Hmong community members gathered in the state Capitol on May 14, Hmong-Lao Veterans Day, to recognize the 50th anniversary of Hmong people’s resettlement in the United States and to push for further investment in Wisconsin’s southeast Asian communities.
Between the mid-1970s and late 1990s, more than 100,000 Hmong immigrants — predominantly from Vietnam and Laos — fled their home countries and restettled in the U.S. due to violent discrimination against Hmong people for their assistance to the U.S. during the Vietnam War. The Hmong population is the largest Asian-American Pacific Islander ethnic group in Wisconsin, at around 58,000 people.
Liam Beran
'Ever since the arrival of Hmong families in Dane County at the Bayview Community Center, the Hmong people have maintained and prioritized the preservation of their culture, traditions and values, through keeping their unique style of community leadership through electing clan leaders in each state, county and city,' said Brenda Yang, who represents part of Sun Prairie on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. Yang, the first person of Hmong descent elected to the board, noted the contributions of local leaders such as Nkauj Nou Vang-Vue, principal of Lake View Elementary, and Mai Zong Vue and Peng Her, CEOs of the Madison-based Hmong Institute, to doing 'the work of eliminating the cycle of trauma.'
Liam Beran
'Our communities did not come here by choice. We came here because of war, because of displacement, and because of U.S. foreign policy,' said Xiong, a senior leader at Madison-based social justice nonprofit Freedom Action Now. Xiong pushed for investment in 'culturally specific victim services, investing in housing and healing and supporting leadership pathways for Southeast Asian youth, especially those who are trans and queer.'
Liam Beran
'What we forget, especially in this country, for Asian Americans, specifically for southeast Asians, is that there's a number of us that actually live here in the Midwest,' said Pheng Thao, co-executive director of the Southeast Asian Freedom Network. Thao, who was five when he came to the U.S., said southeast Asian communities are facing language and cultural identity loss, an issue that he said becomes increasingly severe with stricter federal immigration enforcement. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in March deported Ma Yang, a Milwaukee resident and Hmong-American woman, to Laos, a country she had never been to. 'Those who came here as refugees, my generation, are being detained and deported back to Laos, a country that they do not know, or to Cambodia, a country that they've never seen, or to Vietnam, to a to a place [where] they do not know the language,' said Thao. 'This is double punishment, and this is something that our families are forced to reconcile with again.'
