less brutal 'solutions' to the Communist insurgency. Gerry was unjustly maligned by other anthropologists who did not trouble to understand his work. David Brown
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From: Robert Silano
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Gerald Cannon Hickey; dear brother of Carole Powers, and the late Catherine Walsh, Judge Warren J. (late Dorothy) Hickey, John (Mary Denise) Hickey; fond uncle of many nieces and nephews. Visitation Saturday, Nov. 13, 9 a.m. until time of Funeral Mass 10 a.m. at Immaculate Conception Church, 1415 N. North Park, Chicago. Interment, Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. Info., Drake & Son Funeral Home, 773-561-6874.
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From: Sidel, Mark
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Guestbook here, including Neil and Ginnie Jamieson's tribute: http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/chicagotribune/guestbook.aspx?n=gerald-hickey&pid=146571263&cid=full
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From: Salemink, O.J.H.M.
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
Dear list,
This is not an obituary, but simply a few personal memories of and reflections on Gerald C. Hickey. Hickey was one of the first US social scientists with in-depth knowledge of Vietnam, both of the lowlands – as is shown in his monograph Village in Vietnam – and of the Central Highlands, about which he published three monographs, including a two-volume Ethnohistory. His last work was a professional autobiography, Window on a War. His oeuvre stands as a monument of Vietnam Studies before the VSG was ever ‘invented’.
I came to know Hickey as someone who also did research in the Central Highlands (see my 2003 monograph The Ethnography of Vietnam’s Central Highlanders: A historical contextualization 1850-1990, Hawai’i Press and Routledge, which discusses Hickey’s work in more length), and hence as one of my predecessors, along with – among others – Georges Condominas and the late Jacques Dournes. Dournes did not think much of Hickey or of any American for that matter, but I remember that Condominas graciously called him a bon garçon. I first visited Hickey at his house in Chicago in 1990, when I was doing archival and oral history research in the US and before I did field research in Vietnam, and I spent a couple of days at his house. He was eminently hospitable and generous to me, we had long conversations about his experiences in research and in influencing policies, and he shared many of his documents with me, which was crucial for my research.
He was also a somewhat bitter man. He was bitter at the lack of positive influence that he had had in shaping US – and to a lesser extent South-Vietnamese – ethnic policies and military tactics affecting the Highlanders. As someone who was a firm believer in the justness of the US intervention in Vietnam, he was appalled by the disastrous effects of the war on the Highlanders, including the spraying of Agent Orange and similar chemical warfare methods. He was bitter at the events in the Central Highlands after 1975 and their effects on the Highlanders – the harsh suppression of the Highlanders autonomy movement, the sedentarization campaigns, the organized and ‘spontaneous’ migration into the Central Highlands. For that reason I suspect that he would not have been in favor of the bauxite mines that are being developed now. He was also bitter at his reception back in the US, especially the rejection of his fully externally funded position at the anthropology department of the University of Chicago, his alma mater, by its faculty. Research in the context of war was then – as now – a hotly contested topic, but some persons involved in the vote and decision-making told me that in hindsight this should never have happened.
My relationship with Hickey became a bit difficult when after my field research I informed him about the abuse of his Ethnohistory by Vietnamese authorities who after its publication proceeded to arrest just about all ‘Highlander leaders’ mentioned in the book – only the intervention by a few senior Vietnamese ethnologists could convince the authorities to release these Highlander ‘leaders’ again (thus paradoxically mirroring Hickey’s own position, as a self-styled ‘action anthopologist’ in the Sol Tax manner). I informed him that I had heard that story through various channels and that I intended to use it for my book. I am not sure what exactly made him angry or sad, but overseeing his work I assume that he could not believe that good intentions could have such disastrous outcomes. Nevertheless, we met again during the 2001 AAS meeting in Chicago, and he was congenial as ever; and that was the last time I met him.
In his more popular book Kingdom in the Morning Mist, about the short-lived ‘Sedang Kingdom’ of Mayréna in the Central Highlands of the late 19th Century, Hickey listed a few men who followed in Mayréna’s footsteps, like the French administrator Léopold Sabatier, the last emperor Bao Dai, and the US military officer and advisor John Paul Vann. In my estimation, Gerry Hickey belongs to that list of people who left a lasting legacy in and about Vietnam’s Central Highlands. As an observer of war, may he rest in peace.
Oscar Salemink
Oscar Salemink, Ph.D.
Professor of Social Anthropology
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Faculty of Social Sciences
VU University Amsterdam
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From: Charles Keyes
To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>
I would like to add my own remembrances of Gerry Hickey. I am not sure when I first met Gerry, but the first real encounter occurred in 1968 when Jane, my wife, and I were engaged in fieldwork in the northern Thai border district of Mae Sariang, Gerry on a busman’s holiday from Vietnam came to visit. I recall how he took a strong interest in a place that, in some ways, was similar to the highlands of South Vietnam where he had devoted so much of his life to studying. There was a major contrast, however, that Gerry quickly noted – even despite its proximity to Burma, the hill peoples of Mae Sariang were not caught up in any violent conflict. He said that he found his visit to be a respite from being in Vietnam.
I had the deepest respect for Gerry’s long engagement with and advocacy for the peoples of the Vietnam Central Highlands. He spoke often of how the upland peoples ended up being victimized by both the government of the Republic of Vietnam and then the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. In some ways his work foreshadowed that of Jim Scott – both share a deep distrust of any state. When I reviewed his two volume work on the history of the peoples of the Central Highlands, I was deeply impressed by his extraordinary knowledge as well as his empathy. I also shared his pessimism about the future situation for the highlanders, a pessimism that has, unfortunately, been born out by subsequent history.
Over the years, we had many exchanges, sometimes mediated by our mutual good friends, Tom Kirsch at Cornell and May Ebihara at the City University of New York. Now Gerry has joined both Tom and May as academic immortals, whose work has a lasting legacy for future scholars.
Charles (Biff) Keyes
Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and International Studies
University of Washington