[gentle music]
- Jenny Pederson: Welcome to today's presentation
and program.
It is an absolute pleasure to welcome you all.
My name is Jenny Pederson,
and I am the Public Programs Manager
with the Wisconsin Historical Society.
It's a pleasure to have you with us.
And it's also a pleasure to be able to introduce
our speaker today.
Please note that any opinions expressed today
during the presentation are those of the speaker,
and are not those of the Wisconsin Historical Society
or its employees.
Before I hand it over,
a very brief biography of our very special presenter today.
Mai Zong Vue is the Chief Operating Officer
of the Hmong Institute here in Madison, Wisconsin.
She retired in 2023
from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.
For more than 35 years,
Mai Zong has advocated for the impoverished,
especially the Hmong people and refugees.
She is a cultural trainer, folklore performer,
and storyteller, sharing Hmong poetry and song since 1997.
An alumnus of UW-Madison,
Mai Zong has also served on a variety of local
and national boards
that have worked to improve the lives of women and children,
and has received numerous awards and honors
for her tireless efforts in serving the disadvantaged,
including the YWCA of Dane County's
Women of Distinction,
authentic Hmong leaders and trailblazer.
In addition, Mai Zong is the author
of The Wisconsin Historical Society Press's
Hmong in Wisconsin, published in 2020.
Please join me in welcoming Mai Zong Vue.
Enjoy the presentation,
and thank you, everyone, including Mai Zong,
for being here today.
[audience applauds]
- Mai Zong Vue: Thank you.
How's everybody doing today?
Good?
Okay.
So, a couple of things I'd like to talk, and I can talk a lot.
And I have a lot of information, so I may go really fast.
At the end, if there's, you know, some questions,
feel free to ask them so I can clarify.
And other than that, relax,
and let's just have a good time getting to know
the history of the Hmong in Wisconsin.
So, first of all, thank you for inviting me
and having me to be part of your space-making history
here at the Wisconsin Historical Society.
It's such a wonderful
and crucial agency to have this kind of conversation
for all Wisconsinites.
So, thank you, Jennifer, for inviting me.
So, here's a little bit about me,
just to give you a context.
I grew up in a refugee camp at the age of seven,
and the picture over here
is me about to leave the refugee camp after many years
of sleeping on grass before we get into our shelter.
I don't know anything about Laos,
even though I was born in Laos.
I left when I was seven in that black-and-white picture.
So, I-- When you ask me about Laos, I am clueless.
And then, the bottom was me growing up in the United States.
Become a black sheep
in my Hmong community where I chose education over marriage,
stay an old maid,
and travel the world to talk about gender equity issues.
This is at the 1995
United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing.
And today--
My mom was really happy when I finally got married
and have children, as expected.
So, I have three bundles of joy who are in college.
One is right here at the U,
and one's up in Minnesota and one in Milwaukee.
So, that's a little bit about me.
All my life, I have the pride and joy
of being a bridge between the Hmong community
and the mainstream and the government.
So, I have the privilege to do anything that comes in between,
whether it's advocacy, whether it's program development,
grant administration, or whatever it calls
for minority at DHS and DWD, I have done them,
and it's been a pleasure serving Wisconsin.
And then, I retire.
And here, I'm still doing the same thing, except without
the bureaucratic headaches, which is good.
So, this is a book about the Hmong in Wisconsin.
If you'd like to have an introduction
to the Hmong in Wisconsin, this is a good basis for that.
And at the end,
if you have any book that you want me to sign,
I'd be happy to do that as well.
So, a lot of the information I will be talking today
is based on the 2020 census data and 2021.
As you can see, Wisconsin is a state
that really captures the third-largest of Hmong
in the United States.
The second would be Minnesota, and first is California.
We always say, if everybody told us
that California is
tropical weather-like, like Asia,
we all would have, you know, gone to California,
but we did not know then.
And so, a lot of people moved up
to wherever the sponsorship were based.
