Syracuse, NY.—–Vonn Lee was 12-years-old when she watched her mother, oldest sister and two younger brothers drown in Asia’s Mekong River in 1975, during their escape from Laos at the end of the Vietnam War.

A year later, Vonn immigrated to America where she helped raise her three younger siblings, translated for Hmong refugees, married and started her own family and began a career in nursing.

She always thought about returning to Laos for a visit, but never got around to it.

Sunday, Lee will travel to her homeland on a two-week medical mission with the Hmong District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance based in Thornton, Colo. Read my full story in today’s Post-Standard.

She is a part of a 12-member team that includes a doctor and nurses, all of them Hmongs. The team will provide basic health and dental care to people in Laos and northwestern Thailand.

Lee is making the trip to fulfill field requirement for her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Keuka College, but it’s also personal.

She wants to help her people and put to rest the nightmares that have haunted her for 34 years.

“It will be emotional,” said Lee, 45, a registered nurse at St. Joseph Hospital North Surgery Center in Liverpool. “We’re going to be crossing the Mekong River into Laos. Half my family drowned in the escape from Laos. I think we had too many people trying to escape.”

The Hmong District has done medical missions in China, but this is its first mission in Laos and Thailand, said Xing Kue, who is organizing the mission with his wife, Dr. Ia Kue. The team includes Dr. Kue, six nurses and a dental hygenist, he said.

“We will provide medical service to the needy and by doing so we’re hoping to witness the Gospel,” he said.

For Vonn, the trip will fulfill her personal and professional dreams. She’s always wanted to return to Laos, but never got around to it. Now, she’s going on a medical mission to help her people and put to rest some of the nightmares that have haunted her for 34 years.

It also fulfills field requirement for her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Keuka College. Vonn decided to go back to school last fall after she and her husband became empty nesters. The couple have three children—– BoNhia, 28; Bobby, 23; and Mike, 20.

Source:  http://blog.syracuse.com/metrovoices/2009/07/syracuse_woman_returns_to_her.html

ST. PAUL, MINN. (07/21/2009)(readMedia)– The Concordia University, St. Paul Hmong Culture and Language Program and Dual Language Learner Academy will host its sixth summer camp with a current registration of over 600 students from local metro, state-wide and students from at least five other states, with over 20 language groups represented. The day camp which becomes a mini-United Nations runs July 27-August 7, 2009, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., on the university campus and in an inter-district partnership as a means of forwarding its mission of preserving Hmong and other cultures through storytelling, gardening and the arts, and planting the seeds of academic achievement and higher education attendance for k-12 students. Students will be involved in literacy, science, computers, tennis, heritage music, dance and historical simulations as a means of strengthening ethnic identity and bridging to American culture. We will have local storytellers, musicians, writers and artists as part of our program this year, including: Dyane Garvey, Diego Vasquez, Seexeng Lee and Jen Yang, Bounthavy Kiatoukaysy and Tsong Sawh Lo, as well as Lee Pao Xiong, Director of the Center for Hmong Studies and Dr. Paul Hillmer, Director of the Hmong Oral History Project.

Recently, the program was listed in the Johns Hopkins University National Center for Summer Learning’s excellent summer programs. President Obama’s proclamation and the information regarding the summer programs are on the John’s Hopkins University website.

Our program is funded through the Travelers Foundation, Minneapolis Foundation, the school inter-district partnership and general registrations, as well as having food provided by SODEXO through the USDA Summer Food Program, and directed by Professor Sally Baas and Nao Thao, SEAT Program Associate.

Concordia University, St. Paul is a comprehensive, private university of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and one of 10 schools that comprise the Concordia University System. Established in 1893, Concordia offers more than 40 liberal arts majors, including business administration, education, fine arts, the sciences and church professions. Concordia is a regional leader in accelerated, cohort-delivered, undergraduate degree-completion and master’s degrees in business administration, organizational management, criminal justice and human services. Concordia is the only private university in Minnesota to offer NCAA Division II athletics for men and women. On the Net: www.csp.edu.

