The Hmong people are an indigenous group in East and Southeast Asia. In China, the Hmong people are classified as a sub-group of the Miao people. The modern Hmong reside mainly in Southwest China and countries in Southeast Asia such as Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. There is also a large diasporic community in the United States of more than 300,000. The Hmong diaspora has smaller communities in Australia and South America.
Vang Pao was a major general in the Royal Lao Army. He was a leader of the Hmong American community in the United States. He was also known as General Vang Pao to the people in the Hmong community.
Wat Tham Krabok is a Buddhist temple (wat) in the Phra Phutthabat District of Saraburi Province, Thailand.
Hmong Americans are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Many Hmong Americans immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the Laotian Civil War.
Ka Vang is a Hmong-American writer in the United States. Vang was born on a CIA military base, Long Cheng, Laos, at the end of the Vietnam War, and immigrated to the United States in 1980. A fiction writer, poet, playwright, and former journalist, Vang has devoted much of her professional life to capturing Hmong folktales on paper. She is a recipient of the Archibald Bush Artist Fellowship and several other artistic and leadership awards. She is the author of the children's book, Shoua and the Northern Lights Dragon, a finalist for the 23rd Annual Midwest Book Awards in 2012.
Mai Neng Moua is a Hmong-American writer and a founder of the Paj Ntaub Voice, a Hmong literary magazine. She is also the editor of the first anthology of Hmong American writers, Bamboo Among the Oaks.
Bryan Thao Worra is a Laotian American writer. His books include On The Other Side Of The Eye, Touching Detonations, Winter Ink, Barrow and The Tuk Tuk Diaries: My Dinner With Cluster Bombs. He is the first Laotian American to receive a Fellowship in Literature from the United States government's National Endowment for the Arts. He received the Asian Pacific Leadership Award from the State Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans for Leadership in the Arts in 2009. He received the Science Fiction Poetry Association Elgin Award for Book of the Year in 2014. He was selected as a Cultural Olympian representing Laos during the 2012 London Summer Olympics. He is the first Asian American president of the international Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, and the first Laotian American member of the professional Horror Writers Association.
Dia Cha is a notable Laotian American author and academic who has written books for both children and adults.
Cy Thao is a Laotian-born Hmong American politician who served as a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives from 2003 to 2011.
The alleged 2007 Laotian coup d'état plan was a conspiracy allegation by the United States Department of Justice that Lt. Col. Harrison Jack (Ret.) and former Royal Lao Army Major General Vang Pao, among others conspired in June 2007 to obtain large amounts of heavy weapons and ammunition to overthrow the Communist government of Laos in violation of the Neutrality Act. The charges were ultimately dropped and the case helped serve to further highlight, instead, major human rights violations by the Lao government against the Hmong ethnic minority, Laotian refugees, and political dissidents.
Relations between Laos and the United States officially began when the United States opened a legation in Laos in 1950, when Laos was a semi-autonomous state within French Indochina. These relations were maintained after Laos' independence in October 1953.
The Center for Public Policy Analysis (CPPA), or Centre for Public Policy Analysis, was established in Washington, D.C., in 1988 and describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan, think tank and research organization. The CPPA is a non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on foreign policy, national security, human rights, refugee and international humanitarian issues. Its current executive director is Philip Smith.
The Lao Veterans of America, Inc., describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental, veterans organization that represents Lao- and Hmong-American veterans who served in the U.S. clandestine war in the Kingdom of Laos during the Vietnam War as well as their refugee families in the United States.
The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. (LHRC) is a non-profit, non-partisan, non-governmental (NGO) refugee and human rights organization. It is based nationally, and internationally, with chapters in Colorado, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. researches, and provides information and education regarding the plight of Laotian and Hmong people, and refugees persecuted in Laos, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and Thailand. It was founded by Dr. Pozbeb Vang, Vang Pobzeb of Greenbay Wisconsin. The Lao Human Rights Council, Inc. is currently headed by Vaughn Vang, an educator, and former political refugee from the Royal Kingdom of Laos, who is a Hmong-American—and who was born, and grew up, in Laos prior to the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos and Marxist takeover in 1975.
The Hmong people are a major ethnic group in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul area. As of 2000 there were 40,707 ethnic Hmong in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The 2010 U.S. Census stated there were 66,000 ethnic Hmong in Minneapolis-St. Paul, giving it the largest urban Hmong population in the world. Grit Grigoleit, author of "Coming Home? The Integration of Hmong Refugees from Wat Tham Krabok, Thailand, into American Society," wrote that the Minneapolis-St. Paul area "acted as the cultural and socio-political center of Hmong life in the U.S."
Cherzong Vang was an American community leader from St. Paul, Minnesota. He was an elder of the Hmong people in Laos and the Lao-American community in the Twin Cities of the United States.
Kaohly Her is a Hmong-American politician serving in the Minnesota House of Representatives since 2019. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL), Her represents District 64A, which includes parts of Saint Paul in Ramsey County, Minnesota.
Chia Youyee Vang is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her research and writing deals with the Hmong diaspora, other Southeast Asian diasporas and refugees and on community-building efforts among Hmong people in the United States.
