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Shamans can tie strings around a neck and wrist. A red string around the neck helps in healing, and a white string around a wrist maintains a soul during hospitalization. A shaman, or "txiv neeb" in Hmong, can ask the Mercy hospital staff for permission to do ceremonies that go beyond chanting. An example would be a request to sprinkle water over incisions. According to Mercy's policy, hospital staff are to try to make accommodations. The ceremonies can occur in patient rooms, in the emergency department or in surgery preparation areas. The hospital ceremonies are brief -- 10 to 15...

The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul. “Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.” At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than...

LAOS - "LAO SOLDIERS DECAPITATE TWO-MONTH-OLD GIRL AHEAD OF SENATOR WEBB'S VISIT Infant used as target practice during military attacks that leave 26 civilians dead." August 20, 2009

A United Nations human rights expert will travel to the Twin Cities next month to listen to Hmong families upset about the desecration of graves in Thailand. The expert will hear testimony about the unearthing of hundreds of graves where thousands of Hmong refugees once lived. The site is near a Buddhist temple in Thailand. The hearing will be at the University of Minnesota, where the Human Rights Program has taken up a project to study and help resolve the issue.

Hmong elders and cultural advisers were on hand to witness, and even videotape, the ceremony. Xang Vang now runs the Hmong American Mutual Assistance Association in Minneapolis, but he's always had a fondness for Frogtown. It was where he bought his first home in America, and where many other Hmong refugees got a new start in life. "That's why we Hmong dominate Frogtown -- to be Hmongtown," he jokes. The Hmong Funeral HomeAnd the Hmong Funeral Home on Dale Street was the first of its kind for the entire Twin Cities. For a while, it was the only place where...

First speaker in series focuses on domestic violence among the Chinese Hmong Between 14,000 and 17,500 people are trafficked annually, and an estimated 200,000 American children are at high risk of being part of this modern-day form of slavery, Saejung Lee said while speaking in Eggers Hall Wednesday. Lee, an immigration attorney at the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence (WCADV), gave a presentation called the "Intersection of Human Trafficking and Domestic Violence," subtitled, "Experiences of Hmong Victims in the Heartland." Approximately 15 graduate students and faculty gathered to hear Lee explain the intricacies and difficulties of dealing with human trafficking...

There are two faces of Laos. One is the eco-tourism guided tour for backpackers with cheap hostels and an abundance of ganja (marijuana), coupled with the more expensive, more modernized Vientiane intent on luring western investors. The second is the insular Laos, behind a bamboo curtain, where the xenophobic, Pathet Lao communists (Lao People's Revolutionary Party), with apparent aid from the Vietnamese communists, are intent on annihilating an ethnic group of people -- the Hmong. During the Vietnam War, the US conducted a “Secret War” in Laos arming the Hmong tribesmen and using them to interdict North Vietnamese soldiers and...

Major General Antonio M. Taguba Deputy Chief in this June 30, 2006 photo, as the Keynote Speaker at the Hmong American Veterans of Minnesota - Military Ball in Oakdale, Minn. Photo by Tom LaVenture. NEW YORK (February 25, 2008) – The nation’s second Filipino-American to reach the rank of flag officer, U.S. Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba, this week announced his Endorsement of U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for President. “Senator Clinton’s unequivocal opposition to the use of torture under any circumstances, and her willingness to take a stand for what she believes in is exactly the sort of...

When he was 11, True Thao was running with the chickens and pigs in his village in Laos. He had never seen a telephone or a flush toilet. He didn't speak English. He had never heard of Minnesota. He certainly didn't know that Cedarhurst Mansion, a 26-room jewel of history, was quietly rotting half a world away in a place called Cottage Grove. But in a bizarre only-in-America story, True Thao and his family became the refugees that rescued the mansion.

