Social Status in Hmong Community
HMONG SHAMANISM
The Hmong people were originally located in Highland Cambodia in Southeast Asia. During the Vietnam War, they became allies of the U.S. forces there. As the U.S. troops pulled out, they were committed to evacuating as many Hmong families as wanted to go, primarily to avoid reprisals from the new Ho Chi Min government.
However, like so many well-intentioned programs, the Hmong resettlement was not thoroughly thought-out. When they made it to the U.S., They were spread out into areas that were very unfamiliar to them. Many of them went to the rust bucket states of the Northeast, New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, into their decaying inner cities. They were not used to the frigid winters, and the crowded squalor of the inner city was far different from their thinly-settled, lush Rain forests of Cambodia.
The Hmong were able to communicate with relatives and friends, who had been better placed in areas like central California, or Florida. As they were able, families moved out from areas where they were originally placed, and settled in much nicer areas. Areas like Merced, in California’s Central Valley, became home to very large Hmong communities.