So, where do Hmong people live in Wisconsin?
As you can see on the map here.
Again, we didn't have a choice.
We came wherever our sponsors were.
And unlike the Twin Cities,
where Hmong cluster in two cities, in Wisconsin,
we are scattered throughout Wisconsin in these counties.
And the scatteredness comes from, again,
where our sponsors were.
The other factor is clan leaders.
If a sponsor brought a clan leader to Madison,
that clan leader is like a magnet.
It pulls its clan members to join them.
And so, as you can see in these clusters,
it's because one or two or three clan leaders were sponsored.
And then, that's where people moved in.
I always say, when I do training for my state employees,
if you're a social worker in the '80s,
when the Hmong came, you would go crazy
because, overnight, your family may have left
to go join the clan leader
the minute they discovered where the clan leader was.
And you would have no way of tracing
because they left without letting you know.
So, this is why Wisconsin is clustered in this way.
The other factor is the support in that local community,
the education,
the employment, and the sponsorship support
that also encourages people to come there as well.
So, for example, like Sheboygan, until 2000,
the latest Hmong wave that comes to the United States,
Sheboygan was not heavily impacted,
but it did so in that last wave of Hmong refugees in 2000
because of the relatives
and because of the manufacture of employment,
blue collar job, you know,
the boat manufacture, things that Hmong people can do.
The paper mill, the shoe company, the socks company,
and Johnsonville sausage, for example.
A quick glance of the Hmong in Wisconsin in terms of growth.
In the '80s, when we first came, we did not participate
in census data.
So, there's no capture of us in the '80s.
But in the '90s, it showed that there were 16,000 in Wisconsin.
And then, it grew, and today, we're about 60,000.
Language is always a beauty
and a challenge for a lot of our elders.
My mom and dad, they come in and they don't speak the language.
I came in without speaking much English.
I went right into high school and learned ABC,
and then I always say, many of us,
it's like being thrown in the ocean.
And you have the option to either die
because you don't work hard enough to learn
to paddle your feet and stay afloat
until you are being rescued, or you die, right?
And many of us chose to paddle our little feet
and learn to stay afloat until we're being rescued.
And so, language is the number one challenge for many of us.
Whether it's learning English, going to work,
or just meeting your neighbors.
A classic example of language is this.
I talked about this all the time
because it's so classic to our learning English.
So, my dear friend, Dr. Cha,
who used to teach us at St. Cloud University,
shared her story.
And I loved it because it's so classic.
She said, when she first arrived in Colorado,
she couldn't understand why the heck
would people want to sell their yard or their garage.
[audience laughs]
And when you purchase a yard or the garage,
how do you transport that to your home
when you already have a garage
and you already have your own yard?
Do you put that yard on top of yours,
and do you put the garage next to yours?
How-- Why would people wanna do that, right?
So, one day, her Caucasian friend came over and said,
"Hey, dear, would you like to go to a garage sale with me?"
And she jumped at the opportunity
because she wanted to know how people do all these things.
Then, when she got there, she said to her friend,
"Why don't you people just say you're selling the stuff
"in the garage or the stuff on the yard instead of,
"you know, saying you're selling the yard
and you're selling the garage?"
That's strange to us, right?
And so, language could be beautiful as well as scary
sometimes, right?
And I can sit here and talk about this all day,
because I have so many beautiful stories
of Hmong women being scared,
being confused because of the language definition.
So, my first job with the state
is running the Refugee Women's Initiative program
for refugee women.
And there's so many stories I heard.
I'm like, "Yeah, you're right, why did that--
"You know, that's another definition
you don't know, right?"
So, for example, one of the lady,
she shared her story about driving.
It's very typical that Hmong men,
when we first came here, they're still depressed.
They're still thinking about the past.
And Hmong women, as a case manager of the family,
need to move forward, just like my mom.
You don't have time to think about the past.
You have kids who need to eat,
who's going to school and deal with the daily activities.
