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Revelation Chapter 4 Continued. Revelation Chapter 5. Revelation Chapter 6. Revelation Chapter 6 Continued. Revelation Chapter 6 Second Continued. Revelation Chapter 7. Eggs, pork and some fish may be added after the first 10 days. No fruit, vegetables or cold drinks are allowed. Physical activity post-partum is also restricted, as this may cause internal organs to collapse.
Furthermore, during the first 30 days, a new mom is not permitted to visit other homes. A identified a case in which the likely source of lead exposure in a young child in the U. It is believed that praising the newborn may cause harm to the baby from the spirits. The ceremony is an occasion for naming the child and for relatives and community members to offer blessings and words of wisdom to the child.
Among American Hmong, fewer mothers are breast-feeding than in previous times. Bottle-feeding is preferred for reasons of convenience when the mother returns to work and desires others to feed her infant. Babies stayed close to their mothers and ate all their meals fresh. Babies were weaned when another child was born. Solid foods were introduced when a child showed interest and were mostly the same foods adults ate, just watered down versions. In the U.
A Hmong child is considered a treasure. The baby is given lots of affection and attention, physical and social contact with mothers, grandmothers and older siblings. In the Thai refugee camps, women adopted Thai-style baby baskets or cradles, often hanging from the tent roof or dwelling while the mother performed chores or embroidery work.
Most traditional Hmong families do not want to hear direct comments about their children, especially infants and babies. Traditionally, the norm in marriage is to raise families with large numbers of children. Children generally grow up with their needs responded to quickly and help in the work of a family at a young age.
In Laos, at four, five or six years old a child helps keep watch on the house, doing tasks like hauling water, shucking, milling corn, and carrying a baby sibling; usually a grandmother, uncle or other adult would be nearby in the cluster of family houses.
Children are still young when they begin helping in the farming. Elders tell stories to children, passing knowledge and life lessons between generations. Traditionally a Hmong man would not have much to do with the children when they were still little; not physically affectionate, especially with their daughters. Hmong teach their children to be well behaved in the presence of guests.
Typically, in cases where their children are interrupting or not behaving well in the presence of guests, Hmong parents do not send their children away or discipline them. Discipline is usually administered after the guests have left.
In Laos, girls and boys in their adolescent years have the same responsibilities as adults. Young boys are expected to learn from their fathers, and young girls are expected to learn from their mothers.
Boys moved from village to village for the purpose of meeting girls and participating in festivals where they had relatives. The primary means for meeting young people of the opposite sex during the New Year was a ball game that took place at the festivities.
Boys in one line faced girls in another line and tossed small fabric balls back and forth. A boy often would concentrate attention on a certain girl. Often boys and girls would use a secret form of language to communicate with one another. By playing a small mouth harp they could approximate human speech. In Laos, a suitor would play the mouth harp outside the house of the girl he was interested in.
The girl would sometimes reply with her own mouth harp or another instrument, and the dialogue sometimes continued for hours. In the United States, youth use the telephone and email instead of the traditions of ritualized flirting and communication. New Year celebrations are still a time of courtship and result in many marriages.
Traditionally, Hmong women and men work until they no longer can carry out their daily tasks feeding the farm animals, farming, and tending family duties. An adult male is expected to have full knowledge of traditional values passed from his father or male relative. Adult and elderly males are looked upon for wisdom and skills for handling marital conflicts and problems within the community. Elders may be less respected and feel depressed about their lesser place in the family. Increasingly, elders are placed in nursing homes as families are not able to take care of them and meet the demands of society.
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Additional cultures and geriatric information also available on their site. Rice is a staple in Hmong cuisine. Distinctions among various kinds of rice are found in Hmong language — new rice, sweet rice, purple rice, sticky rice, rice in field, harvested rice. Rice is usually eaten at every meal, along with everyday dishes of meats, fish and vegetables, grilled, fried boiled and spiced. Families eat together around the table, using utensils both in Laos and in the US. No chopsticks are used in Laos.
