Any disputes or issues between two Hmong people or different clans will typically be settled by clan leaders. Each clan leader is responsible for handling conflict negotiation and occasional maintenance of religious rituals. However, within each clan are several sub clans whose members can trace their ancestors to a common person or share a common tradition of ancestral worship and other ritual practices. When two new Hmong people meet for the first time, they usually exchange names and clan membership.
If they belong to the same clan, they will establish the relationship within the clan. If not, they will establish their relationship through the marriage of their kin, beginning with their wives and aunts. They will address each other using kinship terms such as brother, uncle, aunt, and so on.
All Hmong people consider themselves related somehow, either through close or distant relatives. As a result, kinship is the essence of Hmong life. HAPA is enrolling students for school year. You may visit our enrollment page for more information and an enrollment application.
Interested in working at HAPA? We have a few job openings. Please visit our news section for more information. Who are the Hmong? California 9, Minnesota 66, Wisconsin 49, Koua Thao was born in the mountains of Laos and raised in urban Wisconsin. He is now a family man with three daughters of his own. Koua is an emerging leader within the Hmong community.
He will be learning Spanish in the near future to better serve and communicate with his Spanish speaking students. Although busy with his current job and three little ones, he still tries to find time to enjoy the outdoors and considers himself a part-time professional fisherman. After all, he could speak and understand the language. He believes that young Hmong people, many of whom were born in the U.
Unfortunately, many young Hmong people appear to reject their native culture, and the reason is often that they simply never had a chance to learn it or about it. The family is divided into individual extended families consisting of spouses, children, parents and siblings. Extended families often live together under the same roof, though may separate to different dwellings as siblings marry and have children. Traditionally, a large number of relatives that could be readily called upon provided an element of security to farmers who had to move periodically.
In Laos, the Hmong resided in extended families of three or four generations. Having children is important in Hmong culture. Only the ancestors who were parents become spirits that are feared and revered, because they can bring harm to the living descendants. There is a strong desire by Hmong parents to have sons who will offer sacrifices to the ancestral spirits, maintain the family line, and be sanctuary for parents when parents are not able to live by themselves.
Keown-Bomar, In traditional Hmong culture, sons were desired because parents could never live in the same house with daughters and sons in-law due to spiritual reasons. A married daughter and son in-law has a different house and ancestor spirits; therefore two sets of different spirits could never live under the same roof.
Although male children are desired and given greater spiritual responsibilities in the family, this does not mean that daughters are given less affection. Nevertheless, couples without sons may seek to adopt them or may allow the husband to marry a second wife in the hope that she will bear male children. In the US, as many parents consider placing themselves in nursing homes at old age and start understanding the biological reason for conceiving a son or daughter, there is increased acceptance when a couple has only daughters.
Pregnancy is considered sacred and especially fragile in the first trimester. Traditionally, young pregnant women are encouraged not to inform others about the pregnancy due to a fear of evil spirits that would endanger the pregnancy leading to spontaneous abortion. The pregnancy is kept unknown until it becomes self evident in the later trimester cycles.
Today, some Hmong women may not seek early prenatal care for this reason. In addition, due to lack of medical knowledge, the gender of the infant is said to be due to the faith luck of the women. Vue, L. In Hmong culture, mothers and mothers-in-law help at the birth, which often occurs in the squatting position, with the husband helping to cut the cord and wash the newborn infant. Women prefer natural tearing and healing to clinical episiotomies.
Today, a woman requiring a Caesarean section under general anesthetic may have concerns that when her body is cut, her soul will be lost. Traditionally, Hmong believe the placenta is required for reincarnation and bury it at the place of birth, under the house.
Traditionally, the woman is kept warm for three days post-partum, and touching cold water is prohibited. In Laos, women lay by fires. In the US, women may wear warm clothes and use heating. Women should drink hot or warm water after birth. There is a belief that drinking cold water or failing to eat properly can lead to having wrinkles or skin rashes, or walking bent over in old age.
