Among the Hmong

I was telling Kou how impressed I was. Even as a low-level English student, she had completed her worksheet rather quickly and with little pronunciation help from me. Despite her modesty, I assured her she was doing a great job with a difficult language. As a point of comparison, I shared with her that I only knew one phrase in her Hmong language — "nyob zoo," or "hello."

In mentioning this to Kou, a mother of seven who came to the United States several years ago, I had no intention of improving my Hmong vocabulary. But, typical of the hospitality I had encountered all week in my cross-cultural experience within the St. Paul Hmong community, Kou suddenly began to instruct me in a flurry of Hmong phrases. Before her English instructor at Hmong American Partnership called us all together for lunch, I had scribbled down dozens of Hmong phrases, from "thank you" and "see you tomorrow" to "wash face," "tired," and "I have children" and pronounced them all to a quality that no longer made her laugh.

Although only one of many unforgettable experiences from the past 10 days, this moment on Thursday summed up my underlying realization from this cross-cultural study: that those of us in the ethnic majority can be endlessly enriched by taking time to learn about the culture of our neighbors, and we ought to do so. Even though I already spoke the dominant language and knew the dominant social system in my community, there was no reason to make people like Kou do all the learning. Particularly if we are the good, caring Christians we like to think we are, this sort of thing ought to be a two-way street.

Sadly, I don't know that I ever would have made that realization without this 15-day cross-cultural experience, the likes of which every student in my Master of Divinity program at Luther Seminary is required to complete. I chose to focus on the Hmong population in the Twin Cities since I had some contact with people in the Green Bay Hmong community, particularly when I was a news reporter at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. I have known Hmong people since grade school, but (largely since children tend to integrate more quickly into the mainstream American culture) I never bothered to learn much about their culture. I think that reflects a human tendency not to become interested in someone else's world unless we are forced to become a part of it.

Many of the Hmong were forced to become a part of our world in the United States. Back in their home country of Laos, Hmong people in 1960 secretly joined forces with the United States to fight communism. Through the Vietnam War, Hmong soldiers were instrumental in blocking transport of communist supplies to South Vietnam and rescuing downed pilots. But when the United States backed out in 1975, the Hmong were left to face the communists on their own, and many fled to Thailand and later America to save their lives and preserve their freedom. Estimates are that there are now between 200,000 and 300,000 Hmong people living in the United States, with the Twin Cities home to the nation's largest urban Hmong population, above 60,000.

Knowing that story, I had already respected the Hmong greatly. But now I have learned a great deal more about their fascinating culture, such as their clan structure and the close-knit families that influence so much of their lives (the photo above shows us learning how to eat in the more communal Hmong fashion). Then there are the extensive and often expensive expectations that they face through their traditions and rituals (such as the traditional three-and-a-half-day funeral, which typically draws 3,000 to 4,000 people and costs $35,000 to $40,000, or the intricate marriage negotiations, with an average $8,000 or so paid as a dowry from the groom's family to the bride's). I'll address the fascinating aspects of the Hmong religious landscape in a later blog entry.

We have also gotten to meet and learn from some of the most amazing people from within the Twin Cities' Hmong community. Among them are Dr. Yang Dao, who served on the Laotian Congress and played a pivotal role in limiting the bloodshed after the communists took power; the Rev. Naw-Karl Mua, who in 2003 was captured by the communist government while studying the Hmong groups still hiding in the Laotian jungle; and Kou Vang, a developer and funeral home operator who soon ended up in the Green Bay-area media as a spokesman for his family when a relative was killed while hunting in Northeastern Wisconsin. And in general, the Hmong people we've met have been just unbelievably friendly, in welcoming us to their church or even insisting that we eat dinner at their parent's funeral.

Unfortunately, I don't know that the Hmong have always received the same degree of hospitality from those like me in the mainstream American culture. Clearly, some folks have done a lot to usher in them and those of other refugee and immigrant communities, but I think many of us could go to greater lengths to embrace their cultures as they must embrace ours. I got a real taste of what it must be like for them while finding myself lost in a language I don't understand during Hmong church services and our group exercises; the people who step back to our culture and recognize that we're newcomers to theirs have made all the difference. Now, I feel so much better equipped to help out people of other cultures just because I'll be more interested in where they're coming from. And as Kou reminded me, teaching and learning should go hand in hand for all of us.