Feasting on special occasions usually includes a menu of roast pig or boiled pork soup, fruit, boiled eggs, egg rolls, seasoned meats, vegetables, rice, and salad.
Hmong will commonly grow vegetables and herbs in their gardens or yards here in the US. Traditionally, during family feasts, males ate first. This is a dish common for many adults and elder people, even in the US today. In the US, having drinks during family meals is similar to American meals.
In the US, wine and beer are used during special occasions. Excessive alcohol is consumed during traditional Hmong wedding ceremonies, both in the homeland and in the US.
In Laos, opium is used as a treatment drug to cure muscle aches after a hard day of farm work or severe injury to the body. Abusive use of opium leads to family poverty and causes a bad family name.
This negative image continues to taint families in the US. Indulgence cannot be defined in the Hmong culture or Hmong people. In Hmong society, there is no such food as ice cream or other edible things that someone could indulge oneself in. If there is a strong interest to explore indulgence in Hmong, the word needs to be defined carefully in order to guide discussion.
Hmong animist tradition believes in multiple supreme beings, called Gods, responsible for high-level creation and functions of nature. These Gods along with other spirits are believed to dwell in the spiritual world — the realm of the dead, the invisible, and the supernatural.
The Hmong believe that the spiritual world coexists with the physical world and is inhabited by a wide variety of spirits, many of which can influence the course of human life. The Hmong believe spirit types include ancestral spirits, house spirits, spirits in nature, as well as evil spirits. Ancestral spirits include any deceased member of the family. House spirits are believed to inhabit each corner of a Hmong house.
Each part of the house is also believed to have its own spirit, including the stove, and the doors. The altar is assumed to be the place in the house to which ancestors return. Spirits of nature include mountains, trees, streams, valleys, caves, ponds, and winds.
It is said people have 12 souls — the three major ones are the reincarnation soul, the residing soul and the wandering soul. The residing soul stays with the body as it breaks down and becomes the ancestral spirit that descendants revere and pay homage to. The wandering soul leaves the body during dreams or to play with other souls or spirits.
If frightened, the wandering soul may be lost in the spirit world. At death, the wandering soul returns to the spirit world and continues to live life there much as it did in the physical world. A traditional animist practices shamanism. Shamans are people who mediate between the visible and spirit worlds through ritual practices conducted for purposes of healing, divination, and control over natural events.
For a shaman, the altar is the sacred place where the shaman spirits dwell. Shamanism is viewed as a way to maintain communication between the Hmong and the spiritual world. Spirits of nature can cause physical and psychological harm to Hmong in the guise of illness, nightmares, and even death.
Hmong shamans perform ritual trances in order to figure out the causes of illnesses for the purpose of treating the effects. Shamans communicate messages from spirits to the persons affected, and vice versa. Almost all aspects of traditional Hmong life are affected by contact with supernatural beings. A person is thought to have been allotted time on earth by God and to have been given several souls. The Hmong perform many ritual ceremonies for the purpose of fulfilling the will of the ancestors and natural spirits.
Hmong rituals usually revolve around the practices that their ancestors passed onto them. Variations in rituals are found in the practices among different clans and lineages and are passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. Fathers pass animist ritual traditions to their sons. Cha, Persons of Hmong origin traditionally believe in life after death.
With proper guidance from Hmong musical performers during the funeral rituals, Hmong believe that the souls of the deceased will come back to their ancestors for reincarnation, and that the new bodies of their relatives will come back as new members of Hmong families. Many Hmong in the United States continue to practice some form of the Hmong animist tradition. Some practices have undergone changes due to restrictive factors of the new environment.
Missionaries in China in the s and in Laos in the s first introduced Christianity to the Hmong. However the majority of Hmong Christians converted in the United States. People converted for various reasons — to please their Christian resettlement sponsors, to qualify for private school scholarships or in response to the difficulty of performing traditional rituals. Within some families, divisions have resulted when some members have converted to Christianity and others have not.
Some Christian Hmong label traditional animist practices as sinful. On the other hand, some Hmong believe it is dangerous for everyone when Christian members of the household disrespect the spirits by not performing the traditional rituals.
