DOCUMENT RESUME ED 270 509 UD 024 855 AUTHOR ... - ERIC

4 THE HMONG IN TRANSITIONsuch as providing housing or deciding who can speak forthe Hmong.William Smalley, a linguist who first became involvedwith the Hmong over thirty years ago while workingon a project to provide a written form of the Hmong language,sketches out a series of stages that he sees aspart of the transformation of that part of the Hmong societythat migrated to the West. He points out thatchanges had begun to evolve long before the ultimateflight from Laos. Varying forms of individual and groupbehavior in the new setting can be understood, at leastpartially, as a function of events in the past. Contrastingpatterns of community leadership that have emerged invarious areas of resettlement around the United Statescan be traced to both the introduction of education inLaos and the way in which refugee camps in Thailand wereorganized.Robert Cooper, a British anthropologist who hasworked among the Hmong in both Thailand and Laos, presentsdata arguing that in addition to the commonly understoodpolitical reasons for the Hmong flight from Laosthere were also economic motivations for the move. Histhesis is that in examining historical, empirical and observationaldata there are grounds for concluding thatconditions in Laos were such that the land could nolonger support the traditional agricultural economicbasis of Hmong life. This paper proved to be the mostwidely discussed presentation of the Conference, withmany of the Hmong present disputing his interpretation ofthe facts and events cited.Timothy Dunnigan, an anthropologist who has beenkeenly interested in the Hmong since they first arrivedin the Twin Cities in 1975, carries our discussion of theimpact of resettlement on Hmong culture further. He discussesthe process by which they are maintaining theirethnic identity even while some of the attributes whichare said to be markers of being traditional Hmong are inthe process of change. In some cases what appear to besignificant changes in group organization, for example,he identifies as latent attributes of Hmong culture whichhave manifested themselves in previous situations ofHmong history when their ethnic identity was threatened.Gary Yia Lee, part of the small Hmong group that migratedto Australia, was educated there and earned his17