Pao Lor wants to marry his high school sweetheart.
But in protest of an ancient Hmong tradition that requires a groom to pay his bride’s parents for her hand in marriage, the 21-year-old Oshkosh resident said he’s holding off on marriage.
Lor knows his girlfriend’s parents are traditional and will want a dowry for their daughter.
“I don’t want to pay the dowry,” he said. “I know the dowry’s about respecting her worth. But it’s expensive. What if the parents want $10,000 and I don’t have the money?”
Lor said he’s frustrated with the issue and is considering sending a petition around Hmong communities to get rid of the dowry.
“It’s hard and it’ll take time. There are Hmong people who still think the world is flat,” he said. “But if it doesn’t happen for me, it’ll happen for my kids.”
Lor isn’t alone in his frustration with cultural expectations.
Many young Hmong who grew up in the United States share their parents’ deep loyalty to their Hmong roots.
In the meantime, they’ve also developed a desire to embrace an American lifestyle.
But where the American culture promotes independence, freedom and the pursuit of an individual’s own happiness and dreams, the Hmong culture encourages duty to family, traditions and the good of the group rather than the individual.
It’s the kind of clash that leaves the youths straddling two opposing cultural expectations – and many deciding that after living in the United States for years, their priorities have changed from their parents’.
“We’re more Americanized now,” said Mai Yang Lee, 14. “Some rules in our culture are too strict and leave some of us with little freedom.”
It's a growing cultural divide that could provide additional challenges for a new group of Hmong refugees expected to arrive later this year.
Starting this summer, about 15,000 Hmong refugees living at Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist temple in central Thailand, will start arriving in the United States.
The U.S. government made the announcement in December in response to the mounting Thai government pressure to remove the Hmong refugees from the temple.
During the Vietnam War the Hmong allied themselves with Americans by fighting in a secret war in Laos, rescuing downed pilots and patrolling the border between Laos and Vietnam.
When the United States pulled out of Southeast Asia in the mid-1970s, the communist government that took over Laos began a still ongoing war against the Hmong as punishment for their siding with Americans.
About 150,000 Hmong fled the country and sought shelter in refugee camps in Thailand before they were permitted to relocate to the United States.
When the Thai refugee camps closed about a decade ago, the remaining Hmong refugees were given a choice to come to the United States or go back to Laos. Some chose to hide out in Thailand and eventually were given shelter at the Wat Tham Krabok when an abbot opened its doors to the people.
Historically, persecution is a significant part of Hmong history. Legends and archeological evidence dating back centuries reveal that the Hmong once led a prosperous existence in China before the government began stamping out the Hmong culture and assimilating the people into Chinese society.
In response, thousands of Hmong fled China to hide in the mountainous jungles of Southeast Asia to practice their religion and culture in peace.
They lived in simple thatched-roof homes that clung to hillsides and practiced slash-and-burn farming.
It was a lifestyle that called for the strength of the group rather than individual for survival and culturally promoted gender-specific roles. Men were charged with more public roles, such as interacting with other men in the community to ensure the safety of families while women took care of the private domain, looking after the well-being of family members.
For Houa Lee, 14, of Oshkosh, it’s the gender-specific expectations that cause her frustration with the culture.
She said Hmong girls still face considerable challenges in their patriarchal Hmong culture because some parents find it hard to part from traditional expectations for their daughters.
Therefore, Hmong men still enjoy more independence and freedom than Hmong women even in the United States, where gender equality is championed.
“Some rules in our culture should be amended to help everyone, girls and boys have the same equal amount of freedom,” Mai Yang Lee said.
It’s thoughts like this from the young Hmong population that leaves Hmong elders little choice but to accept that the culture is experiencing something it hasn’t been faced with before.
Rather than external efforts to dissolve the Hmong culture, it’s now a pressure within from none other than its most valuable group – its youths.
“With every year that goes by, they’re losing more of the language and express less interest in the traditions and customs that define their Hmong culture,” Nhia Vang Lor, an Oshkosh father, said in Hmong.
For youths of his time, he said it was a rite of passage into adulthood to learn responsibilities associated with the culture and religion. Youths then prided themselves in knowing their responsibilities and knowing how to perform their duties well. But in America, he said, cultural expectations seem to be viewed by Hmong youths as a burden carried for their parents and families.
Lee Lor, 22, of Oshkosh admits to being one of the youths who feels that way.
“I think our culture is being taken too seriously. It can’t be like what the old folks used to do every day in Laos,” he said. “I know that no matter how we try to be Hmong, it’s going to have to follow how life is in the United States now. We gotta keep up in America. So instead of struggling so hard to keep our culture, we need to move on. Or it’s going to hinder our progress in this country.”
Vang Nhia Lee, an Oshkosh father of seven, said Hmong parents are pondering if they might have sacrificed their children’s Hmong identity in order to give them safety, opportunities and a future.
“Before coming to America, a Thai man said to me, ‘Keep your culture and traditions when you go to America, because someday you’ll have to buy it back,’” he said in Hmong.
After more than a decade of living in Oshkosh and seeing his children’s interest dwindle for learning cultural skills such as playing the kheng, a musical instrument made of bamboo played at special events like weddings and the New Year, he said perhaps buying culture is the way of the future for Hmong children in America.
But in the meantime, he’s just grateful Hmong youths in America have a future to ponder.
“We did bring them to America for a future other than what we’ve known,” he said.
Hlee Vang: (920) 426-6656 or hvang@thenorthwestern.com.
