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-Ground lessons in culture, tradition, and language. Furthermore, lessons should provide useful and practical knowledge. The article above describes that within the Native Hmong Learners immersive elective course, each unit is through a Hmong lens. For example, Health class is centered around Hmong health, which deepens Hmong students' connection to heritage. Many schools do not have teachers, funding, or other capacity to provide specific courses as such, but this article should work as a model to instruct educators that culturally sustaining pedagogy is possible.

-Maintain high expectations and empathy for all students (these should be differentiated for each student). See Vang, page 14 for tips regarding working with individuals. Although these are listed as Hmong-specific, these tips are relevant for teachers of all ethnicities.

-Family ties are extremely important in Hmong culture. This means a close connection to a student's family is valued, and communication is held dear. According to Vang, multigenerational households are common, thus extended family members may be involved in a child's life. Students may bring in funds of knowledge extending beyond their immediate family. Like all individuals, this may differ depending on the family. Create lessons that reflect upon these values or that allow students to share/honor multigenerational skills/traditions.

-Vang writes that Hmong students may lack academic support at home as parents or family members have low English literacy. Extra support or affinity spaces may be necessary.

-Different dialects exist within the Hmong language. These incorporate different religious and cultural tradition. Do not generalize this experience for students, instead, listen and honor their experience. "Listen without judgment" to students as they share bits of cultural information.

-Teachers should be aware that most Hmong students are bi- or mulit-lingual, some first generation students speaking Hmong at home. Additionally, dialect impacts English learning needs.

Sources:
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/10/09/in-one-twin-cities-classroom-learning-in-hmong-and-about-being-hmong
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ775324.pdf
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1215233.pdf

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Jocelyn Fang speaks Hmong and she's from a Hmong family, but it took a class at Park Center High School to help bond her to Hmong life and history, and see her place in it.

"I learned so much about being Hmong, and our history and how to speak and write, how to listen," Jocelyn, 15, said of the class, part of an ongoing experiment at the school to connect Hmong students to their heritage. "It's just a very good environment for me to be in as a Hmong student."

Launched three years ago, "Hmong for Native Speakers" has helped bridge a learning gap between culture and classroom academics. It's an elective taught in Hmong and grounded in Hmong history, culture and language.

Teacher Pang Yang saw the need after Hmong students at Park Center noticed the school had launched a Spanish for native speakers class. They told her they wanted their own version.

For Yang, who's spent nearly 20 years teaching English as a second language, saw the opportunity for a class where her students could learn in Hmong - and learn about being Hmong.

Yang's lessons venture far beyond Hmong grammar, vocabulary and language inflection. On a recent morning, she started her second-hour students on a novel by a Hmong-American author.

Third-hour students spoke in a circle discussion about how Hmong students might be affected by the achievement gap. During fourth hour, she introduced her class to a health unit by sharing statistics about health in the Hmong community.

"This is our introduction to our health unit, so connecting health with the Hmong community," Yang said. "So we'll be looking at some data, we'll be talking about what are some factors that contribute to the health disparity."

Yang calls the strategy "culturally relevant teaching." Everything in her classroom is filtered through a Hmong lens. Language, history, literature, culture and her students' own lived experiences are at the center. This makes her classroom material more relevant to her students, she said.

Research supports her strategies. Nationally, students of color don't engage as well with curriculum and teaching "dominated by Euro-American perspectives," according to the National Education Association.

"Sometimes our Hmong students are so quiet in the classroom, they're often forgotten. There's a lot that's going on under the iceberg that teachers may not see," Yang said. "But because I live in their world, I see and have been through a lot of their issues and so I understand that, for them, coming to my room, sometimes all that they need is just a place, a safe place. "

Yang tries to meet her students where they're at. She makes time for journaling and individual check-ins. She focuses on empathy for what her students are going through, while keeping expectations high.

"It's not just language learning, but it's about you as a whole person. It's about your identity and what are you going to do now that you have some of the language background to be able to speak Hmong," Yang said.

Some observers sees these kinds of efforts to connect student culture and classroom learning as key to closing the achievement gap between white students and students of color in Minnesota.

"What if your narrative becomes centralized in our understandings of politics and history? That's the core. As opposed to being a background actor in a European narrative, which is typically what students of color become," said Brian Lozenski, an assistant professor of urban and multicultural studies at Macalester College in St. Paul.