OGDENSBURG, Wis. (AP) -- Eric Humbert, a hunter for 20 years, sees new faces in the woods — more Hmong hunters, more Hispanics. He senses new tensions, too, as another deer hunt approaches and he wants to do his part to ease them. So the Waupaca County sportsman started a business — Ezotic Hunting Signs — making no hunting signs printed in English and Hmong. It's a little thing, Humbert insists, but maybe a step toward racial harmony among Hmong and white hunters after two confrontations that killed seven hunters and sent two more to prison. "I am not saying...

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has decided to grant a waiver for Hmong who provided "material support" to organizations deemed to be terrorist, easing the plight of some but not all Hmong who have been ensnared by federal immigration law. This week, the Departments of State and Homeland Security announced that the law's provisions will not apply to material support that was provided to certain Hmong and Hmong groups prior to Dec. 31, 2004. "This will allow Hmong refugees from Laos who are already resettled in the United States to adjust status and become legal permanent residents," the State Department...

The ex-general's arrest inspires hundreds to rally in St. Paul. For the old, the concern is for a revered leader. For the young, it's for a distant homeland, too. Tou Meng, 12, of St. Paul, joins a rally Tuesday at the Minnesota state Capitol in support of former Gen. Vang Pao, who is charged along with 10 others with plotting to overthrow the Lao government. Vang Pao, a war hero to many, is drawing support from different factions of the Hmong community. (RICHARD MARSHALL, Pioneer Press) View an audio slideshow from the rally Many young Hmong-Americans view Vang Pao as...

Revered Hmong leader charged in Laos plot Gen. Vang Pao, a legendary figure to many Hmong Minnesotans, and 8 others are accused of planning to overthrow the communist government of Laos. The general, who has strong Minnesota ties, battled for control of Laos for most of his life. BY TIM NELSON, LAURA YUEN, JOHN BREWER and TAD VEZNER Pioneer Press Article Last Updated: 06/05/2007 06:33:15 AM CDT Former military leader Gen. Vang Pao meets with the Twin Cities Hmong community in St. Paul in this May 21, 2004 photo. (AP file photo) Related content PDF: Read the complaint The patriarch of...

Excerpt - SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Nine people were arrested in the United States and charged with plotting a coup in the southeast Asian nation of Laos, a public prosecutor in California said Monday. The suspects, mostly members of the Hmong ethnic group, were seized after US authorities "interrupted a plot to overthrow the government of Laos by force and violence," the prosecutor in the state capital Sacramento said in a statement. They include the Hmong former general Vang Pao and Harrison Jack, a retired officer of the US Army, it said. ~ snip ~

War hero or war criminal? Depending upon who's talking, Gen. Vang Pao is one or the other. As a Madison schoolteacher, I think the answer to that question is not as important as the debate the question has generated. Hmong residents here revere Gen. Vang. They insist that he is a great man who helped thousands of their people escape war-torn Laos to find safety and opportunity in the United States. For that reason, they believe he deserves to have a public school named in his honor. A University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, on the other hand, claims that Gen. Vang...

(AP) MADISON -- A University of Wisconsin law professor is under fire for making what some students called offensive remarks about the Hmong people during a recent lecture, including: "Hmong men have no talent other than to kill." Professor Leonard Kaplan also told his legal process class that many Hmong become criminals and gang members and purchase their wives, according to an e-mail distributed by a Hmong student upset by the comments. The remarks outraged students who organized a Wednesday night meeting where the law school dean apologized and tried to calm tensions. Students have scheduled another forum for next...

A charter school and a bus company scrambled Wednesday night to determine how and why a 4-year-old boy was put off a school bus Monday morning, only to wander, crying and lost, for at least an hour on St. Paul's East Side. The boy boarded the bus about 8 a.m. near Earl and Wakefield streets to go to Achieve Language Academy on Stillwater Avenue in St. Paul.

Green Bay -- A Hmong hunter has been found dead in a wildlife area in a case that is stirring memories of a mass shooting that exposed racial tensions. Cha Vang, 30, of Green Bay, was found dead Saturday morning, a night after he was reported missing in the Peshtigo Harbor Wildlife Area in northeastern Wisconsin. Investigators have not said how they believe he died but said they are treating the case as a homicide. An autopsy is planned for Monday. Authorities detained a 28-year-old Peshtigo man, James Nichols, who showed up at a medical center Saturday with a gunshot...

