(gentle music) (birds chirping) (footsteps thumping) (rhythmic music) (voices speaking amongst each other) (rhythmic music continues) (rhythmic music continues) - Thanks for coming.

- Thank you.

- Good morning and (speaking in foreign language).

Happy New Year, Happy Hmong New Year.

This year marks a very special year for the Hmong people as well.

We are also celebrating our 50th year here in the United States of America.

(audience applauding) (rhythmic music continues) - Sometimes we have a pretty simple narrative of where we came from, right?

(rhythmic music continue) There are myths and theories and all kinds of assumptions.

(rhythmic music continues) - It's 50 years since we've been here, and even though in Wisconsin Hmong is the largest Asian group, they still ask us, "Who are the Hmong people, why did they come here?"

- To be part of America, you gotta remember where you're coming from.

And if you find that balance, you'll find a stronger community.

- It's our history, our experiences, actually taught a lot about global history.

And people often ask me, "Why do they choose Wisconsin?"

Right.

(rhythmic music continues) (birds chirping) (gentle music) Sometimes we Hmong Americans, we who now live in the United States, we trace our history back to Laos.

To me, it is a much longer history.

Hmong people are a ethnic group who, like many other Asian groups, right, originated from China.

In Chinese history, you'll see the group called Miao.

That's a nationality in China now.

It encompasses several groups, and Hmong is just one of those groups.

Hmong people have always called ourselves Hmong in our own language, but other people have called us by different names.

In 19th and 20th century, Hmong people became one of those groups that left China due to war, economic challenges, and also people seeking new opportunities.

What we call push factor, as well as pull factors, that influenced many Hmong to move southward, to Northern Vietnam, to Northern Laos, and smaller population to places like Myanmar or Burma.

(downbeat music) We were regarded as people who were very primitive, people who are just agrarian, and their lives are much different from those who live in the low lands.

Elders talked a lot about the disrespect, the name calling, the, you know, they didn't feel welcome.

But during the French colonial era, there were people who fought very hard to maintain their independence.

(downbeat music continues) - My great-grandparents came from China.

(rhythmic music) They came to Laos around 1880.

My family lived there for many years.

They are farmers and they also raised animals such as beef cattle, water buffalo, horses and so on.

(rhythmic music continue) I had a lot of memories because I'm born and raised in the countryside mountains.

We are the first ones to see the sun, the last ones to see the sundown.

I did a lot of thing that countryside kids do.

Play games, climb trees, fishing, hunting.

Compared to other family, my parents are sensitive to our life and they allow both boys and girls to go to school back there.

We have to learn Lao.

We have to learn French also, because Laos is a French colony.

- French colonialism directly influenced Hmong people who lived in the mountains.

When you're a ethnic minority group, where you don't have claim to a specific nation state or geographic area, you don't really have a choice to just be neutral and go on with your life.

You are perpetually fighting for survival, and if you're gonna be involved, who are you going to align with that will benefit you the most?

So many fought with and others fought against the French, in the various wars that the French fought in Indochina.

After 1950, Hmong helped many of the French to fight against many of the nationalists in Laos and in Vietnam.

(birds chirping) And then that translated to what became the Vietnam War.

- [Reporter] Laos, the strategic key to Southeast Asia's richest areas, was attacked by guerilla forces from communist Vietnam.

(explosions booming) (gentle music) - The Vietnam War started from 1960.

My dad was in military already.

(gentle music continues) At first he was with more of a group that is protecting the civilian.

And then after 1964, he has been transferred to the front zone, front line.

(gentle music continues) We fought just to protect our country, just so that we have a place to live.

That's the only thing in mind.

But after that then I understand that the whole thing was that the Hmong were recruited by the U.S.

Intelligence Agency to stop the supply line, because Laos was a jumping board from the North Vietnam coming through the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the South.

(gentle music continues) (guns booming) (explosions booming) - [Chia] Laos is supposed to be a neutral country.

Outsiders weren't supposed to be there.

But everybody was in Laos.

And so American troops trained local people to serve as foot soldiers, to really fight against the infiltration of North Vietnamese who were going through Laos territory, as part of what became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

(rhythmic music) We became America's foot soldiers in Laos, as part of what people often called the U.S.

secret war in Laos, directly in support of the larger Vietnam War efforts.

(rhythmic music continues) Laos was also going through a civil war, so it's much more complex.

You don't have just one side or the factions who support one or the other.

For the Hmong, they have to protect their families.

I mean, people saw so many family members die, so who was going to supply them with weapons, right?

The Americans were willing to do that.

(footsteps crunching) - My dad, he talks a little bit about it, not a lot.

