ShawneeDispatch.com

Talking about the journey from their homeland in Laos to the United States, and the struggles the family faced once they got here, still brings tears to Sarah Yang's eyes.

Speaking in her native language, Hmong, Sarah recounts the Yang family's story of living in a strange land, knowing no one and having few understand her language or her culture.

Nearly 30 years later, some of the Hmong would say not much has changed. Meeting someone who knows their history, their distinct culture, is rare. But thanks to a traveling children's exhibit that arrived at Wonderscope Children's Museum in Shawnee this week, that could change for the area's Hmong population, about 3,000 refugees who largely live in Kansas City, Kan.

The interactive exhibit leads children on a journey through the daily life of the Hmong, from a village in Laos, to a refugee camp in Thailand, to an American Hmong home. The Yang Family -- Paul and Sarah, their son Wayne, and his wife, Alina -- hope the exhibit helps their neighbors understand who they are.

The Secret War

The Hmong's origins are hard to trace, but they are a culture distinct from any other in Asia.

They are not Chinese or Mongolian, and some think they migrated to the area that is now Siberia from the Middle East in about 4,000 BC. They slowly moved south to the fertile lands of the Yellow River, and Chinese persecution forced them even further south to Laos.

They were a nomadic agricultural society with an animistic religion -- they believed there are spirits in everything, and they honor their ancestral spirits to protect them from evil spirits. However, most Hmong in the Kansas City area converted to Christianity before coming to America.

They have several cultural traits that separate them from their Asian neighbors. For example, they are the only Asian culture that does not use chopsticks, the Yangs say -- they prefer to use spoons or their hands.

Americans are familiar with the Hmong because the CIA recruited them to help ambush the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War in what became known as the Secret War. In 1974, after the United States began withdrawing from Vietnam and Laos, the Hmong became targets of the communist Vietnamese for aiding the Americans and, before them, the French.

"Any Hmong that would be left would be tried and killed," Wayne Yang said. "It left the Hmong the bad guy, or in our words of today, the terrorist."

The Vietnamese slowly hunted down the Hmong, and they were forced to flee to Thailand, where refugee camps were established. Many then came to America or Europe.

Now, they are a culture in transition; one that is facing an interesting shift of becoming American while struggling to hold onto its identity.

Wayne Yang was born in Laos but spent most of his life in America and understands that some of the younger generations don't know as much about their culture as their parents. Today he teaches anthropology at Kansas City Kansas Community College while he completes his master's degree at Kansas University, and hopes to someday to complete a Ph.D. Yang said he wouldn't have developed such a passion for his culture himself had it not been for a research paper he wrote in 1999.

"We learned some things, but we didn't really learn the history of our own ethnicity," he said. "Doing that research paper really opened by eyes."

Perilous journey

Wayne Yang was 5 years old when he came to the United States in 1979, but he has a few vivid memories of living in Laos, mostly involving his family's escape.

By 1978, the Yang family was waiting for the communists to make their way to their village in north central Laos. Wayne remembers a little of their house, situated on a hill, and his family farming on the hillside. But he particularly remembers the day his family was forced to flee their home.

Wayne said his parents woke him up one morning, with smoke in the air, and his parents told him and his siblings they had to hurry because the Vietnamese were coming. They quickly packed together a few belongings and set out through the jungle.

"My father, right before we left, he threw his gun away, threw it back at the house," Wayne said. "That way the communists couldn't say we were fighting against them."

Wayne remembers being in the jungle with no food with other Hmong families, making their way to the Thai border on a 16-day trek. He remembers once the men killed an elephant for food, which he said tasted pretty good, and times when the jungle was bright with fire, as the communists tried to burn the Hmong refugees out.

"We had to make our way in the dark so the communists wouldn't see us, because they were watching the border," he said.

At one point, Yang says, his parents had to give him and his siblings opium because they wouldn't stop crying and were making too much noise. His parents tell him sometimes children would die in the jungle because their parents would accidently give them too much opium; many other Hmong died of starvation in the jungle. Sarah Yang estimates only a third of her relatives were able to escape the country.