In general, Hmong Catholics are more likely than Hmong Protestants to accommodate some forms of traditional animist practices within their new faith framework. Traditional animists may be more willing to attend Christian rituals than their Christian counterparts are willing to attend animist rituals.
Wrist usually occurs during wedding, celebration of a new birth of a child, and feast to honor parents or relatives. Neck stringing is generally done to promote good health. When an old person dies, the body is usually kept inside the house for five to ten days. A funeral consists of 5 days of ceremony including speeches, drumming, hours-long chants to guide spirits home to Heaven, and ritualized crying — a way of declaring love for the person. Traditionally, Hmong graves can be a mound of earth on which tree branches are piled to protect disruption by animals, a mound of earth surrounded by a wooden fence, or a mound protected by boulders, the type depending on sub-clan funeral tradition.
In the United States, it still may be important for terminally ill patients to return home to die, as the soul of a person who does not die at home may wander and not be reincarnated. Family members of the deceased may refuse autopsies, and reasons for this include belief that intact body parts and organs are needed for smooth reincarnation and response to rumors that organs are taken out for eating and for sale.
Hmong recognize that illness can be a result of external natural forces, such as accidents and infectious diseases. The concept of contagion is not new to the Hmong in understanding diseases like TB and Chickenpox. Hostile spirits, spells, curses and a violation of taboos are other factors believed to cause illness.
A traditional Hmong belief is that ill health may be the result of the soul wandering from the body unable to find its way home. The soul may be lost due to injury, wounds, a fall, a loud noise, being unconscious including from anesthesia , fear, or feeling sad and lonely.
In the United States, environmental toxins are also seen as causing illness. Hmong believe the liver is the center and regulator of human emotions, playing a role in mental health and personality.
Traditionally, Hmong use home therapies for common aliments. For more unusual or serious problems people seek help from folk medicine doctors, ritual healers, and shamans.
Throughout life, people learn about home therapies for common conditions like colds and aches, and sometimes for other issues as varied as arthritis and fertility. Many homes have a family member specializing in healing herbs. Medicinal plants are grown in home gardens or imported from Thailand, and are administered in teas and ointments. Other healing techniques include massage, coining or spooning rubbing an area vigorously with a silver coin or spoon , and cupping applying negative suctioning pressure on the skin with a cup.
Physical marks like bruises and redness might be found on the body of a Hmong person, the results of these treatments.
Hmong also may wear accessories such as red necklaces made from silver and brass, white cloths around their wrists, and red or white strings on their wrists, necks, or ankles. These accessories may be worn for health and religious purposes. The medicine doctor gains knowledge of diagnosis and treatment by apprenticing with another healer and from the guidance of her helping spirits.
She specializes in healing with herbs and may be a generalist or may be dedicated to healing certain conditions. He calls on healing spirits with Laotian and Chinese words and incense. The symptoms of soul loss include weakness, tiredness, fever and headache, loss of appetite with extra thirst, insomnia or dreams of being in a strange place with a stranger.
A soul calling ceremony is required to cure the sick person. Some family members may learn to call a soul home. If no one in the household is able to call the soul, a revered soul caller is consulted.
The soul caller observes the chicken killed and boiled to divine whether the soul has returned and in what condition. If the healing is not successful, a shaman is consulted. A shaman is the supreme spiritual healer whose primary means of patient care is to travel to the spirit world.
Shamans are usually well known, well respected, and mostly male though some are female, and are key figures in traditional culture.
It is said that shamans do not seek the calling but that the spirits call them to the spiritual healing practice. They learn from other shaman. Shaman ceremonial tools include a gong and a wooden bench, and rituals involve going into trance, long chanting, and sacrificing animals, usually chickens or pigs.
Animals are killed so their souls can be asked to guard the patient. Shamans are able to speak the language of the spirits, negotiate and fight with the spirits for the health of the patient. Shamans perform divination procedures for diagnosis, and trance rituals for curing and further protection. Hmong families rely mainly on traditional healers and shamans for prevention and treatment of mild to life-threatening illnesses. In Laos, there is minimal contact with Western Medicine due to isolation from big cities and medical facilities.
