Hmong Histories: A Critical Perspective

By Chong A. Moua

A critical perspective on Hmong history is necessary because people who are Hmong have mainly been portrayed and characterized by outsiders and scholars as primitive, backward, and warrior-like. These characterizations are one-dimensional stereotypes that obfuscate the agency of Hmong as historical actors, the complexity of their history as stateless people, and the ways in which they have been oppressed and subjugated by dominant groups and forces of colonization and imperialism in China and Southeast Asia. This chapter seeks to re-orient the perspective of Hmong history by centering Hmong agency and Hmong ways of knowing. In doing so, this critical perspective on Hmong history highlights the ways in which Hmong know their own history and how they talk about the factors such as colonization and imperialism that have impacted who they are as a people. 

The lessons in this area of study explore how colonization, imperialism, war, and migration have shaped Hmong histories and perspectives as a people without a geographic homeland. There are a number of lessons that explain the context of Hmong involvement in the Secret War in Laos to interrogate U.S. Cold War policy in Southeast Asia. Some of these lessons focus on the impact of the Secret War on Hmong, with topics that include chemical warfare deployment, the subsequent forced migration out of Laos and into Thailand, and the construction and restoration of communities and homes in new locales. Two lessons use historical Hmong women figures, such as Hmong nurse Choua Thao, to examine the roles women played in Hmong society. These lessons explore how women continue to shape Hmong history, and also the important traits that make these women significant to the Hmong story.

To help contextualize the lessons, this content chapter will provide an overview of the important questions, frameworks, and factors that have shaped Hmong history. This chapter will answer questions that include: What lessons/frameworks does Hmong history offer us to think about the world and the past? How do people who are Hmong  talk about their own history? In answering these questions, this chapter will touch on key theoretical frameworks within Hmong history such as statelessness and oral literacy. Additionally, the chapter will discuss how factors like colonization and imperialism have resulted in multiple instances of forced displacement of Hmong in Asia, Southeast Asia, and the diaspora. 

Dual Theoretical Frameworks of Hmong History

The dual theoretical frameworks of statelessness and oral literacy are important to establishing/understanding critical perspectives on Hmong history. In the context of Hmong history, statelessness is less about the legal definition of what it means for a person to be stateless (i.e. as defined by the United Nations) and more about it being a historical condition. For Hmong, being stateless simply means that the Hmong historically have no geographical homeland to call their own. Being stateless also means they are a people whose sovereignty is not tied to any particular nation-state (Vang, 2021, p. 8). Unlike Italians who may look to the country of Italy as their homeland, for example, Hmong do not have a “Hmongland.” Hmong, however, do have stories within their oral traditions of past kings and kingdoms in their distant past. Until the 1950s, these oral traditions were the main method of documentation and record keeping for Hmong historical events, genealogies, customs, and rituals. The reliance on oral traditions means that Hmong have been an oral literate society for much of their history. It is through stories and oral accounts passed down through word of mouth that Hmong have gathered and shared knowledge of family history, migration, and interaction with other groups over generations. As a historically stateless society without a geographical homeland whose knowledge is recorded through oral traditions rather than writing. As a result, people who are Hmong have often been characterized by missionaries, scholars, and neighboring nations as primitive and backwards. 

Oral Traditions

A critical perspective on Hmong history contests these characterizations by centering Hmong narratives and agency. For instance, there is one traditional Hmong story about how clan names were created. According to this story, Hmong clans came from the union of a brother and sister who were the sole survivors of a flood that destroyed everything in the world. During this time, they hid in a copper drum that stayed afloat during the flood. Afterward, the siblings discovered that they were the only survivors on Earth. The brother suggested the siblings marry to repopulate the planet. At first, the sister refused but eventually agreed when the brother cheated to win a contest. According to the story, after marrying, they had a baby that resembled a round ball of flesh, which they cut up and scattered in various places. From these pieces, Hmong clans emerged (Yang & Yang, 1992). A non-Hmong perspective of this story might focus on the incestuous element or the simple plot line. A Hmong-centered analysis of the story, on the other hand, would recognize that this tale reflects the two main frameworks of Hmong history. First, it is a story that comes from oral traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation and, secondly, it offers an account of Hmong origins that is devoid of either geographic or state affiliation. In the absence of a geographical homeland, this story declares that Hmong people do not come from any place in particular, but, instead, from each other. 