There's a lot of PTSD, a lot of depressions.

My father always say, you know, "It's a big balloon full of water.

If you don't have a big enough bucket to catch it, don't poke at it because you would be splashed."

And when the secret war started, he was asked to start with a group of maybe a hundred military soldiers.

When he got to about district level as a lieutenant colonel, he refused that title because he doesn't want any more of killing in his family.

(Mai singing in foreign language) (Mai continues singing in foreign language) He has lost one of his brother.

He was a spy for intelligence for the military.

Another brother died during the war.

It was really tough for him.

I have a few flashback memories of the enemy burning our villages and we were forced to go and hide out.

And then in 1975, the campaign to wipe out the Hmong people who were allied with the United States.

And so thousands and thousands of people journey from the mountain down to the capital, and then journey across the Mekong River to Thailand to become refugees.

(Mai continues singing in foreign language) (Mai continues singing in foreign language) - [Chia] After the communist takeover, many times people have told me that when they left, they thought it was temporary.

When things get better that they would return home.

When it became clear that it wasn't going to just be temporary, then you have the mobs of people coming, fleeing, finding their own way out.

(downbeat music) - [Lang] The life in refugee camp was very tough.

As a refugee, almost like throwing a dart out there.

I mean throwing wherever you land.

- The Hmong women and men started to do needlework to stay healthy.

In Laos, we do a small one to give as a gift, and it expanded really, really big in Ban Vinai, during the refugee camp, so they don't go crazy with all the PTSD and all the crazy things from the secret war.

- Thankfully, the U.S.

government still allow the Hmong to go to America.

(helicopters whirring) We were involved, our parents were involved in the Vietnam War.

That's why we had the opportunity to come here.

- Through the U.S.

lens, we are now needing to protect these people who are now fleeing communism.

People were taken to prison camp.

People went and they never come back.

Education seminars, and they didn't come back.

And so do you stay and live in fear, or do you try to leave and hope that there's something better?

(gentle music) - And this is the process to come to America.

We start applying then for interview, this our interview.

This, we take an oath to come to America.

When you come here, you're going to serve America, you not betray.

This our plane from Thailand to San Francisco.

And the picture here, the picture that we get out of the gate, will come to America at Green Bay, December, 1979.

(plane engine whirring) (rhythmic music) (engine roaring) - In February, we were about to land in the United States.

Must have been fresh snow on the ground because as far as my eye could see it's just pure white.

The sliding door opened and we were greeted by our sponsors, and they're tall, blonde, and I turned to my older brother and I say, "Now I understood why the American people are so white because they live in a white country."

(rhythmic music) - People often ask me, "Why do they choose Wisconsin?"

Because now you have California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the three states that have the largest Hmong population.

I say, "You can blame the Lutheran churches, you can blame the Scandinavian churches."

I joke about it, but it's the truth, right?

At the national level, they work with all these volunteer agencies like Catholic charities and Lutheran Social Services, and then they would find sponsors at the local level.

Here in Wisconsin, so many churches just stepped up to bring refugee families here.

Refugee resettlement spread us all over the country, but then we do what other immigrants that have come to this country do.

We practice what is called chain migration.

One person here said, "Oh, in Milwaukee you can have support to find jobs or you can have job training or ESL classes, because there are more refugees in the same place."

- I was born in the refugee camp in Ban Vinai in Northern Thailand.

My parents, and especially my mother, worked really hard to just love us, even though we had nothing.

About six, seven years later, we finally came to the United States.

I remember getting into the metal bird, as my sisters and I described the airplane.

I also remember when we arrived in Georgia, walking through the airport and just being amazed.

Imagine a seven-year-old who was walking without shoes on a dirt road, to now being in this modern-day building where planes are taking off and landing.

(engine roaring) If I close my eyes and tell you about it, I can see it in my head, I can see it in my mind as I tell you and describe.

But the feeling is one that I've never felt ever again.

In Georgia, my parents went for a very long time without jobs.

My maternal uncle had suggested that they move to Wisconsin because there was employment, and that there was such a thing as English as a second language courses, so that they could go to the technical school to learn skills so that they could be employed.

When we arrived in Sheboygan, all the refugee children were placed together, irrespective of age or grade, in one classroom.

I don't know if this was intended or not, but it allowed all the Hmong kids to keep that identity and sense of community.

- When we came to Wisconsin, we all are equal in starting, from language, from culture, from working, you name it, anything.

And so we have a very close-knit community, but yet, oh, the culture shock comes in and then the racial started to happen, where the middle fingers start to come in or, you know, just yelling things like, "Go back to your hometown."

You know.

- By 1980, '81-ish, during the recession, you began to see what we call a compassion fatigue.