BANGKOK, Thailand — A lingering legacy of the Vietnam War emerged from the jungles of Laos on Wednesday, as hundreds of members of the Hmong hill tribe minority surrendered to the communist government after decades on the run. The group is the latest of several ragtag bands of surrendering Hmong — remnants of a guerrilla army that served a pro-American government before it fell to the communists in 1975. The surrendering group's chieftain, Moua Tua Ter, accompanied the 405 people — mostly children — to Ban Ha village in Phoukout district before returning to the jungle with a few of...

[Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota] When 175 Hmong refugees from Southeast Asia, formerly Roman Catholic Christians, were officially received into the Episcopal Church November 3 at St. Mark's Cathedral in Minneapolis, their congregation became the first of its kind in the Anglican Communion.Holy Apostles is the only predominantly Hmong congregation in the Anglican Communion, according to the Rev. Dr. Winfred Vergara, missioner for Asian American Ministries of the Episcopal Church.Vergara, whose office has provided both financial and leadership resources to Holy Apostles in recent months, was the preacher at the historic confirmation and reception service. He told the congregation that if the...

HAYWARD, Wis. - A Hmong immigrant convicted of murdering six deer hunters and attempting to kill two others after a trespassing dispute was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday with no chance for parole. Judge Norman Yackel ordered Chai Soua Vang, 37, to serve six life prison terms, one after the other, guaranteeing he would never be freed from prison. Wisconsin does not have a death penalty. Yackel described Vang as a "time bomb ready to go off" at the slightest provocation. "These crimes are not isolated acts, but a pattern of anti-social conduct," the judge said. Vang, a truck...

When Tong Yang goes hunting, he's looking for fun - not for trouble. Yang has spent many an evening this fall perched in a tree stand, hoping a trophy buck would come within range of his crossbow. When does pass below, as a pair did during an outing in the woods here last week, he's not interested. "Just be patient for another time," he said. "The trophy (bucks) are very smart. ... That's how they get to be a trophy buck." As Minnesota's firearms deer season draws near, Yang and many other hunters who are Hmong say they have no...

The guilty verdict against a Hmong man who shot and killed six white deer hunters in northwestern Wisconsin has not eased racial tensions in the area, residents and church leaders said. At the St. Paul Hmong Alliance Church in Maplewood, Minn., church members told senior Pastor Nha Long Yang that they see it in glares from white neighbors or hear it from Hmong children who have been told by white classmates that they can no longer play together. The Hmong man, Chai Soua Vang, a 36-year-old truck driver from St. Paul, Minn., was convicted Friday by an all-white jury of...

When jury selection begins today in the murder trial of Chai Soua Vang in Wisconsin, more than just the St. Paul hunter will be facing judgment. "The entire Hmong community will be on trial, not just Chai Vang," said Vangyee Yang, the Hmong Outreach/Resettlement Coordinator at Neighborhood House in St. Paul. Vang, 36, is charged with six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the shooting deaths of six white hunters last November while hunting in northwestern Wisconsin. A truck driver and National Guard veteran, Vang is claiming self-defense. He says in court documents that the hunters...

MILWAUKEE, WI - A Hmong group and a task force that monitors the state's welfare-to-work program asked state officials Monday to improve services to Hmong refugees after some complained of cold working conditions, inadequate job training and lack of bilingual interpreters. The state's largest Wisconsin Works contractor, Maximus Inc., handles the Hmong refugees in Milwaukee County, where most of the W-2 participants live. "They are angry," said Pa Vang, board president of the Hmong American Women's Association in Milwaukee. "They feel like Maximus is taking advantage of them because they are refugees." About 70 workers were sent to the Patrick...