In the hospital, women might not eat the hospital diet. Traditionally they should eat hot rice and chicken soup with special herbs for 30 days post partum. Eggs, pork and some fish may be added after the first 10 days. No fruit, vegetables or cold drinks are allowed. Physical activity post-partum is also restricted, as this may cause internal organs to collapse.
Furthermore, during the first 30 days, a new mom is not permitted to visit other homes. A identified a case in which the likely source of lead exposure in a young child in the U. It is believed that praising the newborn may cause harm to the baby from the spirits. The ceremony is an occasion for naming the child and for relatives and community members to offer blessings and words of wisdom to the child.
Among American Hmong, fewer mothers are breast-feeding than in previous times. Bottle-feeding is preferred for reasons of convenience when the mother returns to work and desires others to feed her infant.
Babies stayed close to their mothers and ate all their meals fresh. Babies were weaned when another child was born. Solid foods were introduced when a child showed interest and were mostly the same foods adults ate, just watered down versions. In the U. A Hmong child is considered a treasure. The baby is given lots of affection and attention, physical and social contact with mothers, grandmothers and older siblings.
In the Thai refugee camps, women adopted Thai-style baby baskets or cradles, often hanging from the tent roof or dwelling while the mother performed chores or embroidery work. Most traditional Hmong families do not want to hear direct comments about their children, especially infants and babies. Traditionally, the norm in marriage is to raise families with large numbers of children. Children generally grow up with their needs responded to quickly and help in the work of a family at a young age.
In Laos, at four, five or six years old a child helps keep watch on the house, doing tasks like hauling water, shucking, milling corn, and carrying a baby sibling; usually a grandmother, uncle or other adult would be nearby in the cluster of family houses. Children are still young when they begin helping in the farming.
Elders tell stories to children, passing knowledge and life lessons between generations. Traditionally a Hmong man would not have much to do with the children when they were still little; not physically affectionate, especially with their daughters. Hmong teach their children to be well behaved in the presence of guests. Typically, in cases where their children are interrupting or not behaving well in the presence of guests, Hmong parents do not send their children away or discipline them.
Discipline is usually administered after the guests have left. In Laos, girls and boys in their adolescent years have the same responsibilities as adults. Young boys are expected to learn from their fathers, and young girls are expected to learn from their mothers. Boys moved from village to village for the purpose of meeting girls and participating in festivals where they had relatives. The primary means for meeting young people of the opposite sex during the New Year was a ball game that took place at the festivities.
Boys in one line faced girls in another line and tossed small fabric balls back and forth. A boy often would concentrate attention on a certain girl. Often boys and girls would use a secret form of language to communicate with one another.
By playing a small mouth harp they could approximate human speech. In Laos, a suitor would play the mouth harp outside the house of the girl he was interested in. The girl would sometimes reply with her own mouth harp or another instrument, and the dialogue sometimes continued for hours.
In the United States, youth use the telephone and email instead of the traditions of ritualized flirting and communication. New Year celebrations are still a time of courtship and result in many marriages. Traditionally, Hmong women and men work until they no longer can carry out their daily tasks feeding the farm animals, farming, and tending family duties.
An adult male is expected to have full knowledge of traditional values passed from his father or male relative. Adult and elderly males are looked upon for wisdom and skills for handling marital conflicts and problems within the community.
Elders may be less respected and feel depressed about their lesser place in the family. Increasingly, elders are placed in nursing homes as families are not able to take care of them and meet the demands of society. This is an on-line learning module, but you can download the module as a PDF and print the cultural profile by filling out a short survey. Additional cultures and geriatric information also available on their site.
Rice is a staple in Hmong cuisine. Distinctions among various kinds of rice are found in Hmong language — new rice, sweet rice, purple rice, sticky rice, rice in field, harvested rice. Rice is usually eaten at every meal, along with everyday dishes of meats, fish and vegetables, grilled, fried boiled and spiced.
