[wind rustling]
[soft instrumental music]
- Chuayi Yang: Paj Ntaub is one of the most
original Hmong arts.
It's been passed on
since the beginning of Hmong people.
I feel like whenever I pick up Paj Ntaub,
and really work with the needle and the thread,
like, it reconnects me to a part of myself.
It's a way of me remembering who I am
and where my heritage comes from.
So for me, it's a very emotional,
and very spiritual, like, connection to the art.
A lot of my learning came from my mother.
- [speaking in Hmong]
- Mandora Young: When you do this
Hmong needlework embroidery, the traditional Hmong Paj Ntaub,
it's not, like, in a book where you can find it.
And so I was looking for a teacher.
Finding Suzanne Thao was like finding gold.
She's very patient,
and this skill takes a lot of patience.
You have to stitch this way
so that it goes in the right direction
or so that your back will look pretty.
She explains a lot about the colors,
certain colors you can and cannot use
if you're doing a certain piece.
She talks about the different symbols.
Some of it are geometric.
Some are like flowers or imitate animals,
but there's always a meaning behind these.
- Lee Pao Xiong: Some of the Hmong people
live in the jungle of northern part of Laos.
So many of the designs reflect
many of the animals and plants within the jungle.
If you look at this piece here, you see the snails.
The spirals represent the Milky Way.
You also see the elephant foot designs.
The country of Laos is known
as the land of a million elephants.
You also have the tiger face, the chicken crown,
which is on the baby's hat.
The intricate designs here
reflect the Hmong writing system.
We used to have our own writing system,
but it was lost.
A lot of folk tales and stories talks about the fact
that they sew the alphabet into the clothing.
In fact, the word for education
in the Hmong language is kev kawm ntawv,
meaning that if you wanna gain knowledge,
go learn the embroidery.
[upbeat instrumental music]
[metal clanking]
[gong clanging]
- Mai Vang Huizel: The elder generation has the stories
and the knowledge
and the history all in their minds,
and if we don't connect with them,
and if we don't begin asking for it,
then it's gonna be lost.
What we have here are materials that would be used
on a traditional Hmong clothing,
especially worn during the New Year.
You can see these are in pieces,
and so they would be sewn onto a shirt, for example.
And then over here is Hmong clothing
that has the coins on it. [coins rattling]
You'll hear that sound during the Hmong New Year
as people are walking around.
Paj Ntaub passed on orally, usually from a mother
or an auntie or a grandmother to the child.
- [speaking Hmong]
- Mai: We started a program called Project Paj Ntaub
to begin that intergenerational sharing of knowledge.
That act of crafting together, making Paj Ntaub together
is that relationship-building for the women in the family.
- Chuayi: Paj Ntaub making was really a skill
that helped a young woman move through life,
through finding her purpose in the family.
It's carried on to some point, but I think with the war,
there was a huge disruption to that.
- Lee: In the Secret War of Laos,
the Americans, instead of sending troops in,
they sent CIA advisors.
Then recruited the Hmong people
to serve as surrogate soldiers of the Vietnam War.
After United States pulled out of Vietnam,
the communist government took over the country of Laos.
Long Tieng was the CIA headquarter.
Three planes were sent to evacuate
the Hmong out of Long Tieng.
1,600 of them made it out.
The rest of them had to find their way
over to Thailand, crossing the Mekong River.
Ban Vinai was the largest refugee camp in Thailand.
Over 40,000 people lived in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp,
predominantly Hmong.
So many of the Hmong in the United States
came from Ban Vinai.
[gentle instrumental music]
- Mai: Story cloths are Hmong experiences
embroidered on a piece of textile.
Story cloths came out of the refugee camps.
In the cloth, you might see Hmong characters,
but also soldiers,
you know, red string that represents blood.
The Hmong women and men who created these story cloths
were sharing their stories through these pictorials.
- Lee: Some are folktales.
Some are about life in the village.
Some are about the New Year,
and then some are about the migration from China
all the way to America.
My family came here October 22 of 1976.
My father, he was a captain in the military.
He came here and he worked as a janitor.
We have about 85,000 Hmong in the state of Minnesota.
Most of them are here in the seven-county metro area.
Here, you know, you have a culture of acceptance.
I think the local community
really wanted the Hmong to thrive,
and I think that we've added
to the vibrancy here in Minnesota.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- Yia Vang: Here in Minnesota,
one of the things that grows really well
is root vegetables.
So we are working with rutabagas.
We're working kohlrabi.
Different kinds of turnips.
Stuff that traditionally probably
most Hmong people wouldn't do back in Laos or Thailand.
[upbeat instrumental music]
My mom always said to us,
"Vinai is not where our life ended,
but it's actually where our life started."
My parents met in Vinai and they married.
I was born in '84, and then we were there until '88
when we came to America.
- Dude, I love this guy.
- Yia: So we're at Hmong Village.
It's probably one my favorite places to come to.
When we first moved up here, we lived, like, 10 minutes away.
[speaking Hmong]
Laos style,
that means that it has really that funkiness,
that fermented paste in there.
The Thai style is a little sweeter.
And then the Hmong style is like kind of a mix of two,
and that really is descriptive of Hmong food.
Hmong food is based on our people's ability to adapt
to the cultures that are around them.
And that is actually the history of our people,
is being able to adapt to wherever we go.
There's two cultures, and you take the beauty
of both cultures.
You create a third culture.
I believe in forging.
When you forge ideas
from different cultures together,
what you're doing is you're making a bond there.
In that bond, what happens is there's growth.
[upbeat instrumental music]
- Tousue Vang: "Hmong Minnesota"
was inspired by Hmong Paj Ntaub.
I was trying to find a way to tell the story
of the Hmong American experience.
It came together as, like, the nice fusion
of digital art with, like, Hmong traditional story quilts.
The top part is a lot of the experiences
that I would hear from my parents,
such as farming in the valley, being with their animals,
and even with, like, my father being in the war,
learning how to, you know, hold a rifle, things like that.
And the bottom part is my Hmong American experience
here in the Midwest.
As I was leaving to go to college,
my mom said she wanted to buy me a quilt.
And at the time,
I didn't see the significance of it,
and it was more money than we could afford,
and it's now very special to me.
- [speaking Hmong]
- Tousue: My father always talked about
how we had to learn the culture, so that it could live on.
Because if somebody didn't do it,
then it would die,
and then there would be no more Hmong people.
We are our practices, our traditions,
and our culture.
- Chuayi: For my mom,
it was more than just teaching Paj Ntaub.
It was really like,
"How do I make sure that this beautiful art
"that's really truly Hmong
continues to live on through my students?"
- [speaking Hmong]
- Chuayi: And to also see pieces that her mother has made,
like this piece you're holding is over 70 years old.
I feel like being able to show them that,
and share those stories is just very powerful.
It's inspiring.
It's a piece of us.
You know, it's really made by Hmong hands
through the art of Paj Ntaub.
[soft instrumental music]