As a people with an oral history tradition and without a geographical homeland, the Hmong are acutely aware of the powerful relationship between writing and the development and maintenance of nation-states. Because of this, the desire to secure a territorial homeland and writing system has been prevalent in Hmong histories. According to historian Mai Na Lee, Hmong oral traditions abound with stories of how past kings, kingdoms, and writing were lost (Lee, 2015). More importantly, the loss of Hmong kings and kingdoms in the ancient past led to the loss of Hmong books and writing. One story says that after the Hmong kingdom fell and the king was killed by the Chinese, the fleeing Hmong were chased to a river where they ate their books because they were hungry before crossing (Tapp, 1989). A similar account is expressed in song by ritual masters of the Hmong bamboo instrument known as rab geej, or keng. This song tells the story of a Hmong scholar who escaped the purging of Hmong intellectuals. These assaults were accompanied by book burnings, all of which were ordered by a Chinese emperor whose goal was to destroy the Hmong kingdom. The one book that the Hmong scholar happened to save was eventually eaten piecemeal by a pig, a cow, and mice until only a few scraps were left. The scholar then asked his wife to sew the remaining letters into her embroidery (paj ntaub) and, ever since, Hmong women have played a fundamental role in passing on Hmong writing through their needlework (Lee, 2015). On the surface, these stories seem to be simple stories of Hmong loss and persecution. An analysis through a critical Hmong lens, however, demonstrates that these oral accounts are dynamic and creative ways to document not only loss, but colonization and subjugation by the Han Chinese empire. More than stories of loss, these stories serve to explain why people who are Hmong have no territorial homeland and are a society based on oral literacies. 

Desire for Homeland

As a result of these losses, the desire and search for sovereignty and homeland plays a large part in Hmong history and their interactions with the more dominant groups. The Hmong’s persistent desire to establish a homeland and maintain sovereignty has led to stereotypes that characterize Hmong people as unassimilable, rebellious, and warrior-like. Ancient Chinese records show the Han Chinese majority viewed Hmong and all non-Han groups as inferior and barbarian. As early as the twenty-seventh century B.C.E., Hmong were mentioned “as a group who hindered Chinese expansionism into the basins of both the Yellow River and the Hoai” (Lee, 1998, pp. 6). The expanding Han empire eventually pushed Hmong across the southern border into Southeast Asia in large numbers in the mid-nineteenth century. Hmong joined other ethnic minorities in China in a series of rebellions in the 1850s that sought to resist Han Chinese expansion. Migrating to resist subjugation, Hmong experienced similar discrimination once they arrived in Southeast Asia. People who were Hmong eventually encountered  the French colonial empire in Laos, which formed part of the broader French colony of Indochina. During this period, the Hmong were stereotyped by the French as “warlike” after they revolted against unfair French taxation policies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Lee, 1998). When the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union ignited in Southeast Asia in the 1950s, stereotypical characterizations of the Hmong as rebellious and violent came to be seen as desirable traits, and they were recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. During this time the United States saw Laos as a strategic buffer state to prevent the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Unlike in Vietnam, the United States was prohibited from sending ground troops to Laos due to the 1962 Geneva Accords that declared Laos a neutral state. As a result, Hmong fought as proxy soldiers in the so-called “Secret War” that happened “in the shadow of Vietnam” War in Laos  (Castle, 1993). The Paris Peace Accords in 1973 officially ended the war in Vietnam as well as in Laos; and in 1975, the last U.S. troops and personnel left Southeast Asia. During the Secret War, Hmong fought as U.S. allies and also fought on the communist side. After the war ended, those who were former U.S. allies were forced to flee due to persecution in Laos. Thousands of people of Hmong descent made their way to refugee camps in Thailand and eventual resettlement to western countries, including the United States. Hmong who fought with the communists in Laos were able to stay and reap the benefits of victory. A critical Hmong perspective goes beyond one-dimensional stereotypes of Hmong to reframe their resistance and action as part of their historical search for sovereignty and homeland. While the Hmong did fight on behalf of the United States, they also fought to protect their villages, families, and way of life– none of which were part of the United States’s Cold War plans to stop communism. 