Source: http://readme.readmedia.com/news/show/Concordia-University-St-Paul-Hosts-Culture-and-Language-Camp/899167

American-style sports mania will mix with an Asian sense of community and culture this weekend at Marathon Park.

About 1,000 athletes — mostly Hmong, but with all races participating and welcome — are expected to compete in the ninth annual Asian American Sports Festival, organized by Toulee Moua of Wausau. The festival will feature competition in flag football, soccer and volleyball for males and flag football and soccer for females.

There also will be Asian food and merchandise sold at the festival, an event that’s part of a national trend.

“These Hmong sports tournaments are becoming a huge part of what it means to be a Hmong-American,” said Noah Her, 24, of Wausau. “You pick up chicks, meet with friends, shop at different stores and vendors. A lot of it has roots way back in Thailand, where we come from. It’s just a sense of community and bringing the community together again.”

The Wausau tournament is small by national standards. Tens of thousands of athletes, including Her, competed in a tournament over the July 4 weekend in St. Paul, Minn.

But it’s growing.

“When I started, it was slow,” said Moua, 35. “I guess it has grown about 30 percent.”

There’s a low-key, backyard/street vibe to the tournament, but the competition is serious. Moua said first-place teams can take home as much as $2,000.

“I have some friends who play volleyball every night, training,” Her said. “I have friends who have ruined their shoulders from spiking the ball.”

The best athletes become national stars in the Hmong community, he said.

Sports festivals help younger Hmong-Americans bridge the gap between the old life of Laos and Thailand and the new life in the United States, said Thomas Lee, director of the Wausau/Marathon County Diversity Affairs Office.

“The younger generation are more Americanized. They participated in those sports in school,” Lee said. “And now, they’re able to compete at the festival as well.”

Source:  http://www.wausaudailyherald.com/article/20090721/WDH0101/907210427/1981

Hundreds of Hmong team members will rush to Kiwanis Park next weekend to kick off a flag-football competition, something new being added to the Hmong Summer Festival’s lineup of athletic competitions that already includes basketball, soccer and volleyball.

More than 3,000 Hmong will flock from across the state and as far as St. Paul, Minn., to compete in the games, Chue Neng Lee, chairman of the festival, said.

“This generation, there is much more interest in basketball and football,” Lee said. “We would have included them in the last couple of years, but for some reason we couldn’t find a person who could coordinate. This year, we’re lucky.”

He expects to see as many as 15 teams, with 30 to 50 players each, compete in flag football, a popular twist on football in which players pluck flags from opponents instead of tackling them.

Teams can register until the day of the event, but will pay registration fees from $50 to $100, depending on the event, unless they decide on advance registration.

The Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, which hosts the festival, will hand out more than $10,000 in cash prizes to winning sports teams.

Any remaining proceeds from the festival will be donated to the association, which provides services to refugees and the Hmong community of Sheboygan with English, citizenship and Hmong music classes, educational workshops and cultural displays.

Merchants will also be on hand to show off their Hmong clothes, food and homemade jewelry.

“The whole event, it’s fun,” Lee said.

In another nod to the changing tastes of the younger Hmong generation, the festival will drop its traditional top-spinning contest this year. In years past, festival-goers have faced off to spin wooden tops and see whose top spun the longest. Interest has dwindled, Lee said.

The Hmong Mutual Assistance Association, a nonprofit that was created in 1980, has run the Hmong Summer Festival for nearly its entire history.

The Hmong New Year, celebrated near Thanksgiving, is the only other major Hmong celebration.

Reach Kate McGinty at kmcginty@sheboyganpress.com and 453-5125.

Source:  http://www.sheboyganpress.com/article/20090719/SHE04/907190336/1097/Athletics-playing-a-big-part-in-Hmong-Summer-Festival

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) About 100 white bass hitched a short ride recently between two small Ramsey County lakes, but the fish relocation was a bigger step in relations between the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and Southeast Asian anglers.

DNR fisheries workers captured the white bass in Pleasant Lake in North Oaks and trucked them two miles downstream to Sucker Lake in Vadnais Heights. Pleasant Lake is off-limits to fishing, so the fish are now available for anglers to catch.

