In ‘Hmong Capital,' Refugee Stories Are Told in Tapestry

New York Times

26-04-2025

Lee Pao Xiong, a Hmong scholar, spread out several tapestries on a conference table. He pointed to little notches of yellow embroidery falling from helicopters and planes. Below were people stitched in traditional Hmong clothing, running in every direction.
'It's depicting the Communist usage of yellow rain on the Hmong people,' said Xiong, the founding director of the Center for Hmong Studies and its research museum, at Concordia University in St. Paul, Minn., referring to the substance the U.S. government and many Hmong say was dropped from planes, leading to accusations of chemical warfare. 'And also, the killing of fleeing refugees, and so on and so forth.'
Xiong pulls out tapestry after tapestry — story cloths, part of the Hmong textile tradition of paj ntaub. Most feature colorful pastoral or wedding scenes, but some depict memories from the 'Secret War' in Laos, a Vietnam proxy war in the '60s and '70s, during which the C.I.A. recruited Hmong people to fight Communist powers.
In the 1970s and '80s, the Hmong invented story cloths in refugee camps in Thailand. Xiong explained that it was a way to keep family history alive, and make money, after fleeing Laos during the Communist takeover in the spring of 1975. Xiong himself grew up in Long Tieng, a C.I.A. air base in Laos, before escaping with his family to a camp in May 1975.
On the 50th anniversary of the war and the Hmong resettlement, these story cloths can be found in homes, markets and museums around the Twin Cities, including at the Center for Hmong Studies, and the nearby Hmong Archives and Hmong Cultural Center Museum in a neighborhood known as Little Mekong, named after the river that more than 130,000 Hmong crossed into Thailand as they escaped Laos.
Across the Mississippi River, the tapestries can be found in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and come May, the Walker Art Center opens its artist-designed Skyline Mini Golf course, where there is a hole inspired by a paj ntaub.
'You're in the Hmong capital of the world,' Xiong said.
The United States began Hmong resettlement efforts in 1975, Xiong explained, and the government largely placed refugees in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California. St. Paul has the largest urban concentration of any U.S. city, with more than 40,000 Hmong and Hmong Americans. Xiong pointed to the efforts of the city's former mayor, George Latimer, who advocated for the settlement of Hmong refugees, and Albert Quie, Minnesota's former governor.
'Gov. Al Quie actually traveled to the refugee camps in Thailand in 1979 and then came back and advocated for all the churches to basically accept the refugees,' Xiong said. 'He basically lobbied the State Department to send the refugees to Minnesota.'
In the Twin Cities, Hmong culture isn't just present in the tapestries. It's everywhere, including the first Hmong judges and state elected officials, the culinary scene, farmers markets, and the arts.
'The Twin Cities is known in the nation, and even in the world, as the Hmong epicenter,' said the renowned chef Yia Vang. Vang's restaurant Vinai, which takes its name from the refugee camp in Thailand where he was born, was on The New York Times's 2024 best restaurants list. The Twin Cities, he said, is 'where Hmong culture begins.'
Hmong food, commerce, textiles and art are also on view at two major indoor markets in St. Paul, Hmongtown Marketplace and Hmong Village.
'Whenever my kids want to hear Hmong music or they want Hmong food, for me, it's a four-minute drive to Hmong Village,' said Kao Kalia Yang, the author of 'The Latehomecomer.'
Yang was also born in the Ban Vinai refugee camp; her family came to St. Paul when she was 6. Her mother and aunt made story cloths in the camp. 'Hmong women and girls are known for their tapestry around the world,' Yang said. 'It was a rebellious act of us to conserve our stories for future generations using what we had.'
Sunisa Lee, the first Hmong American Olympian and gold medalist, is from St. Paul, and the photographer Pao Houa Her and Yang, both 2023 Guggenheim fellows, grew up in St. Paul and still live in the Twin Cities today.
'The successes that you see come from our parents who wanted us to be successful here,' said Mai Vang Huizel, the director of the Hmong Museum at Hmong Village.
Vang Huizel said that 2025 was an important milestone for reflection and remembering. Many Hmong Americans like herself, she said, know little about their family's experience of escaping war. That's why she started the museum 10 years ago.
'I didn't know anything at all about my parents' experience,' Vang Huizel said. 'I've only heard bits and pieces, and their stories felt more like myths and legends than real life, so I really felt that having something like a museum would be so important for our community.'
'These histories are oftentimes passed on from generation to generation through oral stories,' Vang Huizel said, 'and with a lot of the disruption from war with our community, a lot of those stories are not being passed on from the elders to the next generation, because once they're here in the U.S., they are basically on survival mode.'
To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Vang Huizel will represent the museum in Washington, D.C., on May 10 at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's event, 'Reflection, Resilience, and Reimagination: 50 Years of Southeast Asian American Journeys,' and again on May 16 in St. Paul at the Minnesota History Center's event, '50 Years of Hmong Americans in Minnesota.' Hmong American Day is May 14.
The Hmong Cultural Center Museum also preserves traditions, including teaching the qeej, an ancient bamboo woodwind instrument used at weddings and funerals. The annual Qeej and Hmong Arts Festival was held April 24-26.
'On the 50-year Hmong escape from Laos to the United States, we are still keeping the music alive,' said Txong Pao Lee, director of the Hmong Cultural Center Museum.
At the Center for Hmong Studies museum, the director, Xiong, folded up the story cloths to make room for stacks of documents from the 'Secret War.' Included are handwritten notes from Maj. Gen. Vang Pao, who commanded the secret army, and U.S. correspondence about the Hmong resettlement. 'People didn't think that the Hmong will be able to survive in America,' Xiong said. 'And yet, we survive, and we thrive, and we became a very vibrant community here in Minnesota.'