"Even when we do address students of color history, it's add-on," he said. "But what if you become the central actor and other people's stories get that background shadowing?"

In Yang's classroom, her students say learning Hmong language, history and culture has helped them navigate their lives at home and at school.

Fang said she's using her understanding of her Hmong heritage to connect with her family, understand where she comes from, and use that to plan her future.

"It's crazy just knowing our experiences," she said, "especially since not a lot of people know it."
Correction (Oct. 10, 2019): Captions with the graphics slideshow misidentified the school that Pang Yang teaches at. The article has been updated.

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Learning in Hmong, and about being Hmong

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Jocelyn Fang speaks Hmong and she's from a Hmong family, but it took a class at Park Center High School to help bond her to Hmong life and history, and see her place in it.

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Novels surrounding the Hmong-American experience: https://runestonejournal.com/six-books-featuring-the-hmong-community-by-sandra-vang/

Websites:
Timeline from the Minnesota Historical society https://www.mnhs.org/hmong/hmong-timeline
Hmong Cultural Library https://madison.campusguides.com/c.php?g=390137&p=2649701

Hmong American Literature Unit https://hmongresources.wordpress.com/teaching-materials/engl-2330-hmong-american-literature-materials/
http://hmonglessons.com/

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Overview
This title will no longer be available for programming after the 2020-21 grant year.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American author, filmmaker, public speaker, and natural storyteller. The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (Coffee House Press, 2008) is the first memoir written by a Hmong-American to be published with national distribution. Driven to tell her family's story-and the story of the Hmong people-Yang wrote it as a "love letter" to her grandmother whose spirit held her family together through their imprisonment in Laos, their harrowing escape across the Mekong River and into a refugee camp in Thailand, their immigration to Minnesota when Yang was only six years old, and their transition to a hard life in America. "Yang has performed an important service in bringing readers the stories of a people whose history has been shamefully neglected," writes Kirkus. "Yang tells her family's story with grace; she narrates their struggles, beautifully weaving in Hmong folklore and culture. By the end of this moving, unforgettable book, when Yang describes the death of her beloved grandmother, readers will delight at how intimately they have become part of this formerly ... [unfamiliar] culture" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review).

"What happened to the Hmong happened before us and will happen again after us. It is one group and then another." -from The Latehomecomer

Introduction

"The people say that once you take down the shacks and once the grass grows in that it's over, but wars don't end... not in the hearts and minds of those who really lost something." - Kao Kalia Yang in a videotaped interview at Prairie Lights Books in Iowa City

The Hmong people-pronounced with a silent H-make up an Asian ethnic group with a rich culture, art, language, and sense of family. During the Vietnam War and Laotian Civil War, the U.S. recruited more than 30,000 Hmong men and boys in the mountain region of Laos to fight alongside Americans in what became known as the "Secret War." When the Americans left the region in 1975, Lao soldiers and their North Vietnamese allies infiltrated Hmong villages and began a systematic campaign to kill off the Hmong who remained. A third of the Hmong people died during the war, fighting alongside the Americans. Another third were slaughtered in the war's aftermath.

Kao Kalia Yang's The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (Coffee House Press, 2008) is the first memoir written by a Hmong-American to be published with national distribution. Driven to tell her family's story-and the story of the Hmong people-Yang wrote it as a "love letter" to her grandmother whose spirit held her family together through their imprisonment in Laos, their harrowing escape into Thailand's Ban Vinai Refugee Camp, their immigration to Minnesota when Yang was only six years old, and their transition to a hard life in America. "Yang has performed an important service in bringing readers the stories of a people whose history has been shamefully neglected" ( Kirkus Reviews).

Edited down to 270 pages from more than 1,000, the book is peppered with family photographs and split into four sections. The first section is a gripping account of Yang's family in the Laotian jungle, where her mother and father met and were married. They had been scavenging for food and living in makeshift shelters for three years, coping with sickness, gnawing hunger, fatigue, bombs falling from the sky, and the fear of approaching soldiers. Her mother, Chou Moua, was 16 and, before the war, had been attending school and had dreams of becoming a nurse. Yang's father, Bee Yang, was 19 and the youngest of nine surviving children whose father had died when Bee was young. His mother, Youa Lee-Kao Kalia Yang's grandmother-was a resourceful shaman and medicine woman. They were ambushed when Yang's mother was pregnant with her sister, Dawb. The men fled; the women and children were taken to an occupied village where Dawb was born. On a dark night in 1979, the men came back and the families escaped to the banks of the Mekong River for a perilous crossing to Thailand. Shortly after their journey, Thailand stopped taking refugees and began massacring those who tried to flee Laos.