Four US nationals have been arrested in Laos for "liaising illegally" with ethnic Hmong people, a foreign ministry official said on Monday. The four were detained on Saturday and are now being questioned in Vientiane, said spokesman Yong Chanhthalansy. They were in Laos to try and ensure the safety of relatives of Hmong rebels surrendering to the Lao authorities. On Saturday, 170 women, children and old men surrendered after living in the jungle since the Vietnam War. According to the Nation newspaper in Thailand, the four detainees were Sia Cher Vang and Nhia Vang Yang - two Hmong Americans -...

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Up to 4,000 ethnic Hmong, remnants of a U.S.-backed anti-communist guerrilla army in the Laotian jungles during the Vietnam War, are ready to surrender after 30 years on the run, a U.S. activist said on Thursday. Ex-California police officer Ed Szendrey, who was detained at the weekend by the Laotian communist government for helping 173 women, children and elderly people give themselves up, said many more Hmong were waiting to come in from the cold. "We've had indications that there are nearly three to four thousand ready to surrender," Szendrey told a news conference in the Thai...

BANGKOK, Thailand (AP) - After decades on the run, 170 women, children and old men of the Hmong ethnic minority - which was once part of a U.S.-backed secret army fighting communists in Laos - emerged from their jungle hideouts on Saturday to surrender to the government. Their move, expected to be followed by thousands of their fellow hilltribe people, is the first step in closing the book on one of the most tragic episodes of the Vietnam War. U.S. sympathizers who rendezvoused with the tribespeople said the first batch turning themselves in to the communist government were received warmly...

"The shooting unfolded as the officers were sitting in separate patrol cars with their dogs going over training material. The K-9 training facility is in a quiet neighborhood, Dobbins said. Police gave the following account of the shooting: As the officers worked, they noticed a car slowly rolling toward them. The 1995 Honda Civic, with three people inside, had its lights off. The car stopped about 75 yards away from the officers. A man jumped out, fired at least eight shots from an assault rifle and got back in before the car drove away. The officers, who were armed, ducked...

SHEBOYGAN, WI (AP) - Nineteen-year-old Mai Doua never attended school before this year. Until now, the mother of two sewed for a living at the Thai refugee camp where she lived. Now she is trying to learn a task she says is far harder than sewing, which she started at age 5 - learning English in a foreign land. Doua is among nearly 800 young Hmong immigrants attending Wisconsin's public schools as part of the wave of newcomers who started arriving last summer. Many couldn't read or write in any language. Some didn't even know how to hold a pencil....

You’ve seen on television in recent weeks the scenes of the helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy rooftop in Saigon. Military action in Vietnam came to an end just thirty years ago last month. Unfortunately, for one loyal American ally, it marked just the beginning of even greater troubles. In the 1960s, the United States needed a way to keep North Vietnam from re-supplying its troops in the South through neighboring Laos without violating Laotian neutrality. So, it recruited an ethnic group called the Hmong to fight the Communists. By 1969, more than 18,000 Hmong soldiers had been killed. They...

Letting our friends down Chuck Colson May 19, 2005 You've seen on television in recent weeks the scenes of the helicopters evacuating Americans from the embassy rooftop in Saigon. Military action in Vietnam came to an end just thirty years ago last month. Unfortunately, for one loyal American ally, it marked just the beginning of even greater troubles. In the 1960s, the United States needed a way to keep North Vietnam from re-supplying its troops in the South through neighboring Laos without violating Laotian neutrality. So, it recruited an ethnic group called the Hmong to fight the Communists. By 1969, more than 18,000 Hmong...

In May 1975, the U.S. evacuated Hmong leaders from Laos as the Vietnam era climaxed. That exodus 30 years ago changed a people — and a faraway city. America's secret war was finally ending — in chaos, and in private. Tens of thousands of Hmong fighters and their families waited on a mountain airstrip in northern Laos. Gun-toting men, aged parents and mothers nursing babies, their belongings stuffed into bamboo boxes and overflowing suitcases, all sat on the airfield in the tropical heat. They scanned the clouds nestled against the hills, waiting for a miracle from above. They were hoping...

