Homeland narratives and Hmong Americans in Wisconsin

Author(s):

Hein, Jeremy

Format:

Book section

Publisher:

Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012.

Language:

English

Abstract:

A casual glance at a Wisconsin map reveals towns named Denmark, Holland, Norway, and Poland. This landscape is a reminder that immigrants in Wisconsin have pondered the meaning of homelands for a long time. From the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, European immigrants brought diversity when they came to work in mines, lumber camps, wheat fields, cow barns, and factories. For example, in the 1840s and 1850s, thousands of German, Dutch, and Irish immigrants setled in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The first Hmong family arrived in 1976, and the city is now home to more than twenty-seven hundred Hmong Americans. After overcoming initial public resistance, a multi racial commitee obtained city approval for a Lao, Hmong, and American Veterans Memorial. Dedicated in 2006, a circle of polished black granite blocks displays a map of Southeast Asia and recounts the story of Hmong involvement in the Vietnam War, their flight from Laos, and resetlement in the United States.1 Yet, Wisconsin's European veneer can hinder an accurate understanding of the American immigrant experience. Some place names are not authentic. Railroad owners gave grand titles to tiny depots-such as Milan-as a marketing strategy. A real estate investor in Krakow, Wisconsin, "named the village in honor of the ancient capital of Poland, because he wanted to entice Polish emigrants to setle here." Names such as Germantown imply that homeland means national origin and thus the name of a country.2 The Hmong, however, are a stateless people in the mountains of southern China and Southeast Asia who began a global diaspora after 1975. In Hmong America, Chia Youyee Vang points out that Hmong Americans define homeland in multiple ways "rather than solely in relation to a shared physical homeland." Yet, in order to participate in the dominant national-origins discourse, Hmong Americans are forced to cite Laos as their "homeland. " They are not the only people in the United States whose conception of homeland challenges European American discourse. The ancestry of many African Americans reaches back into the history of the slave trade, making national origin difficult to determine. Native Americans' conception of homeland is closely linked to sovereignty on reservations, not distant countries. To beter understand the many meanings of homeland that now intersect in the United States, this chapter investigates how Hmong Americans answer a question they are commonly asked by non-Hmong: "If you're from Laos, why aren't you Lao"3?. © 2012 by the Minnesota Historical Society. All rights reserved.

ISBN:

9780873518482 (ISBN)

Identifier:

HmongStudies1184