So, with that mood and with that filter,
many Hmong women learn to drive faster
or ahead of their husband sometimes
if they're at the same age.
So, this one woman, she's driving her husband to De Pere
because the General Vang Pao is coming to town,
and her husband keeps telling her,
"Drive faster, drive faster."
[laughs] So, she drove faster.
And the state patrol, you know, was behind her.
Turn on the siren, she got scared.
She just kept going faster.
And then, he came next to her
and rolled the window down and took the bullhorn out
and said, "Please pull your car over the shoulder."
With her limitation in English,
she only understood "car over shoulder."
And then, she got even more scared now because she said,
"How the heck am I supposed to put the car on my shoulder
when my shoulder is so small?" right?
So, then she got scarier.
And then, the state patrol forced her to stop
by going in front of her.
Long story short, definitions of words could be a lot, right?
And sometimes, when you are very limited at English,
you could be scared.
You could be facing things that you just don't understand.
So, language has become a wonderful gift of friendship
as well as hardship.
The other thing about the history of the Hmong
in Wisconsin is that, you know, unlike other things
where people are in a celebration mode
of welcoming people
and entertaining people, many of you remember
the Vietnam War was not popular here, right?
And when our arrival comes, it's the same thing.
People did not celebrate our arrival.
It was very secretive.
There was no standard introduction
from the government.
And so, with that, our veterans,
our elders have to do the introduction of who we are
to the community
besides the sponsors who sponsor us.
And there's a lot of bittersweet experiences with that.
And so, again,
I can sit down and talk about that all day because many,
many times our Hmong veterans are very bitter,
saying, "When the U.S. wants us to fight for them,
"they didn't say we have to be a U.S. citizen.
"And now we're here, to get any benefit,
"to get any help from the government,
"we are required to be a citizen in order to be helped.
And why is that?"
So, that is very, you know,
still very bitter for many of the people.
Many veteran has died and passed away.
And there's, you know, not many left,
but those who are still around, you know, still carry that.
And today, we continue to advocate for our needs.
There's nobody who's going to say, "Oh,
"here's a poor Hmong people who were product of the Vietnam War.
"And here, we need to help them,
and let's do something for them."
You know, there's no such thing unless,
you know, we do it on our own.
Who are the Hmong people?
We don't have a lot of time, so I won't go in detail.
But we're a very old people, group of people,
dated back to what we call China now.
We survived with the clan system.
We have, Hmong in the United States have two dialects,
Hmong in China with many dialects.
So, just to clarify,
like the Jewish, Hmong are scattered all over the world.
The Hmong that I'm talking about are the Hmong from Laos.
We are a product of the Vietnam War,
and we came because, after the fall of Saigon in 1975,
we have no choice but leave.
Otherwise, we would be persecuted.
And so, I'm talking about the Hmong in America
who are refugees because of the Vietnam War.
Yeah, so, again, our history dated, you know,
all the way back to Asia.
In the recent history of Southeast Asia, in the 1790s
and beyond, we have started to migrated to Southeast Asia.
And Hmong lived in Laos for many years
with the French colonization and then the U.S.
when the U.S. wanted to neutralize Laos in the '60s,
and then the Vietnam War.
So, when I talk about Hmong in America,
I'm talking about Hmong people who lived in Laos
who were involved with the United States.
Outside of that, there's Hmong in Thailand,
Hmong in China and Vietnam and Cambodia
and other parts of the world
that do not have anything to do with the Vietnam War.
So, just to clarify that.
So, we got involved in 1963 to '75 with the United States
with a secret army.
And a lot of the hardship that I talked about
is from this period of time when I talk about Hmong veterans.
You can learn more about the three roles
that the Hmong play during that time.
My own family, my father had lost all but one brother
during the war.
One was, you know, a spy for the CIA.
And the others were just local soldiers.
So, there's a lot of these stories
that have not been unpacked, and many have died,
and the children don't know about it.
Some started to talk about it.
My father never wanted to talk about it.