......snip.......... A raging street war between two Hmong gangs has left three dead since Thanksgiving and spread hundreds of rounds of ammunition throughout Sacramento. In response, gang detectives have more than doubled their presence on the streets, to as many as 30 some nights. With nightly warrant sweeps and probation searches, they're trying to get inside information on some of the most notoriously closed-mouth criminals in the area. And Asian gangs are not the only concern. In the past 12 months, other gang attacks have claimed the lives of a Sheldon High School student, a 21-year-old North Sacramento man and...

Email from a friend who is a tax-preparer: "Just had a new client in - Hmong family with traditional middle and last names - 4 kids - first three kids first names were - Reagan, Ronald and Nancy! must be good republicans"

While 2005 is well underway, three Twin Cities filmmakers are revisiting one of the major news stories of 2004, the deaths of six Wisconsin hunters at the hands of alleged gunman Chai Vang of the area’s Hmong community. Now Mark Tang, Theresa Konechne and Mark Ehling are creating a documentary about the incident and the subsequent trial, a documentary whose ending no one knows. Vang, 36, is jailed and charged with killing six hunters and injuring two others Nov. 21 in a confrontation that began with racial slurs and turned violent. The national media coverage of the shootings resulted in...

ST. PAUL - The wave of Hmong immigrants to Minnesota and the rest of the country is at a standstill today after the discovery of a handful of tuberculosis (TB) cases. Officials with the Minnesota Department of Health have confirmed that a 19-year-old in Minnesota has TB, and they suspect that four children may also have the highly contagious disease. Federal health officials said there is a cluster of TB cases at the Hmong refugee camps at Wat Tham Krabok in Thailand, where many refugees are coming from. Those are the same camps 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS visited last March. An...

Tuesday, January 11, 2005 Wis. seeks more Hmong hunting instructors ------------------------------------------------------------------------ By Robert Imrie Associated Press — Jan. 11, 2005 WAUSAU, Wis. — A Hmong liaison officer for Wisconsin hopes to find another 20 volunteers from Hmong communities statewide to teach hunter education classes to aspiring new hunters. Kou Xiong of the state Department of Natural Resources says he is one of only three Hmong certified to teach the classes out of about 4,900 volunteer teachers, most of them white men. "We just cannot find anyone," Xiong said. "The Hmong kids just feel that if they have a Hmong instructor,...

They addressed the recent state shootingsAfter a Hmong man shot six hunters to death in western Wisconsin in November, many in the Hmong community were worried about a possible increase in discrimination. According to those in Green Bay's Hmong population, those fears have become reality.Discrimination was one of several issues addressed by a panel of Hmong leaders who answered students' questions during a presentation at Southwest High School on Thursday. Nou Yang, a Preble High School sophomore who attended, said another teen referred to her brother as a "hunter" while buying stereo equipment days after the shootings. The words toward...

MANKATO, Minn. (AP) - A store that sells bumper stickers said it would stop selling one that advocates violence against the Hmong in light of a fatal shooting in Wisconsin. Custom Now, a store in the River Hills Mall, has been selling a bumper sticker that reads, "Save a Hunter Shoot a Mung." Though misspelled, the slogan was seen as a reference to last month's shooting in Wisconsin. St. Paul resident Chai Soua Vang, a Hmong man, has been charged with murdering six deer hunters after a dispute over a deer stand. Shopper Jessica Flatequal said she complained to management...

Vang" is one of just 18 tribal names in the Hmong culture. It happens to be the name of Chai Soua Vang, the St. Paul man charged with shooting eight Rice Lake, Wis., hunters Nov. 21, killing six of them. After the incident, some Twin Ports Hmong residents often were asked if they were related to the suspect, or if they knew him, said Cher Pao Vang of Superior, Wis. They don't know him. But they do want to help the families and surviving victims of the incident, which shocked the nation and set Minnesota and Wisconsin Hmong communities on...