The family was taken to the Ban Vinai Refugee camp in one of the poorest regions of Thailand, where they lived for seven years and where Yang was born. Covering less than a square mile, the dusty camp was the temporary home of roughly 40,000 Hmong refugees between 1980 and 1987. While the children played, adults tried to fight off illness, disease, nightmares, abuse from Thai soldiers, and suicide. "All I have to do is close my eyes and I see the dry grass surrounding the camp," says Yang. "I see the little children playing in the dirt, the hungry dogs..., my mom and dad, young like they were then, waiting in the dust for some future to begin."

In the final sections, Yang describes her family's move into a transition camp and then, with thousands of other Hmong families, to St. Paul, Minnesota, where she spent the rest of her childhood. Placed in the first low-income housing units in the state, Yang remembers wanting to be invisible as they endured stares and people yelling for them to go home. Yang eventually moved into, and out of, a house she describes as haunted by the ghost of a boy who died there. And she describes the challenges of school with her sister, speaking infrequently but learning to write. At the end of the memoir, Yang graduates college and begins her book, and says goodbye to her beloved grandmother amidst an elaborate and loving funeral. "To this day, if something happens and I get scared, I speak to her," says Yang ( The Conversant).

Winner of a PEN USA Literary Award for Nonfiction and Minnesota's Book Award and Readers Choice Award, The Latehomecomer takes its name from a short story by Canadian writer Mavis Gallant and references Jews who returned home from internment hoping to find homes that no longer exist. "It wasn't until the 1950s that a Hmong written language was taught and used. It's a new medium for us," Yang explains. "To say that we're going to go into this thing that's literature, and that it will last longer than the newspaper, or the TV-it's kind of incredible. Especially for me." Asked how long it took to write the book, Yang answered four years, but "centuries and centuries to do the living" (Mn Artists).

Kao Kalia Yang (b. 1980)

"I try not to think about the bricks in front of me. I look out the window and I see where I want to go." - Kao Kalia Yang

Kao Kalia Yang was born in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand and moved when she was six with her family to St. Paul, Minnesota, home to the largest concentration of Hmong in the country. They began their life in the U.S. living on welfare in public housing until her parents took on multiple jobs to feed their family. To fill her time, especially during the long winters and because she couldn't afford to attend movies or concerts, Yang would read. "There'd be a bookmobile that would come every week [to the projects where we lived]. Because we didn't own a VCR, my older sister used to hold my hand and we'd go to the library and check out books and then she would create elaborate stories for me with the books that would make me cry and weep. I called her the human VCR.... I fell in love with the library. It is still one of my favorite places on earth."

While she loved books like the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, Yang recalls asking the librarian for books about people like her. "She gave me a book about the Chinese, the Japanese, the Vietnamese, but she couldn't give me a book about Hmong kids." That was one of her first callings to write, which was easier for her than speaking English. "When I tried to speak, kids laughed. So I stopped completely. But I was a kid and the words had to go somewhere. So they went onto the page" where her voice grew stronger and more natural (Minnesota Public Radio). "Everyone in my life knows that if I haven't written in a while, my whole demeanor changes," she told The Conversant. "I have to get to the page before I boil over."

Yang is a natural storyteller having grown up listening to tales in Thailand, where her family painted a world beyond the walls of the refugee camp and told stories of mythical tigers and real ghosts. Her uncle "would stretch out his arm and say every freckle was a lake, every piece of hair standing up was a person. His knuckles were the rise and fall of the mountain ranges. The rivers were the veins flowing through." "That," she said, "was my first introduction to an illustrated picture book."