He's always saying, "Move on."
My father is the one in the black suit there.
He never wanted to talk about it.
He just wanted to move on.
Because, one day,
when I was pressing for him to talk about it,
he said, "Like a big balloon filled with water,
"do you have a big enough bucket to fill it?
"Because if you poke it and it breaks,
"you're going to get all splashed with water.
Are you going to take that," right?
And those are things
where we sometimes don't think about the trauma experiences
that they have, the PTSD that stays with them.
And all of these things where they have it inside
and they're trying really hard to suppress it
so they don't feel it, right?
And if you go and poke at it, you better be ready.
And so, anyway, so the Hmong community come
and we survived with a clan structure
and clan names.
You can find that on page 21 of my book
that we talked a lot about that,
but we survived in that clan structure.
The clan structure is just to support each other
and also to hold marriages together.
So, for example, if you're from the same clan,
you can't marry each other despite the distance.
So, like, when I go to China
and I met a Vue boy that I really like,
mm-mm, no, I can't marry him because of the same clan.
So, clan structure is a very strong,
supportive structure for the Hmong people wherever we go.
Family structure is also very defined by kinship,
by roles and responsibilities.
And in the United States,
the role reversal has really shaken our family structure,
where we no longer understand why the role of the older son
is now being done by the older daughter
or the youngest son or whatever, right?
And so, it's being tested.
It's like a sponge.
It's been squeezed and sponged in many, many ways.
But we still maintain some of the family structure nowadays.
And I still continue to do my little teaching to those
who are very traditional
and telling the girls, you know,
if you don't want your father-in-law
and mother-in-law to stay with you,
do not marry the youngest son,
because that's the role is to take care of mom and dad
when they-- until they die.
If you don't wanna work hard and lead the whole family,
don't marry the oldest son.
Because the oldest son is the leader.
He's going to lead his family and lead the community,
and you're going to work really hard, you know?
So, knowing these roles,
you can choose who you want to marry
and how to integrate yourself into the family.
Language, again,
for Hmong in the United States, there's green and white dialect.
In China, there are many dialects.
Gender role, again, when we come here,
the history of being submissive, stay within your role,
within your lane has gotten, you know,
really challenging.
Because, back to what I said earlier
in the example of the women,
if you learn to drive and now you're driving for everyone,
including your husband and then his family and so forth.
Whether you like it or not, it's giving you that power, right?
And that can cause some conflict too,
when you talk about gender role.
Or you're the first to speak English
and you ended up speaking for everyone.
While children always tell their parents in high school,
"F means fabulous when they go to school, teacher."
Parents don't know that.
They thought, "Oh, okay,
you got many F and you're very fabulous."
[audience laughs]
Okay, so, you know, the role reversal could be sweet
or painful, depending on the family.
We have a very rich tradition.
We believe, for those who don't--
who still stay in animism, where we worship ancestors,
the belief that everything has a soul
and that we will reincarnate after death.
We still have a very, you know, strong ritual,
especially during funerals like this.
Many Hmong in the community has also converted to Christian.
So, then, they don't practice this anymore.
So, again, this is a very rich history.
And we would be talking in a day
if we want to talk about the detail.
Practices that we carry to Wisconsin that are still,
you know, very practical for us is the soul calling.
We do soul calling for new additions to the family.
When we get scared or when we have something to celebrate.
And that soul calling ritual calls for the adoption
of the tying of the string and with the egg.
When you tie the string to someone
after the soul calling, you're giving them wishful thinking,
good health, good luck, and so forth.
Now, we've been here, yeah, for 50 years this year.
In looking back into the '90s to now,
this is what it looks like for education.
We still have a lot of people who, you know,
don't have any schooling completed,
but we have made some progress in different levels.
Whether it is high school, some college, associate degree,
bachelor, or graduate program.
I don't know how many of you have Hmong teachers
or Hmong physicians that you attend to,
or Hmong business that you go to.
But these are things that we're beginning to see
in the community is Hmong professionals.
