The Coalition of Hmong Students aims to raise awareness of Hmong culture and history on Carleton College.
For those who want to learn more about the Hmong culture. The Hmong people are an ethnic group that originated from southern China. The Hmong people are defined as a subgroup of the Miao ethnicity. Due to conflicts with the Chinese government in the 18th century, some of the Hmong people have migrated down to the mountainous regions of northern Laos and Vietnam where they lived by farming. During the Vietnam War, the Hmong people were hired by American CIA soldiers to fight in what became known as the Secret War, a war against communism. With the withdrawal of the United States from Vietnam and Laos in 1973, thousands of Hmong people were abandoned in the jungles of Laos. Prosecuted and hunted by the Lao-communist and Viet-communist party, the Hmong people abandoned their villages and fled for asylum in Thailand where they lived in refugee camps. From there the Hmong people were eventually granted refugee status in several countries such as the United States, France, Australia, Canada, and many others. The migration and displacements of the Hmong people created a broken ethnic group that is dispersed across many borders known as the Hmong diaspora.