Yang was a pre-med student at Carleton College before she started writing what would later become her first book, The Latehomecomer (Coffee House Press, 2008). "My mom and dad taught us that we needed doctors and lawyers," she said. "Lawyers can protect the rights that we've never had enough of; doctors can heal what is broken in the bodies around us." Her sister told her she'd become a lawyer, so Yang went the route of becoming a doctor until her grandmother passed away and she pursued her dream of writing. "My favorite professors, my friends, nobody knew that the most important person in my life was gone," she said. "So it was important for me to ... tell the world that a woman who never learned how to read or write had ... walked through history and left all of us behind to miss her." On the day she buried her grandmother, Yang says, she got news that she had been accepted into Columbia University's MFA creative writing program.

Since the publication of her first memoir, Yang has been an avid public speaker on such topics as literacy and education; race, class, and gender; and the refugee and immigrant experiences. She has made a deep impact on the lives of, among others, Hmong readers and American Vietnam war veterans who have come to her readings. She co-founded with her sister Words Wanted, a company dedicated to helping immigrants in the Twin Cities with writing, translating, and business services. Her short film, The Place Where We Were Born, documents the experiences of Hmong-American refugees. Her second book, The Song Poet (Metropolitan Books, 2016), is an homage to the Hmong tradition of song poetry and her father's effort to document the times and places where the Hmong have searched for belonging. "I'm not even five feet tall," she said, but "my dad has always said that the size of my hands and feet would not dictate my life's journey, that I was not a child of war, poverty, and despair; I was hope being born. I want his words to be true."

Yang lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her husband and their three children, and her younger sister and brother. She depends on the love and support of her extended family. "All of them make me feel more human, more connected, more than just alone in the world" (Coffee House Press). When she had difficulties giving birth to her twin sons-her heart stopped, doctors rushed in-her sister, unasked, helped take care of the babies during Yang's recovery. "My husband and I wake up to the same alarm clock every day. We sit opposite each other for breakfast with our babies in our arms and sometimes we even manage lunch and dinner, and I thought about all of those years when my dad worked the night shift and my mom stayed during the day, and they never saw each other except to say hello and goodbye in between. For the first time I understand how long those years were for them."

Asked if she has returned to the site of the refugee camp in Thailand, Yang said she returned in 2001 to the haunting vision that there were no remnants of her life there: "The great mounds of my youth were gone, leveled by the wind and the earth" ( The Conversant). "If my citizenship papers are true," says Yang, "if indeed I am now a naturalized American, if my brothers and sisters, born in America, and so many of their friends are indeed American, then perhaps, at long last, we are home" (Coffee House Press). Asked what her grandmother would say if she were with us today, said Yang, "Me Naib, Pog zoo siab heev rau koj os mog. Your grandmother is so happy for you" (Coffee House Press).

Updated July 2017

1. The prologue to The Latehomecomer offers a glimpse of what it means to Yang to be Hmong, in many ways summarizing the story about to unfold. Why do you think Yang begins this way? Why do you think she wrote the prologue in third person when the rest of the memoir is written in first person?

2. Part one begins with a description of "the biggest covert operation in CIA history" (p. 7) known as "The Secret War" and its devastating aftermath in 1975. Were you familiar with the involvement of the Hmong people in the Vietnam War before you read the book? In what ways can a memoir go beyond mere documentation to expand our understanding of a chapter of American history?

3. How does Yang describe her parents when they meet, and in what ways do they change throughout the book? Is their story a love story? How does Yang talk about love?

4. When the Yang family crosses the Mekong River, they're forced to leave their family photos behind. What belongings carry meaning in The Latehomecomer? What objects would you hope to hang onto through such a journey?

5. In what ways is storytelling important to Yang and in Hmong culture? What can be lost when a story best known in the oral tradition is written down? How does Yang navigate this transition?

6. "I used to ask all the adults in my life where home was because they kept telling me that Ban Vinai Camp wasn't my home," Yang told the NEA. What are some of the ways the Hmong establish a sense of home without a written language and "home" country? How do you define "home"?

7. What surprised you about Yang's experiences living in a refugee camp?

8. Yang describes the strong bond she feels with her siblings, her parents, her grandmother, and the rest of her extended family. How do these bonds define, support, and/or challenge her? How do the familial bonds in your life define, support, and/or challenge you?

9. Of the many reasons Yang's grandmother provides for not wanting to leave the refugee camp and relocate to America (pgs. 78-80), which one most resonates with you? What do you think she is most afraid of?

10. What did Yang and her family have to learn about America in order to emigrate? What do you think it would be helpful for newcomers like Yang and her family to know before they arrive?

