[ndlr] Inédit dans l’Equipe Magazine (édition du 3 mai 2014), l’histoire de la famille Moua. Reportage de Karim Ben-Ismaïl. Photos Laurent Gudin.
Il y a soixante ans, leur famille combattait avec l’armée française dans les montagnes environnant Diên Biên Phu. Héritiers d’une lignée de maîtres de kung-fu, les frères MOUA brillent aujourd’hui dans les sports de combat.
There are roughly 30,000 Hmong-Americans living in Saint Paul, Minnesota today, more than any other city in the country. The Twin Cities Metro area has a Hmong population of 64,000. While those may seem like small numbers when compared to the total population of 3.28 million in Twin Cities Metro, they are significant for a culture that has been historically small and relatively insular. […]
Oskar Ly is a Hmong French American living in Saint Paul. She grew up in a traditional Hmong household where her mother was always sewing, and as she got older Ly decided she wanted to make her own fashions. Ly is a fashion designer, hair and makeup artist, singer and songwriter, and much of what she does is to foster and promote Hmong arts and talent in the Saint Paul area.
It was through Hmong-organized open mics that Ly found her voice, so to speak, and was able to explore singing and songwriting. “Those are things I didn’t get to practice growing up,” she says. “It wasn’t encouraged. [Hmong] parents came from a refugee background and wanted something more for us; they wanted [their children to have] traditional careers.”
For her, creating music is an opportunity to celebrate and share Hmong culture. It doesn’t necessarily have to be Hmong music; it can be inspired by pop, folk, hip-hop, or anything else. “I personally don’t write in Hmong but others do,” she says. “People find self empowerment in their own language when even their parents don’t read or write in Hmong. We’re losing our language by the generation. Hmong don’t have their own national country; we’re hill tribe people. Because of a long history of being persecuted, Hmong people never had the ability to capture their language like other counties have in terms of writing – even something as simple as the alphabet [doesn’t exist].”
[ndlr] Message de Jean Michaud paru initialement sur VSG et reproduit sur Mémoires d’Indochine avec son aimable autorisation.
Richard Owens with Hmong farmers during harvest season for dry rice in Thuan Chau district, Son La Province, Northwest Vietnam.
This to congratulate Richard Owens who has recently defended successfully his PhD dissertation in social anthropology at University of Georgia (USA) titled “Measuring smallholder land investments in Northwest Vietnam: A cross-cultural study of three highland villages in Phỏng Lái commune, Sơn La province.”
His abstract states:
“In this dissertation, I investigate the connection between land tenure and the conservation of natural resources in the northwestern uplands of Vietnam (Son La province) through a focus on the political and economic forces that shape smallholder investment practices. Within a historically-informed context, I analyze and compare smallholder land use decisions among Kinh, Hmong, and Thai groups considering identity, cultural practices, and household economics. Recently, Vietnam has banned swidden agriculture in favor of the intensification of upland agriculture. To that purpose, it has provided technology, subsidies, and extension services targeted to lowland majority development models.
During the course of this dissertation, I analyze soil conservation activities in three villages (between and within designs) and across the commune at the household level. Results from investment activities (short-term, long-term and household rate categories) show that smallholders’ long-term investments are significantly smaller in relation to household investments. I contend that there are a number of social, economic, and environmental reasons for why Hmong, Thai and Kinh are not making significant soil conservation investments. State polices aimed at suppressing swidden agriculture have been replaced with intensive upland farming, leading to increased erosion and land degradation. Traditional swidden systems do not require inputs, hence they are not receiving long-term investments. Upland farming is possible through the use of inorganic fertilizers that are necessary for HYV maize production. Examining the failure of the property rights to conserve natural resources this research makes a significant contribution to the theory of property rights This study considers the socio-cultural and economics dynamics of land title and natural resource management. “
What I would also like to stress about Richard’s work is that he finds that ethnicity matters when locals get to assess economic opportunities and make strategic choices. The Hmông and Thái ways, he finds, are distinct from the Kinh’s and express different views on modernity, identity and aspirations. His research thus dovetails nicely with other recent dissertations based in rural communities of the northern highlands stressing that these non-Kinh societies show creativity and pro-activity in the course of their social and symbolic reproduction, such as (among others) Jennifer Sowerwine (Berkeley 2004), Bent Jørgensen (Göteborg 2006), Tran Hong Hanh (Freie U. Berlin 2006), Christine Bonnin (McGill 2011), Achariya Choowonglert (Chiang Mai 2012), Ho Ngoc Son (ANU 2012), and O’Briain (Sheffield 2012).
Jean Michaud
Département d’Anthropologie / Université Laval (Québec)
[ndlr] Tension croissante en novembre entre les H’mongs et les autorités locales. Analyse d’Eglises d’Asie.
Bien qu’ils soient parvenus jusque dans la capitale pour faire entendre leurs protestations, les H’mongs de quatre provinces septentrionales du Vietnam continuent d’être victimes de la répression des autorités locales. Les forces de l’ordre ont pris pour cible leurs maisons funéraires, construites pour y déposer les défunts et y accomplir les rites funéraires.
