HMoob (Hmong/Mong) is the name we have always called ourselves. We spell the name HMoob instead of Hmong or Mong – the commonly-spelled, anglicized written version of our name – to recognize the two different dialects in our community, Hmoob and Moob, and to depict the accurate high-tone pronunciation. In our language, HMoob means “human” or “people.” As a historically stateless people, without a geographical homeland, who we are is deeply rooted in our humanity and peoplehood, our relationships to each other, and our lived environment. HMoob people can be traced back to the sub-Mekong regions in southern China and contemporary Southeast Asia (i.e., Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand). Unlike the dominant description that reduces HMoob people to a migratory ethnic hill tribe, this essay highlights the long historical reality that HMoob people have practiced and lived as a stateless community. HMoob definitions and practices of peoplehood and indigeneity are not static, but have always centered HMoob ways of life that prioritize a kin-network, collectivist community, intimate relationships with the environment, and mobility and adaptability in response to political persecution. HMoob people have been forcibly displaced because of war, imperialism, and colonialism, yet HMoob people have found ways to maintain our peoplehood and practices of indigeneity.
Indigeneity for stateless communities like HMoob people is not tied to nor defined by one physical territorial location or place of origin. The concepts of indigeneity and indigenous status are often reduced to the legal definitions created in response to colonial and imperial history. Particularly, Indigenous movements are framed as claiming rights to physical territories, gaining access to resources, and in opposition to nation-states. While these dominant legal definitions are legitimate and necessary for some Indigenous groups to reclaim their rights, Indigenous Peoples throughout the world have always prioritized self-determination over land and resource ownership. As Joanna Carino said during the International Conference on Indigenous Peoples Rights in 2010, self-determination is “to freely determine our continued existence as distinct peoples, and our economic, political, and sociocultural development, at a pace which we ourselves define.” In 2023-2024, HMoob artists, scholars, and community leaders curated the exhibition Cloth as Land: HMong Indigeneity at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center arguing that HMoob textiles are one way in which HMoob people preserve the continuity of our ancestral landmarks and homelands. This essay adds to that conversation on HMoob indigeneity and the continuity of our peoplehood through a poetic conversation, in the style of a duet, between HMoob sisters.
HMoob indigeneity lives and evolves through oral histories and oral literacy. While this essay is primarily in English, we have included a poetic duet written and recorded in HMoob Romanized Phonetic/Popular Alphabet (RPA). Paj huam (Pa houa) is one of several HMoob oral art practices used to document history, family genealogy, celebrations, personal milestones, and HMoob ancestral landmarks–in short, these oral artforms are testimonies of HMoob existence, living, and knowing. The form of paj huam utilizes a scheme that pairs every seventh or eighth syllable with one another to formulate a rhyming pattern. Each line conveys a connecting message that rhymes with the third or fourth syllable of the next line. The rhyming scheme of the paj huam shows the beauty of the HMoob language by using lyrical tones to convey and emphasize the message and emotions throughout the poem.
This duet begins with a HMoob female voice expressing her deep yearning to know HMoob history and her feelings of nostalgia for home/land. This character laments that her long history of forced displacement has left her with only fragments of memories about home/land and place. She questions whether the continuity of HMoob peoplehood will live on or remain just as memories.
In response, a HMoob sister points out that HMoob homeland has never been lost. In fact, she narrates that HMoob people have carried our own histories and memories with us beyond the mountain ranges that our immediate families once knew. This HMoob sister names some of the historical-mythical and well-known HMoob leaders to map out HMoob peoplehood that is not rooted in just places but in history and the agency of HMoob people. She references mythical and ancestral legends that speak of the story of Princess Nkauj Ntxuam (Lady of the Fan) and Txiv Yawg’s (King Chi You’s) kingdom Cuaj Lig Ntuj in China. She also notes battles fought by Pob Tuam Twm and Tsab Xyooj Mem in the 1800s in China, Paj Cai Vwj’s Madman’s War against French colonialism (1918-1921), and the U.S.’s secret war in Laos led by General Vang Pao (1962-1975). She ends her lyrical narrative with an elegy, asking where the next mountains will be that HMoob can make home in light of these historical displacements.
Acknowledging this sentiment in the third stanza, the first sister starts to piece together her evidence of HMoob existence. She declares that HMoob people are indeed not confined to one mountain, but that HMoob people have lived in various mountains, including the lowlands. HMoob history, in fact, acts as a pillar of HMoob ways of knowing as HMoob now also live in Wisconsin. She describes how HMoob people continue to form kinship networks with one another despite our actual blood relations.
HMoob sisters still pack boiled chicken as meals for the road when their brothers visit, a historical practice that shows care between individuals who have established kinship ties. HMoob villagers and elders continue to teach and practice intimate and spiritual knowledge about the environment such as foraging for Solomon’s Seals, fishing, and small and big game hunting in Wisconsin. HMoob people continue to honor the spirits of the land, skies, and rivers regardless of the new places that we moved to. She ends her verse with the commitment to leave deficit narratives about HMoob people behind.
The final stanza of the duet affirms that HMoob people lead joyful lives despite being stateless and displaced. The responding sister asserts that HMoob people have always made home wherever we are because we draw on our indigenous practices to forge relationships with new environments, peoples, plants, and animals. In Wisconsin, HMoob can travel anywhere along the many rivers, lakes, mountains, marshes, and forests and we will always have a place to rest, live, and love as long as we have each other.
This duet offers a glimpse of HMoob indigeneity and peoplehood, illustrating that displaced communities thrive when our worldviews and ways of life are practiced, honored, and recognized. 2025 marks the 50th year that HMoob people became refugees in the United States. While HMoob people in Wisconsin have and continue to face racial, economic, and political challenges, HMoob people have always found ways to make and remake home for ourselves.