Many poor Americans were wondering, "Why are we helping all these refugees?"

And so there's all kinds of protests.

"Why you using public funds to help these people?"

Many people didn't think we would survive in this country.

In fact, some people thought we were on the road to extinction.

No one survives alone.

We know that we have to survive.

We know that we have to fight for ourselves.

- [Mai] We would have financial co-op, we would have funeral co-op.

We have lovely, delicious community potluck.

- We have to help each other as much as possible, take people to, teach them how to drive.

One of my uncles, he got only one two-door Toyota Silica, and then sometime we fit six or seven in there, just to move people around.

- Because very few people can read and speak English, I have to sit with family to translate Hmong to English, English to Hmong.

Many times I have to take their wife to deliver baby and, you know, then say, "How do you want to name your son or your daughter?"

I say, "No, I'm here to translate, the father don't speak English."

(rhythmic music) So Lang said, well, "We need to probably compile a dictionary to see if we can help some people."

(rhythmic music continues) - I start to word by word, do the translation word by word, and back then no computer, just typewriter.

And so a lot of making correction, a lot of typing.

We were very happy that we got this done to help the refugee community that have a little or no English yet.

- They were collaborating with mainstream organizations to offer English language classes, and they create their own nonprofit organizations.

For example, HAFA, Hmong American Friendship Association.

- They said, "Well, we gotta have an organization that serve our people who speak Hmong, who understands our cultures."

We had 17 different social service program, from elderly, youth, housing, on and on.

It was tremendously hard, but we are making a difference.

We are helping to make a difference.

(rhythmic music continues) - It's such a fun time for me growing up.

The unity is there and the structure is there to support each other.

And then the '90s comes and, you know, it was different.

The honeymoon stage is now kind of over, right?

We are a community that adopt pretty quick and adjust very well, and I'm really happy for the young people now in society with all the opportunity.

But I'm also sad that they are missing out on learning about what does being Hmong mean, right?

(rock music) - Hi!

- You know, when I was a kid, I was the only Asian person in a white town and all my classmates are white.

(rock music continues) I hated the Hmong culture.

I don't want any Hmong accent.

I was, "Oh God, I want to be American."

(rock music continues) (fireworks booming) It was one of those things that you want to be American so bad, you want to integrate.

It was very lonely.

It was, ooh, it was tough.

(rock music continues) - When I became the first Hmong teacher hired by the Milwaukee public schools, I quickly learned that my students were facing living in two worlds.

As soon as we enter the house, we need to honor our Hmong culture.

And so as soon as we step out of the house, we wanted to be Americanized.

In 2000, my husband and I decided to travel back to Thailand to visit the refugee camp, after being in the United States for 25 years.

And I remember for the first time I burst into tears.

I realized that without our heritage, we are nothing.

And so that is the reason why Hmong American Peace Academy was born.

In our curriculum we have a Hmong culture strength component, kindergarten through high school.

We teach Hmong history, Hmong culture, and Hmong language.

We want to celebrate our culture.

Education is just not about reading and writing, but it's about the people that you're surrounded with.

(rhythmic music) Oh, thank you!

From my observations, I think that the young Hmong people are changing, and not only that, but they're holding on the Hmong culture.

For my generations, we are called Hmong American, but, in the next generations we are going to have our young people called American Hmong.

(rhythmic music continues) - That's how I think about culture.

We share, we take, and we improve on, you know, our practices.

What can we let go and how can we take on new practices so that we can support everyone?

(rhythmic music continues) - When we moved to Laos, Hmong culture mingled with Lao.

We moved to Thailand, same thing happened.

In America, same thing happened.

In the old days, women don't go to school, women don't get a job, they stay home.

Right now we have women who have a wonderful career, politicians as well too.

- In the United States, I am the first elected judge of Hmong descent without appointment.

The support from the Hmong community was just so amazing because that support came from all places beyond Wisconsin.

And at that point, despite all of our successes as a community, I think we felt that we could have more by way of representation.

And I just happened to then be in that right place at the right time.

(gentle music) - Like I said, I wish I have a crystal ball.

But I think we will continue to struggle and we will continue to work hard.

At the end, I think we will balance it out, just like any Wisconsinite would be, in that we will have both the good and the bad.

(gentle music continues) - For me, it's concrete.

I am Hmong ethnic, but I came and become citizen.

I work.

I know I belong here.

(gentle music continues) So for me, I am both Hmong and American.

50 50, let's put it that way.

Hmong is my blood, American is my country.

(gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) (rhythmic music) (rhythmic music continues) (rhythmic music continues) (rhythmic music continues) (rhythmic music continues)