11. Tens of thousands of Hmong refugees moved to California, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the 1980s and 90s. How does Yang describe the ways her family was treated? What measures do they take to both fit in and stay invisible?

12. "The only way to live in America was to learn of its possibilities, and the way to do that was school," Yang writes, paraphrasing her father's attitude (p. 139). What was the transition to school like for her and her sister, Dawb?

13. The conditions in the camps were "hard for those who knew more than I did," writes Yang, "but for me, the hardness in life began in America" (p. 151). Why? How does she regain her "voice," as represented in both her native language and in English?

14. The memoir's last section is devoted to descriptions of her grandmother and how the importance of honoring one's elders in Hmong culture. How does this compare to the ways elders are honored in other cultures?

15. The book ends with sentiments of hope and determination directed at her family and her "Hmong brothers and sisters." How are her "dreams" for them similar to or different from what you think of as the collective "American dream"?

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This title will no longer be available for programming after the 2020-21 grant year. Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American author, filmmaker, public speaker, and natural storyteller. The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir (Coffee House Press, 2008) is the first memoir written by a Hmong-American to be published with national distribution.

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How can I learn more about Hmong culture?

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How can I learn more about Hmong culture?

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There are a plethora of great sources for learning more about the Hmong community in Minnesota. The Hmong Museum is one great example, however they do not have a physical space that they permanently reside in. It's important to search where they're currently 'living' before visiting this museum. Once you're there, they showcase Hmong culture with rotating exhibits and interesting programs like English language learning classes. The Hmong Resource Center Library is located in St. Paul, but also has a virtual library available to anyone who wants to learn more about Hmong culture, history, art, etc. A final great resource for learning more about Hmong people and their culture, visit Hmong Arts, Books and Crafts (Hmong ABC) located in the Hmongtown Market on Como in St. Paul. This store is the first of its kind in Minnesota. They have both in-person and online options for buying books, art, and other crafts created by Hmong artisans.

Sources: https://hmongmuseummn.org/
http://www.hmonglibrary.org/
https://www.hmongabc.com/

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EXHIBITS AND COLLECTIONS Digital Zine Read stories and see artwork inspired by the Hmong American community's experience during the pandemic. Learn about the Digital Zine a museum Unlike any other Hmong Museum is the first museum dedicated to the preservation and education of Hmong culture, history, experiences, and arts.

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Because Minnesota has a large population of Hmong communities, there are several MN universities that have Hmong resource centers, groups, or educational programs. Concordia St. Paul has a Center for Hmong Studies and the University has both a Hmong Student Association, a Living Learning Community for Hmong freshman at the U, and a close relationship with the Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul. Both the CSP Hmong Center and the UMN Student Association have lots of links to educational resources and information about current events to attend and learn about in regard to the Hmong community in Minnesota and also the United States.
When I lived on campus at the University, I shared the third floor of Comstock Hall with the Hmong LLC. The Resident Advisor for our floor also identified as Hmong and held lots of Hmong student-specific events for the LLC.

Sources: https://www.hmsalove.org/
https://housing.umn.edu/llcs/tsev-hmoob
https://hmongcenter.csp.edu/
https://www.hmongcc.org/

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Many resource centers and student groups around the Twin Cities have links on their websites for where to find fun local events. Although the Hmong International Freedom Festival,
usually held in early July, was cancelled this past summer due to COVID precautions, this November's Hmong New Year is still being held at the St. Paul Rivercentre. Typically, both events are lively and well-loved by the Hmong community and the people who participate in the events of the holidays.
Sources: https://www.visitsaintpaul.com/blog/guide-to-hmong-new-year/
https://mnhd66brepublicans.org/tag/hmong-freedom-celebration-j4/

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A local Minnesotan chef walks through their three favorite restaurants at the Hmong Village food court in St. Paul. Pho is a fourth common Hmong dish (not specifically mentioned in this article) and can be found all over Minnesota. Additionally, the Hmongtown Marketplace (also in St. Paul) is a great place to find over 100 shopping and food stands to experience.
Sources: https://hmongtownmarketplace.com/
https://www.twincities.com/2020/03/05/what-to-eat-at-hmong-village-let-chef-yia-vang-show-you/

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When we recently met chef Yia Vang at Hmong Village Shopping Center in St. Paul for an interview, our profile story (see related story) morphed into a second story we weren't expecting.