Wayne's clearest memory is reaching the Mekong River that forms the Thai border. Though it was very wide, Wayne, his parents and his brother and sister would have to try to cross it with just an inner tube, purchased from Thai people who sold them to help the Hmong escape, and two trash bags his parents inflated for make-shift floating devices.

Yang and his sister, as the youngest, were put in the inner tube, with their mother using her clothes to pack them in tight before putting them in the river.

"My feet hit the pebbles and I started screaming, and I remember we heard gun shots from down the river," Yang said. "I fell asleep then because of exhaustion, and when I woke up, we were on the other side in Thailand."

For a year, the family lived in a Hmong refugee camp in Thailand. They were brought to the United States thanks to the sponsorship of a Lutheran church in Iowa.

The American Hmong Community

While the Yang family was in Iowa, there was no one they could talk to.

The transition was especially hard because Paul Yang had been a respected teacher in Laos, and Sarah had never had to work outside of the home before.

"All they can think of is how great life would have been if they stayed in Laos, without the war," Wayne said.

Their sponsoring church found a Thai woman 30 minutes away who could speak Laotian, which Paul Yang also could speak. They spent a year in Iowa before Sarah Yang learned her uncle was in Kansas City.

Though the Hmong are spread across the country, with populations in Wisconsin, California, and the largest in Minnesota, they have a remarkable way of keeping in touch. Wayne Yang started his own organization, the Hmong Village, as a genealogical project as well as a way to preserve the Hmong culture.

"Once my parents' generation is gone, we won't know how we're related," Wayne says. "If we don't keep the relationships intact, we'll lost that knowledge."

Most of the Hmong in Kansas City were from the city of Phoua Kham Houa in the Xieng Kuang Province of Laos. But many know how they are related to other clans elsewhere in the country.

Wayne met his wife, Alina, through such a connection. His uncle was dating her aunt in California, and they met when Wayne came out to visit his uncle. Alina explained such family bonds have made it easy for relatives to find each other and easy for Hmong marriages to remain within the culture.

"We're always interrelated somehow, even if we're not related by marriage," Alina said. "It's very possible to meet across the country; the dynamics of it are very interesting."

Still, bi-racial marriages are becoming more and more common, and now almost every family has a non-Hmong member. Alina's sister married a Puerto Rican; Wayne's sister married a Caucasian.

Alina remembers it was hard for the older generations to accept. When her aunt wanted to marry a man who wasn't Hmong, she said there were meetings among the Hmong clans and elders, and some threatened to disown her aunt. Now, she says things are easier.

"It was harder for them than it is for us now, because we've kind of merged ourselves into the American culture," Alina said. "I don't think it was a prejudiced thing for the older generation. I think it's a lot of working for the preservation of the culture."

Creating understanding

Just as the Hmong are adapting to their new home in the United States, even after 30 years, Americans are still adapting to the Hmong, and many know little about the culture.

Alina remembers meeting a real estate agent once who was familiar with the Hmong because he was a Vietnam veteran.

"We were really excited, because that doesn't happen a lot," she said, explaining what a relief it was to meet someone who understood the Hmong. "They know why you're here and they know your history. You're not just an immigrant that showed up looking for a better life."

Alina was born in the United States; her father had been one of the top officials in the Hmong helping the CIA, and the CIA arranged for him to come to America when they left Laos. In America, he met her mother, whose family had lived close to the Thai border, so it had not been as difficult for them to escape the Vietnamese.

But even as a second generation Hmong, with looser connections to her culture, Alina says it is hard for her to interact with people who don't understand her culture. As a teacher in the Olathe School District, she hopes people will take advantage of Wonderscope's exhibit.

"I feel like our school systems have failed in teaching our children diversity," she says. "When people see me, I feel like they're judging me from the outside first, and then when they learn I'm an educator, they see me differently..."

Alina sees the exhibit as one way to help expose people in this area to the Hmong, since they may be their neighbors.

"I really want them to have a chance to see who I am, because I am part of this community," she says.

The Yang family is helping with the exhibit as much as possible. Paul and Sarah Yang say they think the most important thing for people to understand is their history.

Wayne Yang says the exhibit will benefit the local Hmong population just as much as those with no Hmong background -- a method to help preserve the Hmong culture among the younger generations.

"I think they'll be very excited," he says. "It's a way for their children to experience their own experiences."