Les agents de la Sécurité publique organisent des opérations destinées à détruire les maisons funéraires, constructions symboliques du changement de vie introduit par la religion « Duong Van Minh » [Dương Văn Mình], qualifiée de « culte pervers » (Ta Dao) par le gouvernement. De plusieurs sources convergentes (1), on apprend que, dans la matinée du 24 novembre, les forces de la Sécurité publique ont lancé une opération contre le village de Na Heng, commune de Nam Vang (ou Nam Quang), district de Bao Lam, dans la province de Cao Bang, frontalière de la Chine. Dès la veille au soir, d’importantes forces de police avaient été rassemblées au chef-lieu du district. Lors de l’attaque, au matin avant l’aube, une quarantaine de H’mongs s’étaient porté à la hauteur de la maison funéraire pour essayer de la protéger. Selon les témoignages oraux rapportés par la population, 37 personnes auraient été blessées et 17 menottées et arrêtées par les forces de l’ordre. Celles-ci ont également confisqué toutes les caméras et les appareils photographiques.
The Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University-St. Paul is pleased to announce its Fifth International Conference on Hmong Studies. The purpose of this conference is to provide opportunities for emerging and established Hmong and non-Hmong scholars to share their research on Hmong related topics, to inspire and motivate students to engage in scholarly research, and to recognize distinguished scholars for their work in the field of Hmong Studies.
Call for Papers/Presentations
The Fifth International Conference on Hmong Studies is seeking proposals for individual papers and organized panels.
For individual papers, please provide the title, a 250-word abstract, name and affiliation, contact information, and a one-page curriculum vitae or brief biography. Individual presentations should run no longer than 60 minutes and should include 15 minutes for questions and discussions.
Organized panels should consist of three to four panelists and one moderator. Please provide a title, brief description of the panel, 250-word abstracts for each paper, and the names and institutional affiliations of all participants. Each panel is allotted 60 minutes, inclusive of open forum.
Please submit individual papers and panel proposals to Xiong@csp.edu. The deadline for submission of papers and proposals is November 29, 2013. Complete papers are due by February 28, 2014. Selected papers will be considered for publication in an edited volume by the Center for Hmong Studies.
Topics may include but are not limited to:
Acculturation & Adaptation
Art, Music & Media
Business & Economic Development
Culture & Society
Language, Linguistics & Literature
Current Hmong Issues
Diaspora Community
Education
Families & Children
Gender Relations
Health & Wellness
Hmong in China, Thailand, Laos, France, etc.
Hmong History
Hmong Identity
Leadership
Politics
Religious Beliefs & Practices
Urbanization
Youth
All tracks will be presented in English unless noted. When submitting your proposal, please indicate whether your presentation will be in Hmong, English or other languages. Proposals should be submitted to Xiong@csp.edu.
Please direct questions concerning this Call for Papers or the conference to:
Lee Pao Xiong, Director
Center for Hmong Studies
Concordia University, St. Paul
1282 Concordia Avenue
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55104 Phone: 651-641-8870
Personal Memories of Operation White Star in Laos, 1961 by Colonel Alfred H. Paddock, Jr., US Army (Retired).
by SWJ Editors
Operation White Star was a program, started in 1959, in which deployed US Army Special Forces detachments advised Royal Laotian government forces in their operations against the Pathet Lao communist insurgency. Later the program evolved to include training of Kha and Meo (Hmong) hill tribal groups in guerilla warfare against the Pathet Lao. Most of the Special Forces detachments advised Royal Laotian Army units, while a few others organized hill tribes under the direction of the CIA. In 1961 our A-detachment from the 77th Special Forces Group at Fort Bragg, NC, worked with both programs. I will share some of my memories of this unique experience in this essay.
Our Special Forces A-detachment consisted of Captain Jim Ipsen, commander, me as a lieutenant executive officer, and 10 NCOs with medical, weapons, communications, demolitions, intelligence, and operations specialties. The team was so configured that it could be split and still retain these basic specialties. Because of the classified nature of White Star at that time, we deployed wearing civilian clothes and carrying DOD civil service ID cards. I’m sure that we fooled few.
[ndlr] Sur son site personnel l’écrivain londonien Paul Bogdanor consacre une page aux sources en ligne sur les “Bains de sang de gauche”. Nous avons extrait de sa liste les sources concernant directement le Viêt Nam, le Laos et le Cambodge. Textes de chercheurs, de journalistes ou de simples témoins sont répertoriés aux côtés de rapports d’enquête et de documents d’archives. On y retrouve le débat sur les victimes de la réforme agraire de 1953-1956 en RDVN, des documents sur les techniques de répression des “contre-révolutionnaires” dans les trois pays, des témoignages sur les goulags vietnamiens et laotiens après 1975 et sur le génocide cambodgien perpétré par les Khmers rouges. Certains de ces textes seront évoqués en introduction de la séance 6 du séminaire. Les annotations sont celles de l’auteur.
Left-Wing Bloodbaths
Radical leftists would have us believe that they stand for democracy, progress, human rights and social justice. But when they seize power, they introduce slavery, terror, famine, concentration camps and mass murder. As the Marxists used to say, this is no accident.
Vietnam Goes on Trial in Geneva Over Its Refugees [PDF] – Communist ethnic cleansing literally drove the Chinese population into the sea, where hundreds of thousands of boat people suffered and drowned.