We asked what Hmong dishes Vang loves to order when here. After all, St. Paul has one of the largest Hmong populations in the country, and we were in one of the largest Hmong retail and food courts around. For those of you who aren't familiar with Hmong Village Shopping Center, the spot off Johnson Parkway is a large gathering spot housing Hmong-owned businesses (While we're at it, Hmongtown Marketplace off Como Avenue is another popular one in St. Paul).

Inside, the shopping center is lined with retail stalls selling items such as beauty products, fashion apparel, kitchen wares and home goods. There's also a market for groceries, including a large selection of produce. And then there is our favorite feature - the food court with restaurants and delis dishing up everything from spring rolls to Hmong sausages and wings to stewed pork belly. Noodle soups such as pho and kapoon red curry are available, as are a wide variety of rice entrees. We could go on and on.

Vang has eaten at every counter in this expansive food court, and definitely had his go-to places. He nodded at what we usually liked to order - stuffed chicken wings, Hmong sausage and pho. But when it was time to eat, it was clear Vang wanted us to try things off our beaten path and he led the charge.

We were so delighted by his picks - and insider tips including off-the-menu items - that we had to share the experience and pass on his recommended dishes. This way you too can consider a stop at these food counters during a visit here:

SANTI'S

First and foremost, one of Vang's must stops was at this grill spot. The Crazy Steak ($19), cooked to medium-rare with a nice char to it and brushed with a pepper sauce, was a must-order. The dish, which is sizable (seriously, like two pounds) and easily shareable, was served with two sauces on the side - a pepper paste and wasabi sauce - for even more kick. It was the Hmong version of a pepper steak. If you're looking for something clean and lean, the Nine Spice Chicken ($8) was a wonderful plate of a tender half chicken cut into smaller pieces for easy serving and brushed with more of that pepper sauce that added flavor to the already aromatic spices. We rounded out these dishes with an order of Sticky Rice ($4), which was a giant helping that went perfectly with the family style meal we were about to dive into. It's worth noting that the meat dishes took 15 to 20 minutes to prepare. No problem - we just gave them our table number, then went to the other counters to order other food items we wanted in the meantime.

MAI'S KITCHEN

Whenever we're at a Hmong market, stuffed chicken wings, which are basically the fillings found in an egg roll stuffed into a de-boned chicken wing, are our standby. Instead, Vang insisted we try the chicken drumsticks version here. He prefers Stuffed Chicken Drumsticks ($2 each) over wings for the flavor and extra meat, and we're still marveling at the technique required to completely remove the bone, leaving only the little nub at the end of the drumstick to hold onto. And we can back up Vang's's claim that they are unforgettably delicious. Mai's Kitchen is also home to Vang's favorite papaya salad at the marketplace, so we had to try this as well. And Vang shared this great tip: while there were three types of papaya salad listed on the menu board, you can order a Hmong Style Papaya Salad ($6) off-the-menu, which is a cross between a traditional Thai papaya salad and the more shrimp-paste laden Lao papaya salad. We ordered it, and could see why this was his favorite, especially since Mai's Kitchen makes them to order for maximum freshness.

LUCKI'S KITCHEN

Part of the fun is you can try a bunch of entrees at this cafeteria-style spot. They included off-the-menu items and daily changing specials. Vang's go-to here is the Sweet Meat, a sweet pork stew with soy, cinnamon, anise, sugar and whole boiled eggs that makes for a sweet and savory dish. We then ordered Braised Mustard Greens and Pork, reminiscent of collard greens. To round it off, Vang ordered a Pork Stew with innards that included tripe and tendon, for those at our table who wanted to try something on the adventurous side. Each entree was $6 for a 16 oz. container. We didn't order it this way, but a sign advertised a special in which you could get three entrees with rice for $7, which we assume came in smaller portions.

HMONG VILLAGE SHOPPING CENTER

Where: 1001 Johnson Parkway, St. Paul

Market Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Sunday. Note that some vendors may open or close at different times.

More info: 651-771-7886; hmongvillagemn.com

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What to eat at Hmong Village? Let Chef Yia Vang show you.