In comparison to Wisconsinites,
you know, we're not too far off.
We are still heavily not having, you know,
some education in terms of
the 17% compared to the mainstream.
But we're learning to, you know, value education and work hard.
Employment status.
It's still very challenging because you have to remember,
we come in with parents who don't speak the language,
who don't understand
the complexity of the industrial workforce.
And so, a lot of the jobs are still blue collar
in comparison to a very diverse industry
where people here place themselves
in whatever skill set that they have, right?
But if you look at the '90s to '17, to '21,
2017, '21,
you know, the unemployment rate has sharply reduced.
When we look at our community and how much we have to work
and how much we have to devote our time to our young community
in comparison to the mainstream.
I work for the government, and I know
that intervention is a lot more expensive than prevention.
If we were to help a young person get educated,
well behaviored, and avoid Department of Correction,
we wouldn't have to pay for mental health.
We wouldn't have to pay for cells,
we wouldn't have to pay for all the labor that comes in DOC.
So, I know that prevention is a lot cheaper,
and that's what we're trying to do in the Hmong community,
is to make sure that our young community is developing
into productive citizens
instead of being a liability to society.
Marriage in the community.
It's gotten very diverse.
When we first came,
it's traditionally just among the clan, the community system.
But now our interracial marriage is increasing every day.
We have Hmong married to African American,
to Latina, to Muslim, to, you know,
wherever they live, they get to know each other,
and they like each other, and they fall in love,
and they make a life together.
So, marriage has gotten very diverse as well.
In Wisconsin,
one of the challenges that we continue to face
is the cultural preservation of funeral.
It's a rich cultural practice in the Hmong community,
and it calls for 24/7, three days straight, sometimes four.
And the challenge is a funeral home rented to Hmong community
who are still doing traditional funeral like this,
if they're in a neighborhood with lots of residents,
the residents don't like it.
They would call the director and pressure the director,
and they no longer rent it to the Hmong people.
So, in Wisconsin, we're facing that.
In Madison, we're pushed down to Oregon,
where we can do a Hmong traditional funeral.
Because, in Madison, we don't have that facility anymore
because of that pressure.
I talk about professional.
So, with the opportunity to be educated in this country,
many of young people are able to learn
and make a career for themselves based on their interests.
And so, everybody has, you know, their own choice.
The first picture there is our first Hmong senator
in the United States, Senator Mee Moua of Minnesota.
She and I grew up in Appleton.
We used to go in our summer job
as being seasonal workers in Waupaca,
where we go pick cucumber
and process cucumber for pickles.
And so, we have lots of memory together.
A lot of the time--
So, Mee, and the other one is Judge Kristy in Milwaukee.
Again, the first Hmong elected judge in the nation.
We go through a lot of these situations
where our parents want us to behave,
but we are facing racial issues and we want to fight, right?
And caught between needing to be patient
and just mind your own business,
and needing to express yourself and say, "I am a human too."
It's very hard, right?
So, like, Senator Mee,
she's so frustrated when every time eggs were thrown
at her house, her window, they wash it.
She wanted to go and fight the person who did that.
And her mom would say, "Nope."
And the phrase for many of us is "be patient."
Be patient, being patient is not going to kill you.
That's what our parents said to us.
And so, her mother finally one day say to her,
"If you're so upset,
study hard, and someday you come and be the boss."
And so, she took that to heart, went to school,
graduated from law school, and ran for office, right?
So, many times, the children took it to heart
and really practiced it.
Sometimes they want to express themselves,
and they cause themselves a fight in school, right?
And so, these are hardships in the educational process for us.
But in that process,
many Hmong professionals, you know, were established.
We have a young community, like I said.
We need to make sure our economic development is in place
for them, whether we have enough food for them to eat
so they can focus in school, or enough tutors for them
so they can, you know, do good in school,
or understand who they are
so they don't clash with their own elders at home.
