The Legacies of War

Painful images drawn by Hmong/Lao refugees.

When a friend of mine posted this on Facebook, it was a touching surprise because it's not every day that you see someone outside of your own culture shed light on a topic that many know nothing about. Although I was born in Thailand, my family's heritage is mainly of Lao descent and many people associate the Vietnam war with that country only (and the U.S. of course). This Midwest debut of exhibition features rare archival and current images, art and video, and tells the story of the horrors of the Vietnam-era bombing of Laos and lingering scourge of unexploded cluster bombs today.

"In the 1960s, when Lao civilians were being secretly bombed and displaced as refugees of 'The Secret War,' they had no other way, no language or tools to communicate with the outside world about their experiences except through a series of crude, hand-drawn sketches shown to visiting foreigners. But this art was enough to provoke questions that ultimately led to world awareness of what was happening during the CIA's covert war for Laos, and in many ways these sketches reshaped the destiny of over 400,000 Laotians and Hmong in the United States today." -- from Intermedia Arts website

St. Paul, MN is home to one of the largest populations of Hmong people, whom a lot of people know nothing about. In Southeast Asia the Hmong as an ethnic group lived across the northern area of three different countries—Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. The Hmong lived in relative peace with the other ethnic groups of the region before and during French colonial rule, but support for United States’ military actions in Laos and Vietnam during the 1960’s differentiated them from other groups. When the United States military intervention in Vietnam led to armed conflict along the Laotian-Vietnamese border in the 1970’s, approximately 20,000 Hmong sided with the United States army and provided critical aid in reconnaissance and the destruction of the Ho Chi Minh trail (Lynch 2004: 6). However, the United States pulled troops out of Laos and Vietnam, and evacuated the countryside, leaving the Hmong—considered traitors—behind to face retaliation from those they had fought against.  The remaining Hmong in the region fled the hostile regimes of Laos and Vietnam in 1975 to settle in refugee camps like Wat Tham Krabok in Thailand.

This is an exhibit that hits close to home as my family immigrated from Laos and my parents lived through this war. It's a big reason why we're here in America today. So, if you get a chance to see this exhibit, please know it means a great deal to a lot of people. The exhibit opened on Sept. 30th and runs until Oct. 26th at Intermedia Arts in Uptown. For more information, please click HERE.