Families eat together around the table, using utensils both in Laos and in the US. No chopsticks are used in Laos. Feasting on special occasions usually includes a menu of roast pig or boiled pork soup, fruit, boiled eggs, egg rolls, seasoned meats, vegetables, rice, and salad. Hmong will commonly grow vegetables and herbs in their gardens or yards here in the US.
Traditionally, during family feasts, males ate first. This is a dish common for many adults and elder people, even in the US today. In the US, having drinks during family meals is similar to American meals.
In the US, wine and beer are used during special occasions. Excessive alcohol is consumed during traditional Hmong wedding ceremonies, both in the homeland and in the US. In Laos, opium is used as a treatment drug to cure muscle aches after a hard day of farm work or severe injury to the body. Abusive use of opium leads to family poverty and causes a bad family name. This negative image continues to taint families in the US.
Indulgence cannot be defined in the Hmong culture or Hmong people. In Hmong society, there is no such food as ice cream or other edible things that someone could indulge oneself in. If there is a strong interest to explore indulgence in Hmong, the word needs to be defined carefully in order to guide discussion.
Hmong animist tradition believes in multiple supreme beings, called Gods, responsible for high-level creation and functions of nature. These Gods along with other spirits are believed to dwell in the spiritual world — the realm of the dead, the invisible, and the supernatural. The Hmong believe that the spiritual world coexists with the physical world and is inhabited by a wide variety of spirits, many of which can influence the course of human life.
The Hmong believe spirit types include ancestral spirits, house spirits, spirits in nature, as well as evil spirits. Ancestral spirits include any deceased member of the family. House spirits are believed to inhabit each corner of a Hmong house. Each part of the house is also believed to have its own spirit, including the stove, and the doors. The altar is assumed to be the place in the house to which ancestors return.
Spirits of nature include mountains, trees, streams, valleys, caves, ponds, and winds. It is said people have 12 souls — the three major ones are the reincarnation soul, the residing soul and the wandering soul. The residing soul stays with the body as it breaks down and becomes the ancestral spirit that descendants revere and pay homage to. The wandering soul leaves the body during dreams or to play with other souls or spirits.
If frightened, the wandering soul may be lost in the spirit world. At death, the wandering soul returns to the spirit world and continues to live life there much as it did in the physical world. A traditional animist practices shamanism.
Shamans are people who mediate between the visible and spirit worlds through ritual practices conducted for purposes of healing, divination, and control over natural events.
For a shaman, the altar is the sacred place where the shaman spirits dwell. Shamanism is viewed as a way to maintain communication between the Hmong and the spiritual world. Spirits of nature can cause physical and psychological harm to Hmong in the guise of illness, nightmares, and even death. Hmong shamans perform ritual trances in order to figure out the causes of illnesses for the purpose of treating the effects.
Shamans communicate messages from spirits to the persons affected, and vice versa. Almost all aspects of traditional Hmong life are affected by contact with supernatural beings. A person is thought to have been allotted time on earth by God and to have been given several souls. The Hmong perform many ritual ceremonies for the purpose of fulfilling the will of the ancestors and natural spirits. Hmong rituals usually revolve around the practices that their ancestors passed onto them.
Variations in rituals are found in the practices among different clans and lineages and are passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. Fathers pass animist ritual traditions to their sons. Cha, Persons of Hmong origin traditionally believe in life after death.
With proper guidance from Hmong musical performers during the funeral rituals, Hmong believe that the souls of the deceased will come back to their ancestors for reincarnation, and that the new bodies of their relatives will come back as new members of Hmong families. Many Hmong in the United States continue to practice some form of the Hmong animist tradition.
Some practices have undergone changes due to restrictive factors of the new environment. Missionaries in China in the s and in Laos in the s first introduced Christianity to the Hmong. However the majority of Hmong Christians converted in the United States. People converted for various reasons — to please their Christian resettlement sponsors, to qualify for private school scholarships or in response to the difficulty of performing traditional rituals.