The biggest barrier is the cost of conventional health services. Those who are able to seek modern health care services for life-threatening conditions are those with the knowledge of the health care services and the money to pay for them.
Anyone without money is denied conventional medical services even for life-threatening but preventable health conditions, such as diarrhea in young children. Modern health care is believed to be beneficial, but traditional diagnosis and treatment either herbal or spiritual may be used first. Some biomedical treatments may conflict with Hmong belief. After a general anesthetic, it may be necessary to perform a soul calling ceremony in the operating room.
People may consider the amount of blood in the body to be finite and not rejuvenating, and they may resist blood draws. There may be resistance to vaccines and problems of adherence to treatments that require long-term sustained use of medicine.
In most cases, Hmong will willingly use medicine that brings observable results. Hmong women may refuse vaginal examinations, especially by male doctors. Medical examinations of the breast or private parts are sensitive issues in the Hmong community as well as other ethnicities not used to Western medical practices.
Mammogram, Pap smear or rectal exams were not available back in the homeland. When the patient is Hmong, knowledge of the medical services must be assessed first before introducing the medical exams. To foster understanding of the medical exams or diagnosis, visual aids of the human body part related to health condition must be used to accompany the information. Issues of trust between a care provider and the patient and family are critical.
The reputations of care providers, those trusted and those not trusted, are shared in the community. When dealing with a Hmong family, confidentiality is considered to be a very important issue. However, within the family itself, confidentiality may not be thought of as all that important and families may make care-giving decisions together.
The men in the family may consult traditional healers for advice about health care decisions. Family members share their experiences and seek support from one another. When talking to less assimilated Hmong persons it may be necessary to repeat questions and allow extra time for responses. In the United States, less-assimilated Hmong may have a limited English vocabulary; it is helpful to use simple terminology whether by telephone, in person, or through an interpreter.
Traumatic experiences of war and its aftermath leave an impact on health. Hmong were victims or witnesses to terror — bombings, murder, rape, drowning, starvation, displacement and discrimination.
Post-traumatic stress disorder may be prevalent among Hmong in the United States. US studies have shown high rates of depression, often related to the life situation difficulties of the Hmong refugee — especially difficulties of adjusting to life in the US. See a May 25, New York Times article about a program in which construction and maintenance of community gardens and adjoining meeting spaces for Hmong and other immigrant communities are made possible by the California Mental Health Services Act of Immigrant families often struggle to meet insurance co-payments, and culturally attuned therapists are in short supply.
See also: , an article by M. Warner and M. Mochel discussing the linguistic and cultural barriers the Hmong encounter when they attempt to access the health care delivery system in Merced County, CA. The Hmong society remains one of the most structured social groupings in the world.
Several levels of community are identifiable in the Hmong social structure worldwide: clan, sub-clan, ceremonial households, extended families, and nuclear families. At all levels, the Hmong are communitarian in nature, surviving on relationships. Due to the various influences of acculturation, the Hmong community has become less cohesive in the United States compared to life in Laos or other homelands.
In traditional Hmong culture, the son and his wife are to live with the parents and care for them in old age. In the modern day, specifically in the US, as many children and parents become independent, there is tendency to live in separate houses. A decrease in extended families living together has led to loss of social support for elderly parents. In the homeland, people farmed for their own crops and food. People had similar lives and there was no large income gap causing people to look down on each other.
In the US, the social structure has changed. People work to earn a living. Those who are unable to work rely on public welfare. In the US, the gap between household incomes has resulted in decreased community coherence. The events are organized independently by different Hmong organizations established by different clans. People travel from afar, even across the country, to join different New Years events. The U. A community estimate puts the total number of Hmong living in the U.
It is rare that Hmong families in the U. Minnesota appears to have attracted the strongest percentages of Hmong from various regions throughout the country between According to the Census, the largest population of Hmong in the U.