The language that I talked about earlier,
right now, we're going through a lot of culture clashes
in language where intergenerational grandparents
don't understand grandchildren
because grandparents are only speaking English--
I mean, speaking Hmong, and children,
grandchildren only speak English,
so they don't understand each other.
And that clash is really, really hard.
And we continue to face racial challenges as a people
and as, you know, a normal thing in life.
I mentioned our forgotten Hmong veterans.
We have very few of them,
but they are still around telling the story,
educating the community,
and continue to do their part to make sure
that their voices are heard.
And I can, again, talk a lot about that.
But at the Hmong Institute,
what we're doing is helping these veterans
with their mental health, bridging the gap,
close the gap in language and culture challenges,
making sure that they can access the health care, and so forth.
At the same time trying to preserve culture.
Tradition, again, I talk about soul calling.
The other practice that we still do is shamanism.
It's a healing concept
that the shaman will enter the other world
and do whatever he needs for whatever situation
he is asked to do.
And the chicken and the egg is the vital part
in the soul calling that we still practice.
So, yeah, the rest of the slide
I'm gonna talk about what are we doing
at the Hmong Institute
to help the Hmong community, again, advancing our community.
We need to help our elders who are suffering right now,
who fought during the time, and now they're just home alone
because their adult kids are working
and they're looking out the window by themselves every day.
So, we have Hmoob Kaj Siab, a daytime program
where they come in, we give them activity.
They be among with each other, they can speak their language.
And now we have Lao, Cambodian, Nepali as well,
in addition to Hmong elders.
So, when you come to our center, you see, you know,
elders sometimes using nonverbal communication
that's beautiful in communicating with each other.
We do youth program,
and we do cultural training for providers,
like what I'm doing today, or on a daily basis,
agency might call us to consult
because they have a Hmong patient and they don't know,
you know, how to do it the best.
During the COVID time,
we have done a lot to make sure that food equity is in place
and culturally-relevant food is in place for them.
Rice is our main staple, not potato, right?
And so, we have to educate food banks that,
if you give these beautiful beets, canned food, and potato,
most of the time, they landed in the trash can.
[alarm rings] That's my alarm to say stop.
And so, we have to educate the system
not to give them those
so they can give it to people who need it.
But at the same time,
tell them that our elder needs raw meat
so they can portion size as needed.
And the good thing is that they garden.
So, they froze-- They freeze a lot of the veggie
that they can eat throughout the year,
but they don't have money to buy meat or rice.
So, we advocate for those.
During the pandemic,
many, many of our elders and community
are really scared, like others.
I think what's additional for our elders then,
they're being afraid of being pushed around
when they walk.
You remember in the COVID time where a lot of people pushed,
you know, elders on the street, attacked them and so forth.
So, they're really scared, so they don't wanna get out.
The other part that was really sad for many elders
is they didn't understand the social distance regulation
of no touching or stay six feet apart or you can't,
you know, be together.
And so, many elders are saying...
"I am so sad.
"My daughter and my son-in-law
"would put food, cooked food in my front door,
"but then they're not coming in.
Why," right?
So, they're interpreting that as,
"Well, maybe they don't like me.
Maybe they no longer want me," right?
But they don't understand that there is the policy
because of the COVID, right?
So, we have to do a lot of that softening in education
for them so they understand.
So, we provide, you know, those education for them.
And so, we are just a home away from home for them.
Many people ask, you know,
how can people help the work that we do?
There's many ways that they can help us,
whether it's volunteer work or, you know, money or donating,
you know, your time and food.
We also are currently looking for English conversation.
We have at the institute, in our day program,
we have two volunteers that come
and do English conversation with our elders,
but they no longer are in town.
So, we are now looking for volunteers
to have English conversation with our elders,
so help us spread the words.
We do a lot of community events as well.
Again, people who want to help with our population.
Yeah, let us know.
You can always help us advocate for policy change,
resource, and so forth.
So, I will give, yeah, the rest of the time to all of you.
