Uploaded on: 06/24/2007
Hmong combine old heritage with new faith as numbers grow
By Christina Capecchi
The Catholic Spirit
Yang Dao |
The newly crowned Miss Hmong America greets the crowd at the 2000 Hmong American New Year celebration at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. The three-day event falls between Thanksgiving and Christmas, depending on the Hmong lunar calendar. |
Consider him a modern Moses among Hmong.
Yang Dao delivered his people from exile, single-handedly convincing the United States to admit Hmong refugees in 1975.
But the 61-year-old Brooklyn Park resident laughs at the comparison.
“No, no, no,” he said. “I am just a bridge between the religions in the United States.”
He’s a bridge between cultures, too, helping Hmong people adapt to Minnesota while maintaining their roots.
Thanks to Dao, St. Paul hosts the largest urban Hmong population in the U.S.
Dao, a Catholic convert, attends St. Vincent de Paul in St. Paul. He was the first Hmong in the world to earn a doctorate, a position that propelled him to fight for his people at the end of the Vietnam War.
When the U.S. Embassy offered Dao’s family a ticket into the United States, he declined. That would mean leaving behind the 40,000 Hmong who had fled the communists in Laos, occupying refugee camps in Thailand.
“I could not leave my people,” Dao said.
So Dao pressed on, contacting ambassadors around the world to find a home for the refugees. After three months of persuasion, U.S. delegates granted the Hmong admission into the country.
God was at work in that moment, Dao said.
“I believe that God is always with those people who are in need.”
The Hmong immigrants would remain in need as they adjusted to America. The first decade — 1976 to 1986 — proved especially difficult. That’s the period Hmong refer to as the Death Syndrome, when 200 Hmong across the country died in their sleep.
“The doctors could not find any biological causes,” Dao said. “They were young and stressed about their responsibility to family. They felt helpless.”
In Minnesota, the Hmong settled primarily on the east side of St. Paul. Very few spoke English, limiting their employment options to assembly jobs.
Slowly, they adapted. Children learned English at school and then translated for their parents.
The year 1986 marked a turning point for the Hmong. More were speaking English and taking professional training programs. They began working as electricians and technicians.
They contributed to the church, too.
Traditionally, Hmong are animists, worshipping the spirits of ancestors.
“People ask me, ‘Are you a cradle Catholic?’ and I say no,” said Deacon NaoKao Yang of St. Vincent de Paul. “It’s a new faith; the Hmong are discerning, they are learning.”
Catholicism was introduced to the Hmong by missionaries of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, according to Deacon Yang. The first Hmong in Laos became Catholic in 1954. Catechists began traveling to various mountain villages, sharing their faith. By 1975, Dao said, 10,000 Hmong were Catholic.
Yet far more Hmong converted to Catholicism after immigrating to Minnesota.
Since 1981, more than 1,000 Hmong have converted to Catholicism in the Twin Cities, according to Deacon Yang.
Converting wasn’t easy, given their Hmong heritage, said Tom Kosel, Director of Refugee Services at Catholic Charities. He recalled a meeting of the Hmong Catholic community in the early 1980s at St. Mary.
“They were in a lively discussion about which cultural traditions would they be able to maintain and which would they have to drop, being Catholic,” Kosel said. “It took me straight back to the Acts of the Apostles when the early apostles had to settle conflicts in the community about what they would keep doing and what would change at the beginning of the church.”
Hmong Catholics first worshipped at St. Mary in St. Paul and St. Leonard of Port Maurice in Minneapolis.
The Hmong revitalized the churches, singing in the choir, teaching religious education and volunteering as ministers.
In the mid-1980s, they made an especially vibrant contribution to St. Mary, where the stained glass had deteriorated.
When Mike Pilla of Rainbow Glass submitted an estimate for the repair, it exceeded the church’s budget. So, Pilla offered to train the Hmong parishioners, knowing they excel at handiwork.
Under Pilla’s direction, and with help from a Catholic Charities program, the Hmong artists turned heads, Kosel said.
“They took every stained-glass window that needed repair out of that church and they repaired and restored them and put them back in,” he said.
Dick Flesher, who served as programs coordinator of Migration and Refugee Services for the majority of the 1980s, said, “I heard they even got an inquiry from Notre Dame.”
In 1995, the archdiocese officially appointed St. Vincent de Paul as the Hmong Catholic Church, making it the only one with that the distinction in the country.
Today, 170 Hmong families attend St. Vincent de Paul. Just as the early Hmong Catholics worked to meld their old traditions with their new tenets, so do these Hmong.
Take their funeral service.
“As animists, Hmong sent the soul [of the deceased] back to the ancestor,” Dao said. “Now as Catholics you send the soul back to God.”
However, Hmong Catholics still invite an elder to speak to the family on behalf of the deceased, a traditional Hmong practice.
Younger Hmong say they are also trying to forge compromise.
“As a new generation, it’s very hard for us to keep the old traditions,” said Dao’s daughter-in-law Khao, 27. She was born in a refugee camp in Thailand and converted to Catholicism when she married Dao’s son.
Khao said she’s grateful for the new structure Catholicism provides.
“It’s not that I’m rejecting [Hmong heritage]. I want to involve a few old traditions, but if there’s no one who knows the old way, then I can fall back on the Catholic Church.”
So it will continue — one part old, one part new — and seeking God’s blessing on the balance.