Census data indicate that Refugee arrivals peaked at 27, in Of the current population, about According to the census, the Hmong are the only ethnically based population with a median age under Fifty-six percent of Hmong are under the age of 18 compared to twenty-five percent of the entire US population. The median age for Hmong in the US is Fifty-one percent are males, forty-nine percent females. Hmong families in the US average 6. Per average Hmong household there are 6. Clan leaders will typically settle any dispute between two Hmong persons or between different clans.
Clan leaders may be involved in such matters as reconciling a quarreling couple, and ensuring that individuals fulfill ritual obligations. In Laos, there was no single Hmong government or ruler. The leader at the family level can be a powerful and influential person in the community. He may not necessarily be the most educated but is someone who holds the respect of others because he cares for the people and is just and fair.
He is someone who knows all the rules and norms of the culture. People seek advice from this leader and rally for his support. The leader accepts responsibility for giving advice and solving problems. When there is a challenge in a nuclear family setting, it is best resolved within that unit.
If that fails, the next level of the hierarchy will take over. This process continues, if required, until the conflict is satisfactory solved. During their history, there has not been any one Hmong leader who presided across borders even though the Hmong have a word for a Hmong national leader — Hmoob tus vaj — tus coj ib haiv Hmoob. The one person that comes closest to this position is General Vang Pao. Due to his record in Laos during the Vietnam War, the Hmong all over the world have heard of him or have respect for the man.
He is considered by some to be the Hmong paramount leader. Saykao, The threat to deport Hmong refugees in Thailand into Laos initiated many support groups in the US to stop the illegal deportation of Hmong in Thailand refugee camps, and ask for political asylum by letting them come to the US.
Minnesota Council of Nonprofits, In California, 18 clans met in Fresno to put a cap on the dowry price. The guideline was drafted by clan leaders with the help of Fresno lawyers. The purpose of the dowry cap is to prevent parents from imposing unreasonably high wedding fees i. Lo and Magagnini, Historically, in the Hmong community wrongdoings ranging from domestic violence to murder, theft, etc.
Today, in the US, the US legal system is sought to resolve such offenses, with the exception of domestic violence. Domestic violence is the only problem in which family members and clan leaders still try to resolve it first before resorting to the US legal system. The Indochinese Farm Project, funded by a Seattle city block grant and by the King County Park Commission from through , helped some Hmong and other former farmers from Laos learn about Seattle soil, weather, marketing, and business practices.
Several Hmong families have established truck farms near Woodinville, selling vegetables and flowers in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. In Washington State, less than 12 percent of Hmong receive public assistance. Many Hmong work two jobs, often in factories, landscaping, housekeeping, or mechanics. Some are professional teachers, social workers or interpreters.
Many women continue making tradition-derived needlework that finds its way to market, usually through fairs or the Pike Place Market. For some, this had developed into other kinds of sewing, such as piecework, stuffed animals or hair bows, and factory sewing. The Hmong families who have settled in Washington formed a hard-working, permanent nucleus. They became citizens, bought homes, worked hard, and invited other Hmong to join them.
Donnelly, Historically, neighborhoods were marked by a sense of caring and trust regardless of the clan name last name.
The sense of being neighbors was also practiced on the farm. During the early days when Hmong started settling in the US, a Hmong neighborhood was filled with people who knew each other. Due to their sense of family values being more important than the individual, Hmong settled in cities or states where relatives resided.
As times changed, people tended to live where they could survive economically. Hmong neighborhoods that are still more visible are those in California and Minnesota. Hmong New Year has changed in its way of being celebrated in the US. After the feasts, the community would have one single New Year celebration lasting several days with activities of ball tossing and chanting poetic songs, boys seeking brides and girls seeking potential husbands.
In the US, especially in big cities such as Seattle, St. Paul, etc. Bozeman St. The organization was established by a coalition of Mien, Hmong and Khmuu people in May , after eight years of planning.
It is a community-gathering place, and offers programs for children such as after school tutoring and classes in traditional dance, language and arts.
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