So the question is,
where else can you find Hmong people in the world
besides the United States, right?
- Attendee 1: Yeah. - Mm-hmm.
China has the vast majority, and with the many dialects.
So, there's over... oh, I don't know my number,
but for sure, over 10 million people in China.
Then we still have Southeast Asia, as I mentioned.
And then, French Guiana is very fortunate
to have the Hmong
who moved from France to, you know, French Guiana
and become farmers down there.
And they have really blossomed.
The variety of choice of veggies and fruits.
So, you can find tropical fruits like you do in Asia
in French Guiana.
So, that's a large cluster of Hmong down there too.
We do have some Hmong refugees resettled in Brazil
and other parts in South Africa, but from my understanding,
they have also migrated out to join families.
So, I don't know how many are there.
Australia is another country that has a large number of Hmong
and the same thing as France.
As recent as three years ago,
we have discovered that there's Hmong in Germany
that were resettled there as refugees as well.
So, yeah, I think just about any of the big countries
that are involved with Southeast Asia
tend to have Hmong people resettled there.
And here, you know, even in the United States,
we have Hmong in south and north up here, right?
So, like, in 2000,
I met the first Hmong, my colleague, Mai Neng from Texas,
and she spoke Southern English. [audience laughs]
And I just-- my ear just couldn't,
you know, adjust to it.
I'm just like, "Oh, my God, so beautiful,
your Texan accent."
And here we are, we're Hmong,
but we're speaking, you know, Wisconsinite accent.
And it's just beautiful, you know,
to see different languages in that.
But, yeah, we're pretty scattered around the world.
Mm-hmm.
The importance of Hmong farmers in Wisconsin.
So, I am sad to see that our Hmong vendors
and the farmers market are going down.
Because, again, the aging of our population,
the mom and dad who, you know,
when I talk about those education and how we went up,
it's very, very important
for parents to support their children to go to college.
So, parents would work two jobs, three jobs,
and still do farming so they can sell on the weekends
so they can help pay tuition for their children.
And so, farming was an avenue
that Hmong parents did it with pride.
They did it because they know how to do it.
And they did it because,
you know, it gives them a self-worth.
And on top of that, it's extra money to pay for their children.
So, it is very important
for the Hmong farmers to be able to do that farming.
When I first came to work in the state, there's about,
hmm, 20, and I keep track of these data.
So, there's about maybe 20 in the '90s
when I came, and then, you know,
on the Capital Square when you go on Saturday market.
And then, it keeps increasing, increasing and to the level
where every block, you have about six, seven Hmong vendors.
Right?
But in the last five years,
it's starting to decrease because Hmong farmers,
again, are aging and they're no longer able to farm, right?
And so, now the last time I went to the farmers market
about last month,
yeah, it's down to about two vendor per each block.
So, you know, it's sad.
And I say that because even Department of Ag
is recruiting me to help them with their advising group
on how to sustain Hmong farmer
so we can continue to enjoy the produce that we have, right?
And my answer is yes, we can always advise,
but if there's no teeth to the conversation,
Hmong farmers won't maintain
because the young people that I talk with, they say,
"We're not going to do manual labor with our hands.
"If you give us a tractor, yes,
"we will continue to do the farming with a tractor
"that can help us, right?
Not us doing the hands."
So, these are the new requests and challenges
of the younger farmers.
We still have some younger farmers
that's carrying on the tradition, but very few.
So, very good question.
I don't know how many of you enjoy Hmong produce,
you know, on the square.
But it's very important that we keep that tradition on.
Yes, mm-hmm, question?
- Attendee 2: Yeah, my question was about
initiatives for language preservation.
- Mai: Mm-hmm. - Attendee 2: Right?
Sort of heard something about a DLI program in Madison,
but I have no idea whether that's common or unique
or what other efforts...
- Mai: Yeah, mm-hmm, yeah.
You know, it is a need in the community.
