The Puzzling Ethnic Museum in Hanoi

 The Vietnam Museum of Ethnology is a fine museum, and we had enjoyed our visit, though it left us perplexed.  It is a celebration of the fifty-four ethnic minorities of Vietnam, with highly respectful displays about their history and culture.  A great deal of information was offered, more than one could digest coming to it with little or no background.
The minorities are not presented as "primitive" in any sense.  They are literate and connected with ethnic groups elsewhere in Indo-China and Asia.  However, we when we asked our guide about their presentday status, we got opaque answers.  Could they move into the cities from their centers in the countryside?  Yes, but they don't want to.  Do they learn Vietnamese?  Yes.  They have schools in their native language and in Vietnamese.  But supposed they wanted to move out, get a higher education, intermarry, would that be possible?  It would never happen.

Since we grew up in the United States, we naturally think of the Amerindians as a basis for comparison, and, since we live in Israel, we also think of the Bedouin as an ethnic minority that is not well assimilated into the majority society.  We also think of the Roma in Europe, and the Inca people we encountered in Peru.  Perhaps we should think of our Jewish selves as well.
These photographs are from the outdoor exhibit at the museum, the recreation of ethnic dwellings (we saw something similar in Romania and suspect that is is a kind of Communist approach to displaying ethnic cultures), and no one could resist taking pictures of these remarkably expressive and frank statues, from a tomb.
Could the people who made these statues (quite recently) fit into modernizing Vietnam?  And what about the Vietnamese visitors to this museum.  Are they embarrassed by the overt sexuality, or do they think it's fun?  Vietnamese history, as our guides presented it, had two main vectors: the drive to gain indendence from Chinese domination and the drive southward from the center of the Viet people.  So these ethnic minorities, who are now honored in a museum, are the victims of Viet expansion, pushed off into inaccessible and undeveloped regions of the country.

 Obviously that is not the way the matter is presented in the museum.