The Hmong people are an ethnic group which mainly lives in southern China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. They have been members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) since 2007. In China they are classified as a subgroup of the Miao people.
Laotian Americans are Americans who trace their ancestry to Laos. Laotian Americans are included in the larger category of Asian Americans. The major immigrant generation were generally refugees who escaped Laos during the warfare and disruption of the 1970s, and entered refugee camps in Thailand across the Mekong River. They emigrated to the United States during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.
Hmong Americans are Americans of Hmong ancestry. Most Hmong Americans consist of those that fled to the United States as refugees in the late 1970s due to their cooperation with the United States' Central Intelligence Agency operatives in northern Laos during the Vietnam War, and their descendants. Over half of the Hmong population from Laos left the country, or attempted to leave, in 1975, at the culmination of the war. At the time, the Pathet Lao launched an aggressive campaign to capture or kill Hmong soldiers and families who aided the CIA. Thousands of Hmong were evacuated or escaped on their own to Hmong refugee camps in Thailand. About 90% of those who made it to refugee camps in Thailand were ultimately resettled in the United States. The rest, about 8 to 10%, resettled in countries including Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Australia. According to the 2019 American Community Survey by the US Census Bureau, the population count for Hmong Americans was 327,000.
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.
Saymoukda Duangphouxay Vongsay is a Minnesota-based Lao American spoken word poet, playwright, and community activist. She was born in 1981 in a refugee camp in Nongkhai, Thailand. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Minnesota, Morris. She is currently pursuing a Master in Liberal Studies focused on public policy and arts and cultural leadership at the University of Minnesota.
Malichansouk (Mali) Kouanchao is a Lao American visual artist, web and interactive designer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is the subject of a children's book Mali Under the Night Sky. Her multidisciplinary works explore the relationship between art, transformation, and communal healing.
The Laotian diaspora consists of roughly 800,000 people, both descendants of early emigrants from Laos, as well as more recent refugees who escaped the country following its communist takeover as a result of the Laotian Civil War. The overwhelming majority of overseas Laotians live in just three countries: Thailand, the United States, and France.
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.
Ketmani Kouanchao is a Lao American educator and writer.
Krysada Panusith Phounsiri is a Lao-American artist and engineer based in San Diego, California.
Chay Douangphouxay is a Lao-Khmer American artist and activist from Minneapolis. Douangphouxay is a spoken word artist known for covering topics such as race and gender. Through her art, she has sought to redefine the image of Asian-Americans.
Louis Alemayehu is an American poet, educator, musician, and community organizer.
Channapha Khamvongsa is the Lao-American former founder and executive director of Legacies of War, a D.C.-based non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to raising awareness about the history and continued effects of the Vietnam War-era bombings in Laos through the use of art, culture, education, and advocacy. In September 2016, President Barack Obama acknowledged Channapha’s advocacy efforts in Laos, when he became the first U.S. President to visit the country.
Legacies of War, is a fiscally sponsored project of NEO Philanthropy, Inc (NEO), dedicated to raising awareness about the history of the Vietnam War-era bombing in Laos and advocate for the clearance of unexploded bombs, (UXO) and survivor assistance, to provide space for healing the wounds of war, and to create greater hope for a future of peace.
Maria Cristina Tavera ("Tina") is a contemporary Latino artist, curator, and cultural organizer who lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. Influenced by her dual citizenship, as well as her transnational movement between her residing Minnesota and Mexico families, she combines historical and contemporary texts and images from recognizable Latin American myths, legends, and present news. Tavera uses her prints, paintings, installations, and Dia de los Muertos ofrendas, or altars, to explore the way that national and cultural icons symbolize complex identities and can construct shared communities at home and abroad. Her artwork is both humorous and confrontational as she invites her viewers to question constructs of race, gender, ethnicity and national and cultural identities. She has exhibited her artwork and curated shows all around the world, and has artworks permanently installed in several art exhibits throughout Minnesota.
Pao Houa Her is a Hmong-American photographer whose works are primarily centered around the history and lived experiences of the Hmong people. Her's photography consists of greenery and geographic images. She is also a professor at the University of Minnesota and teaches Introduction to Photography.
Cinema in Laos emerged later than in nearby Vietnam and Cambodia.