And so, we are very fortunate
that Lakeview Elementary on the north side
has a dual Hmong program modeled after the Spanish one
that happened maybe a decade ago.
And so, that's one of 'em that is very unique here in Madison.
In Milwaukee,
we're very fortunate that Hmong American Peace Academy,
which is a Hmong charter school for Hmong kids,
and they have been in existence for the last few decades,
where they developed themselves from elementary to high school.
And so, they're one of a kind in Wisconsin that is mainly,
you know, Hmong students.
I remember I took my older daughter to tour it
when she was in high school,
and we walked away, and I said, "What was, you know,
the lesson learned for you?"
And she said, "I never seen so many Hmong kids in my life,"
because she grew up, you know, on the north side
and, you know, not many Hmong students there.
And so, she went there.
And 100% of the students are Hmong.
She was just, like, blown away.
Yeah, so that.
And then Appleton just started
a Hmong diversion program as well.
That just started this year.
And then, at the institute, we've been doing our
Hmong summer language enrichment program for the past 13 years.
And that is a full five weeks, Monday to Friday,
8:00 to 5:00 every day in the summer.
And so, that's for students in Dane County.
So, yes, language preservation is a very critical one.
And it is important
for students to learn as well as bridge the gap
with the communication with their grandparents.
So, I'm very proud to say
that our students from the summer program,
they went home and they're able to close the gap
with their grandma.
And one time, the grandpa was having a birthday,
and the student wrote a happy birthday note in Hmong to him.
And he was so proud.
And he read it and he put it on Facebook.
[audience murmurs]
So, closing that gap with grandma and grandpa
is also very important.
So, yes, very important, mm-hmm.
Any other questions?
Uh-huh.
Yeah, so the Hmong from Laos has two dialects,
as I said, the green and the white,
and the Hmong in China,
there's about 10, over 10 different dialects.
Uh-huh, so the Hmong in Laos that went to France,
went to Australia, France, and all over the place,
they spoke, they speak two dialects.
And the difference is, it's not major.
It's kind of like, maybe, 5% that's totally different, right?
Where white Hmong, for example,
would say the "tall" as in a bridge, right?
And the meaning in green dialect would be "the blanket."
So, you know,
we always have really good interracial marriage
between green and white, husband and wife,
you know, misunderstanding each other.
So, there are those variations, but small.
Otherwise, it's like here in the United States,
where some people in some parts of America say "soda"
and other parts say "pop," right?
Or water fountain and, what,
bubbler? - Audience: Bubbler.
- Yeah, mm-hmm, so, otherwise, it would be like that.
So, you just kind of know, you know, based on speaking on it.
But, yeah, there's those two dialects, mm-hmm.
And in the picture I show, I didn't talk about in the detail,
but you can also tell, many years ago,
not now, you go crazy if you base it on what people wear,
but traditionally, you can tell by the clothes that you wear.
So the white Hmong will just wear white skirts,
and a blue Hmong will wear a colorful skirt.
But, again, not true now.
Now you have Hmong Chinese,
Hmong Vietnam, Hmong green, Hmong blue all mixed together.
So, it's not true anymore.
Mm-hmm, yeah.
And if you-- Have anyone gone
to the Hmong New Year here in Madison?
So, as a community, we celebrate the New Year around this time.
In fact, it's coming this coming Saturday and Sunday
at the Alliant Energy Center.
So, this would be a good time for you to go
and see what we do.
Of course, New Year now is very commercialized.
It's not like the good old days of just courting,
where you harvest all year round,
and now it's time for young people to go
and find their, you know, mates.
And so, you would do that through singing
and do that through the ball, tossing a pov pob.
All of those traditions are weakening
and it's more commercialized.
So, you see a lot of competition in singing and dancing
and then food vendors and so forth.
So, you know, it's a mix of both worlds, mm-hmm.
And it's coming, yeah, it's Saturday and Sunday
at the Alliant Energy Center, mm-hmm.
All right, thank you all.
Thank you all for listening. [audience applauds]