Within some families, divisions have resulted when some members have converted to Christianity and others have not. Some Christian Hmong label traditional animist practices as sinful. On the other hand, some Hmong believe it is dangerous for everyone when Christian members of the household disrespect the spirits by not performing the traditional rituals.
In general, Hmong Catholics are more likely than Hmong Protestants to accommodate some forms of traditional animist practices within their new faith framework. Traditional animists may be more willing to attend Christian rituals than their Christian counterparts are willing to attend animist rituals. Wrist usually occurs during wedding, celebration of a new birth of a child, and feast to honor parents or relatives. Neck stringing is generally done to promote good health.
When an old person dies, the body is usually kept inside the house for five to ten days. A funeral consists of 5 days of ceremony including speeches, drumming, hours-long chants to guide spirits home to Heaven, and ritualized crying — a way of declaring love for the person.
Traditionally, Hmong graves can be a mound of earth on which tree branches are piled to protect disruption by animals, a mound of earth surrounded by a wooden fence, or a mound protected by boulders, the type depending on sub-clan funeral tradition. In the United States, it still may be important for terminally ill patients to return home to die, as the soul of a person who does not die at home may wander and not be reincarnated.
Family members of the deceased may refuse autopsies, and reasons for this include belief that intact body parts and organs are needed for smooth reincarnation and response to rumors that organs are taken out for eating and for sale. Hmong recognize that illness can be a result of external natural forces, such as accidents and infectious diseases.
The concept of contagion is not new to the Hmong in understanding diseases like TB and Chickenpox. Hostile spirits, spells, curses and a violation of taboos are other factors believed to cause illness.
A traditional Hmong belief is that ill health may be the result of the soul wandering from the body unable to find its way home. The soul may be lost due to injury, wounds, a fall, a loud noise, being unconscious including from anesthesia , fear, or feeling sad and lonely. In the United States, environmental toxins are also seen as causing illness. Hmong believe the liver is the center and regulator of human emotions, playing a role in mental health and personality.
Traditionally, Hmong use home therapies for common aliments. For more unusual or serious problems people seek help from folk medicine doctors, ritual healers, and shamans. Throughout life, people learn about home therapies for common conditions like colds and aches, and sometimes for other issues as varied as arthritis and fertility. Many homes have a family member specializing in healing herbs. Medicinal plants are grown in home gardens or imported from Thailand, and are administered in teas and ointments.
Other healing techniques include massage, coining or spooning rubbing an area vigorously with a silver coin or spoon , and cupping applying negative suctioning pressure on the skin with a cup.
Physical marks like bruises and redness might be found on the body of a Hmong person, the results of these treatments. Hmong also may wear accessories such as red necklaces made from silver and brass, white cloths around their wrists, and red or white strings on their wrists, necks, or ankles.
These accessories may be worn for health and religious purposes. The medicine doctor gains knowledge of diagnosis and treatment by apprenticing with another healer and from the guidance of her helping spirits. She specializes in healing with herbs and may be a generalist or may be dedicated to healing certain conditions.
He calls on healing spirits with Laotian and Chinese words and incense. The symptoms of soul loss include weakness, tiredness, fever and headache, loss of appetite with extra thirst, insomnia or dreams of being in a strange place with a stranger. A soul calling ceremony is required to cure the sick person. Some family members may learn to call a soul home. If no one in the household is able to call the soul, a revered soul caller is consulted. The soul caller observes the chicken killed and boiled to divine whether the soul has returned and in what condition.
If the healing is not successful, a shaman is consulted. A shaman is the supreme spiritual healer whose primary means of patient care is to travel to the spirit world. Shamans are usually well known, well respected, and mostly male though some are female, and are key figures in traditional culture.
It is said that shamans do not seek the calling but that the spirits call them to the spiritual healing practice.
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