MADISON (AP) -- Hmong leaders pleaded for more help from the state to educate Hmong hunters on regulations, as they brainstormed Tuesday on ways to defuse racial tension and help their people earn respect in the aftermath of the North Woods slayings. The session was held a week after Chai Soua Vang, 36, from St. Paul, Minn., was charged with shooting six white hunters to death and wounding two others Nov. 21 after Vang trespassed on their land in Sawyer County. Kou Xiong, the state Department of Natural Resources Hmong liaison, told a group appointed by Gov. Jim Doyle to...

A Rice Lake, Wisconsin Perspective It was Sunday evening, 11/21/04, and my son and I were on our way back from the deer shack after opening weekend of the Wisconsin deer season. The radio said that there was a man loose in the woods near Birchwood, who had shot 8 people already, with 5 already dead, and that anyone in the area should get out. I looked over at my son in disbelief, and in an attempt to prepare him for the fallout, said “This is going to affect us somehow… we’re going to know people involved in this”. We’d...

A shot of prejudice Regarding the Nov. 23 article "Hunting trip takes deadly turn" and subsequent articles about Chai Vang, the Hmong man who is accused of killing six Wisconsin hunters: Ten years ago I was hunting deer with a shotgun on public lands. As I was returning to my truck, a group of four hunters headed toward me. None of them wore any hunter's orange. I could see they were carrying high-powered rifles. They heckled me as they fanned out, forming a barrier. They cussed at me and lashed out with racial slurs. They said that I was hunting...

As a child born in America to Hmong immigrants, the role of mediator between my elders and what they discovered here fell heavily upon me. Lately, as I read of a Hmong man accused of shooting and killing six hunters in Wisconsin, I feel the bridges I have built over a lifetime to connect a past world to this one crumbling under national scrutiny. When I was a child, I would have to remind my grandmothers to pick up the telephone receiver before dialing. It was my generation, born into the world of telephones, raised by those who lived in...

From Ch 13 Menomonie Man Charged With Vandalism December 2, 2004 Andrew Fefer A 38-year-old Menomonie man is charged in connection with painting the word "killer" on his neighbors' mobile homes and a truck. Three days after the homes and truck were vandalized in the Evergreen Isle Mobile Court, one of the homeowners told officers what had happened. He called back later that day, saying someone was painting over the letters, making them bigger. Police responded and caught David L. Miller in a nearby home. "He denied any involvement but was apprehended and charged with three counts of criminal...

RICE LAKE, Wis. (AP) - Two survivors of a deadly deer-hunting confrontation joined a community prayer service where organizers urged people to avoid falling into fear and prejudice in the wake of the shootings blamed on a Hmong immigrant. Lauren Hesebeck and Terry Willers, whose six friends were killed in the shootings, sat near each other at the service Tuesday organized by area ministers. About 900 people packed the auditorium for the 70-minute service of prayers, Bible readings, music and calls for healing in this town of 8,300 - a community one pastor described as full of "souls exhausted by...

I thank you for the well written post marktwain. I think it puts a noose of perspective upon those too liberal to look at both sides of this tragedy. Your description of the Wisconsin area just about mirrors the people and the town I grew up in. I am new to this forum and I stumbled upon it trying to find out more facts about this incident. Although I sense some "racial prejudices" from some of the posters, I can tell that most of you just want the facts so that there can be some justice done here. At the...

Here is an article from the NYSlimes

DOBIE, Wis., Nov. 27 - The two gatherings, less than 200 miles apart, seemed to be separated by whole worlds. In this isolated village deep in the pine and cedar woods of the Upper Midwest, mourners trudged through falling snow on Friday to Our Lady of Lourdes Church to remember one of six hunters, all locals, killed near here a week ago. To the southwest, across the state line in Minnesota, thousands of Hmong immigrants streamed into a downtown St. Paul auditorium for three days of New Year's festivities with papaya salad, traditional courtship games and young women in dresses...