Hmong Agency: How Hmong Tell Their Stories

While much of their history has been animated by a desire for a territorial homeland, being without has made Hmong people resilient, dynamic, and innovative. A critical perspective on Hmong history matters because it centers the agency of Hmong as historical actors and insists that Hmong history isn’t about what happened to them, but how Hmong tell their own stories. The Hmong story offers a number of important lessons in an era where nation-states take precedence in global structures and relations. For instance, a critical Hmong stateless perspective asks us to think about non-state, non-territorial forms of belonging. In the absence of a geographical homeland, Hmong have conceived of homeland and belonging in various forms, such as family, the arts, and, more recently, writing. 

Family as Belonging

Family provides a form of belonging that is established through kinship. Without a homeland, the geography of kinship serves to bind Hmong to one another. The maintenance of these bonds through oral traditions and rituals is an important way to trace and preserve history over time. Family as homeland insists that the question of “who do you come from?” is as important as the question of “where do you come from?” in regards to the past. Memory is another form of belonging–both individual and collective–a place where Hmong remember but also record the lived experiences of their people that do not appear in any official or national narratives. This “memoryscape” (Moua, 2017) chronicles violence, trauma, and displacement but can also serve as a site of recuperation, resistance, and knowledge production. 

Hmong Art of Kwv Txhiaj

Hmong arts, which include a variety of oral traditions, also help Hmong maintain a sense of belonging and personhood in the absence of territory. Song poetry (kwv txhiaj) is an example of oral tradition that is widely practiced regardless of gender, age, or social status in Hmong society. Hmong-American writer Kao Kalia Yang argues that the significance of kwv txhiaj is similar to how African American writer Ralph Ellison defines American blues. Ellison (1992) states that blues is a form that is “an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically” that “keep[s] the painful details and episodes of brutal experience alive in one’s aching consciousness” (p. x). While Hmong do use kwv txhiaj to sing about everything from loss and the yearning for homeland to war and tragedy, the other popular categories of kwv txhiaj center courtship, love, familial bonds, everyday life, and the beauty of the natural world. 

Writing Their Own Story

Writing, especially in the Hmong American context, has also become a space where Hmong have begun to establish a sense of belonging on a literary terrain—in both English and the Hmong language. In recent years, writer Kao Kalia Yang and poet Mai Der Vang have won critical acclaim for works that use un-translated Hmong words and draw on Hmong experiences. Ultimately, a critical perspective on Hmong history is about Hmong having the agency to tell their stories on their own terms. 

References

Castle, T. J. (1993). At war in the shadow of Vietnam: U.S. military aid to the Royal Lao Government, 1955-1975. Columbia University Press. 

Lee, M. N. M. (1998). The thousand-year myth: Construction and characterization of Hmong. Hmong Studies Journal, 2(2), 1-23. 

Lee, M. N. M. (2015). Dreams of the Hmong Kingdom: The quest for legitimation in French Indochina, 1850-1960. University of Wisconsin Press.

Moua, C. A. (2017). Refugee memoryscape: The rhetoric of Hmong refugee writing. In C. I-Fen Cheng (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies (pp. 117-128). Routledge. 

Tapp, N. (1989). Sovereignty and rebellion: The white Hmong of northern Thailand. Oxford University Press.

Vang, M. (2021). History on the run: Secrecy, fugitivity, and Hmong refugee epistemologies. Duke University Press.

Yang, K. K. (2016). The song poet: A memoir of my father. Metropolitan Books.

Yang, M., & Yang, S. (1992). The flood and Hmong clan names: The world’s second beginning. In C. Johnson (Ed.), Myths, legends, and folk tales from the Hmong of Laos (pp. 114-120). Linguistics Department, Macalester College.