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When we recently met chef Yia Vang at Hmong Village Shopping Center in St. Paul for an interview, our profile story (see related story) morphed into a second story we weren't expecting. We asked what Hmong dishes Vang loves to order when here. After all, St.

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After the U.S. ended their war efforts in Southeast Asia, the Hmong people were not initially approved to come to the U.S. as refugees. The Migration and Refugee Assistance Act had to be amended to include the Hmong.

The federal State Department gave contracts to charities who were willing to work with and support resettling refugees after the Vietnam War, including the Hmong people. Several organizations in Minnesota sought this opportunity, including: Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Services, and Church World Services.

Minnesota was seen as a desirable place for the Hmong people to live because of its educational and economic opportunities. The University of Minnesota also helped support the growth of the Hmong community in the Twin Cities through its Agricultural Extension Service in the 1980s, which provided over 6 million dollars in education, land, and agricultural equipment to Hmong farmers and their families.

Hmong people continued to settle in Minnesota through what is known as secondary migration; family members in Minnesota wanted their families to move to join them in Minnesota, and in this way a large community of Hmong people grew.

Sources:
https://www.mnopedia.org/hmong-and-hmong-americans-minnesota
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/03/01/10-things-hmong
https://sites.google.com/a/macalester.edu/refugees/hmong

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The Hmong people are an ethnic group that originally lived in independent communities in China, but had to leave the country in the 1800s when the Chinese government wanted to create a "united" China and used their military might to suppress ethnic minorities in China, including the Hmong, by invading their land and killing the people who lived there. This suppression led to the Hmong leaving China and going to Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Burma.

When the U.S. government was engaged in the Vietnam War (with the goal of "suppressing communism"), the CIA also covertly recruited Hmong people living in Laos to help their military efforts against the communist movement in Laos.  This is referred to as the Secret War, because it was run by the CIA and not advertised to the public and Congress. As a result of their efforts to help the U.S. government, the Hmong were persecuted when the U.S. left and the communist governments in Vietnam and Laos were in power. Some estimates say that 10% (35,000 people) of the population living in Laos after the war were killed as a result of the Secret War and its aftermath. Because of the violence, the Hmong people had to seek asylum in other countries, including the U.S.

Sources:
https://www.hmongamericancenter.org/hmong-history/
https://www.mnhs.org/hmong/hmong-timeline

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Hmong people originated in China. For many thousands of years, Hmong groups sought independence from Imperial China, but Imperial China suppressed smaller ethnic groups in efforts to "unite" China.

After some major uprisings in the late 1700s through mid-1800s, Imperial China used military efforts to suppress Hmong, leading to a mass exodus of Hmong people to other mountainous areas in Southeast Asia outside of China (Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar).

In the 1960s, JFK authorized recruitment of ethnic minorities in Laos to support covert military operations against communism, leading to a large number of Hmong troops  working with the U.S. military and CIA. Many Hmong people lost their lives during this "Secret War" in the 1960s and 70s.

After the Laotian monarchy was overthrown, Pathet Lao launched efforts to capture or kill Hmong people who had sided with the U.S. CIA during the war, leading to the creation of Chao Fa and Neo Hom movements as well as leading to many Hmong people evacuating/escaping/exiting Laos as refugees.

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, more than 260,000 Hmong live in the United States. Of those, 66,000+ (over 25%) live in Minnesota!

Sources:
https://www.mnhs.org/hmong/hmong-timeline

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Hmong Greetings (Language Lesson, Audio)

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Hmong Greetings (Language Lesson, Audio)

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Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PGvUYGjsAc

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Hmong refers to an ethnic group living primarily in China, Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, and Myanmar.

The image is a map that shows Hmong-Mien languages throughout the region.

Sources: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Hmong
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong_people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong%E2%80%93Mien_languages (map)

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This alphabet is used to write Hmong Dau and Hmong Njua languages (aka White Hmong and Green Hmong).

Source:
https://omniglot.com/writing/nyiakengpuachuehmong.htm

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The flag shown here is of the ChaoFa Federated State (constitution adopted July 1988), which is an organization of Hmong people in Laos who resist the Laotian government and fight for Hmong self-determination. Not all Hmong people support ChaoFa or identify with this flag.

Sources: https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/la-hmong.html
https://www.unrepresentedunitednations.org/en/unrepresented-united-nations-directory/hmong-en