More specifically, they are available to Southeast Asian anglers, who in recent years have pushed the DNR to put more effort into white bass management. The white-fleshed fish are highly coveted by Hmong and other Southeast Asian anglers because they are tasty and resemble a species native to their homelands.

”It is a good fish to eat, with less bones,” said John Ny Vang, of St. Paul. ”You can steam them and fry them, and the meat is firm.”

White bass are found mostly in large rivers, such as the St. Croix and the Mississippi, but in few lakes. Most of the state’s anglers hold the species in low regard, preferring walleyes, black bass and northern pike species that get the bulk of the DNR’s attention.

But a new St. Paul sportsman’s group has persuaded the DNR to pay more attention to white bass.

The group, the Capitol Sportsman’s Chapter of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association, represents mostly Southeast Asian sportsmen and has interests that include fishing and squirrel hunting. Vang is one of its founding members. He said that in 2007 he presented a program at a DNR round-table, which included Commissioner Mark Holsten, to make white bass a higher priority.

The agency agreed. The DNR’s fisheries managers have developed a four-part plan to publicize more of Minnesota’s white bass hotspots, conduct white bass fishing clinics, test fish for contaminants and try experimental stockings to boost populations.

The Sucker Lake stocking was the first such effort. ”If this works out reasonably well and there is some measure of success, we’re willing to give it a try for a few more years,” said Dirk Peterson, DNR regional fisheries supervisor. ”It’s a small, inexpensive thing we can do and it addresses the concerns of a group that has a strong angling tradition.”

Peterson said the Sucker Lake project costs $1,000 or less.

In the past two decades, the agency has translated fishing regulations into Southeast Asian languages, hired Southeast Asian managers and recruited and hired three Southeast Asian conservation officers.

More recently, those officers and volunteers have been teaching five or six firearms safety classes to Southeast Asian hunters annually.

There are 30,000 to 40,000 Southeast Asian anglers, according to Josee Cung, the DNR’s Southeast Asian liaison officer.

But the white bass program is the DNR’s first wildlife management effort that caters to that group.

”It’s such an important species that many Minnesota Southeast Asian anglers go to Devils Lake in North Dakota to fish for them,” Cung said. ”The Sportsman’s Chapter made the economic argument, if people drive to Devils Lake, why can’t we have more white bass in Minnesota?”

Pleasant Lake is part of St. Paul’s water supply system and off-limits to fishing. The fish are in Pleasant and the connecting chain of lakes because the system is linked to the Mississippi River. The fish survive in Pleasant Lake because it has moving water, but it is doubtful the bass will reproduce in Sucker Lake, Peterson said.

The Pleasant-Sucker relocation makes sense, said Peterson, because both have invasive zebra mussels present. It would be impossible to move the white bass to any lakes that don’t have zebra mussels.

The Pleasant Lake has a similar fish contaminant warning as many Minnesota lakes, limiting anglers to eating one meal of fish per week.

But contaminants are an issue for white bass anglers using other waters. White bass tested in the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers 20 years ago showed high levels of PCBs and mercury. The DNR, along with the Department of Health, will retest those populations soon.

”We actually assume those contaminants will be lower because water quality has improved,” Peterson said.

Using electrical gear and special boats, the DNR captured white bass and moved them to Sucker Lake, which has a public park. The bass averaged about one pound, a typical size for white bass that anglers catch, said DNR fisheries specialist Rick Walsh.

The DNR hopes to expand its Web site and publish a brochure with white bass information.

”It’s a small effort,” said Cung of the Sucker Lake stocking, ”but the community is very appreciative of the effort.”

Source: http://wcco.com/localsportswire/22.0.html?type=local&state=MN&category=s&filename=MN–Outdoors-WhiteBas.xml

Technically, it’s work that’s kept me away from Hmongism for these past few months. But in this harsh economy, I am blessed to even be able to say that! Friends and family all report job cuts and lose of benefits, it’s still hitting close to home. Companies that have been open for decades are looking to downsize and some are even outright closing due to these economic times. Many economists state that we’ll rebound soon, but what happens now when bills are due and money is scarce? We just hope that we have enough to hold out, others aren’t so lucky. Foreclosure is such a common phrase these days that you’ll feel left out if you haven’t considered it or discussed it yourself.

