This panel interrogates the ways that engagement with colonial institutions has reshaped ethnic minority identities through discussion of Chams, Corsicans, and Hmongs in early twentieth century French Indochina, corresponding to contemporary Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. The presenters on this panel especially focus on ways in which members of ethnic minority groups have navigated colonial institutions on their own terms in ways that simultaneously reshaped colonial institutions and their understandings of ethnic identity. Mai Na Lee’s paper examines the role of Hmong leaders’ experience of French colonial education in shaping Hmong ethnic identity and its relationship with national identity, especially in newly independent Laos. Next, Royce Novak’s paper looks at how Corsicans, as a metropolitan ethnic minority, gained social status and reconciled ethnic and national identity through participating in the physical and structural violence of French colonial institutions in Vietnam. Lastly, William Noseworthy’s paper analyzes the central role Cham Muslim communities played in determining the position of Cham people in the colonial state, leading to their rapid institutionalization throughout French Indochina. Natasha Pairaudeau, given her expertise on South Asians in French Indochina, will provide commentary and facilitate questions and discussion. Together, these papers ask how ethnic minority groups use the same colonial institutions that tend to reinforce colonial racial and ethnic hierarchies as a means of achieving elevated social and political positions within their societies while simultaneously redefining their sense of ethnic and national identity. As a whole, this panel provides innovative and nuanced interpretations of the interplay between colonialism and ethnic identity in the context of modern Southeast Asia.