Despite these discouraging economic headlines, now is the time to take the opportunity to improve your situation. College enrollment, coincedently, has increased steadily over the past few years. More and more are people looking to gain valuable skills that will give them that edge over the other 100+ applicants. Now is the time to improve and elevate yourself above all others because competition is more fierce in a job market where postions are scarce and requirements are more specialized.

I consider myself a fairly lucky guy, so it’s with this that I take a minute to thank all of you readers. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to express my own thoughts and opinions in this format. Without you, Hmongism would not exist. The Hmongism movement would not exist. Keep doing what you’re doing and we’ll walk this journey together.

-Hmooj Vang
Editor

Christina Vang and Hua Moua call their project “Hmong -3-2-1,” which like their lives and their art, intertwines with dual meanings.

“It’s like English 101, which means learning,” says Hua. “And in Hmong it stands for the three spirits that come when you die. One spirit goes back to the ancestors or roots. One spirit guards the body. And the third spirit wanders aimlessly in the world.”

That, they say, captures the essence of their senior research and art exhibition project called “The Door in the Mountain,” which caps their four years of study at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. The project, along with 135 other exhibits by senior artists and designers, will be on display at MIAD through May 9.

With the project, Vang and Moua, both born to Hmong parents who immigrated here after the Vietnam War, say they hope to keep alive Hmong culture and spirit that they fear might be slipping away as new generations assimilate here.

The Hmong have passed on history and culture through hand-sewn picture story cloths and storytelling because a written Hmong language wasn’t developed until the 1950s by missionaries.

One of eight children, Vang, 22, was born and raised in Milwaukee and attended Brown Deer High School. She remembers watching her mother sew quilts for Hmong festivals.

Moua, 24, was born in Merced, Calif., also one of eight children. In 2000 her family moved to Madison, where she finished high school at Madison West. She, too, cherishes childhood memories of her mother stitching cloths. Her father played the musical Hmong reed instrument and told the ancient tales designed to entrance and teach.

“All my family worked with their hands and work in artistic ways,” she adds. “My older sister is a fashion designer. My brother works with cars. Once I jumped on the computer and learned Adobe, I was hooked,” she says of her love of graphic design.

The two women found that, although they grew up in traditional Hmong households, the dominant culture pulled them away.

“As we got older we did see that we loved our roots, but that we were assimilating and forgetting because the Hmong have no country to go back to, so it’s hard to hold on to the culture,” says Moua.

At MIAD the two joined their cultural passion with their love of graphic design to create their senior project, which interprets traditional folk tales through design. They made story cloth posters, fabric dolls and sculpture, illustrated folk tale books, and a CD. All are placed in a space that includes a table and bright, comfortable pillows to create a storytelling atmosphere.

The project included research and collecting the folk tales anew. Moua’s father, Chuechoular Moua, was only too happy to assist by retelling the ancient tales. His favorite is “Dao Ton’s Heavy Heart.”

It tells the story of a man who, like himself, plays the reed wind instrument. One day he’s called by the Sky King to play at his daughter’s funeral. “On the way he talks to the others about how much he misses his wife. The spirit, who becomes a tiger, hears his sorrows and captures his wife,” he says. Dao must then go through many adventures with the tiger to finally win his wife back.

“The lesson is that when you go away, you don’t talk about your wife or your family,” he says. “In our culture, it’s a sign of respect not to talk about your family, but to hold them in your heart.”

Other cultural assistance and support were provided by the Hmong Association of Sheboygan and others in the Hmong community. The two would like to see their exhibit live on, possibly at the Hmong cultural center that’s being built in Madison or another venue.

The exhibit’s title, “The Door in the Mountain,” describes the hope for younger generations of Hmong, who came from the rural mountains of Laos.

“There’s a story about a couple that didn’t know how to handle a problem, so they went to a wise man,” says Vang. “He advised them to go to the door in the mountain, which means to return to their roots and culture. That’s what this means to us.”

Source: http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/43321707.html