ST. PAUL -- In Minnesota, where being white and Lutheran is as commonplace as being snowed-in during the winter, the throng of Asian immigrants stood out from the beginning.

Everything about the Hmong was different: the way they looked and spoke, the way they ate and dressed, the way they prayed and lived.

In the mid-1990s, as they migrated by the tens of thousands and settled into rundown, low-rent neighborhoods throughout the Twin Cities, a deep but unspoken tension developed between the newcomers and the longtime locals.

It was a classic case of culture shock, both for this state of 10,000 lakes, where nine of 10 people are white, and for the Hmong, an isolated tribe of mountain people dreaming of new beginnings, but struggling to adjust to a new land.

Bad-news stories about the immigrants began to hit the front pages of local newspapers almost immediately, creating a negative -- and unfair -- perception of the Hmong.

There were the tales of animal cruelty and the religious sacrifice of small dogs. The statistics that nearly half of the Hmong were being supported by state welfare rolls. A horrific string of gang rapes. The worst mass murder in Minnesota memory. And the 13-year-old girl who smothered her newborn and stuffed the tiny corpse into a garbage can at the YMCA.

Only then were the words uttered, hateful words that some Minnesotans had been thinking for years, but had never dared to blurt out publicly.

"Those people should either assimilate or hit the road," said a talk-show host on the metropolitan area's most popular morning-drive radio broadcast.

The Hmong, a nomadic and impoverished people from the highlands of Laos, Cambodia and southern China, came to America to collect on a promise.

At the height of the Vietnam War, the CIA covertly channeled millions of dollars to Hmong (pronounced Mung) soldiers, offering them a chance to move with their families to the United States if they'd risk their lives fighting the Viet Cong and the Pathet Lao, a Laotian Communist insurgency group.

About 60 percent of the Hmong -- an estimated 180,000 -- vowed to fight for a nation they had never seen. Thousands died, suffering some of the highest casualty rates of the war. The victorious Communist government vowed mass genocide against the Hmong.

In the mid-1970s, the Hmong began fleeing bleak Asian refugee camps for California, where nearly three-fourths of them found themselves unemployed and on welfare.

Twenty years later, in part because of the aid of Lutheran Social Services, the Hmong moved east, to a state with unforgiving winters but a booming economy. The Fresno Bee dubbed it a "mass exodus," and by 1996, Minneapolis and St. Paul had become known as the "Hmong capital of North America." Of the almost 190,000 Hmong scattered throughout the United States, between 60,000 and 75,000 reside in Minnesota.

"We first found our way to Minnesota because the economy was strong and the people were known to be friendly," said Fong Her, director of the Hmong National Development in Washington.

Almost from the outset, there was a grudging relationship between the Hmong and the Minnesotans, a reserved bunch who wondered what kind of a culture would condone the marrying of 13-year-old girls, polygamy, and the indoor butchering of large farm animals for religious ceremony.

"Yes, we stick out here," said Ilean Her, executive director of the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans in St. Paul. "I suppose that's putting it mildly."

Around barber shops and dinner tables, folks in Minnesota talked about the Hmong -- how they would hunt deer out of season, how so few spoke even the most basic phrases of English, how Hmong women bore an average of 9.5 children, how many things made them different from the folks here named Anderson and Gustofson.

"I suppose it would be safe to say that if a whole bunch of them moved into a mostly white neighborhood, the whites would turn around and move right out," said Dave Campian, 27, a lifetime Twin Cities resident.

"We may very well have been a culture shock for the state of Minnesota," said Steve Thao, a Hmong journalist in St. Paul. "But America has been a culture shock to our people as well. We are doing our best."

The tension between Minnesotans and the Hmong had long been building -- well before a talk-radio shock jock muttered the words that left morning commuters reeling.

The newspapers had carried all the stories:

Young Hmong men were establishing inner-city gangs, and membership often required the kidnapping and gang rape of Hmong girls. Seven girls, some barely teen-agers, were raped in March and April 1998, according to officials from local police departments.

Hmong were being arrested for animal cruelty because many of their shamanistic religious ceremonies called for the releasing of animal spirits, and families would do these sacrificial ceremonies using hogs and cattle and chickens in living rooms -- often in public housing.

The nation read about the 24-year-old Hmong mother from St. Paul who killed her six children -- ages 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 11 -- by strangling them last year. Khoua Her, who has been convicted of murder and sentenced to 50 years in prison, was arrested after calling 911 with a simple statement -- "I don't know why I killed my kids."

"Virtually the only publicity we were getting in Minnesota was bad," said KaYing Yang, a Hmong activist who moved to Washington from St. Paul last year to become the director of the Southeast Asia Resource and Action Center.

In early June, another Hmong made headlines.

A 13-year-old girl from neighboring Wisconsin -- which also has had a large number of Hmong immigrants -- was charged with killing her newborn baby. The girl, who later would tell authorities that she had been raped by an uncle, had given birth to -- and then killed -- her baby boy in a bathroom stall of the YMCA.

The story hit the papers June 9.

That morning, as they were driving to work listening to talk radio, well over 100,000 Minnesotans heard Tom Barnard -- the Midwest's version of Howard Stern -- use the case as fodder for some morning laughs.

Speaking in pidgin English, Barnard commented that the girl could face a $10,000 fine for the crime, quipping, "Ten thousand dollars? Now that's a lot of egg rolls."

He didn't stop there. He took it one step further.

"Those people should either assimilate or hit the goddamn road."

Adapting to America's culture has been no easy task for the Hmong.

Clustered in primitive villages in the rugged mountains of Laos, the Hmong had no written language until 1953 and lived simple lives based on a set of shamanistic superstitions and tribal taboos. When CIA agents recruited them to fight -- dropping into the villages in helicopters -- Americans said that the Hmong had lived in such isolation that they examined the undersides of the aircraft in an attempt to determine their sex.

"Tom Barnard says, 'Just assimilate,' " said Yang, in her office in Washington. "But he has no clue what that means for our people. They don't speak the language. They don't understand the rules. They grew up in huts with mud floors, and they think living in housing projects is luxury. They need time."

About 13 agencies have formed to help the Hmong adjust to life in the United States. A newspaper, the Hmong Tribune, began printing about six months ago. But because so many Hmong lived in isolation for much of their lives, the hurdles are enormous.

"You have no idea how completely isolated these people have always lived their lives," said Vee Phan Nelson, a refugee from Laos who is director of the Center for Asian and Pacific Islanders in Minneapolis.

"Growing up in Laos, we would see the Hmong come down out of the hills a few times a year to come to town. They were frozen in time. The best way to compare it would be to the early days of America when the settlers would see the Indians come out of the woods."

To make matters worse, it is almost impossible to teach English to many of the elders because there are no words in Hmong that can translate ideas such as automated teller machines or savings accounts, welfare or the Internal Revenue Service.

"Where do you start?" Yang asked, looking a little defeated.

But the Hmong -- as naive as they may be about modern American customs -- understand the signs of being unwelcome and ridiculed.

In a local newspaper, a Hmong student at the University of Minnesota described being treated as "a parasite" by locals. Others spoke of growing up in white middle America and regularly hearing elementary classmates call them "gook" or "slant-eyes."

"I grew up in Wisconsin, and every time I heard one of those names it did something to me," Yang said. "People threw rocks at our windows. People yelled on the street. It was very painful. Ask yourself: What does that do to a child?"

Despite hardships, the Hmong are irrevocably changing the face of Minnesota.

Twenty-five percent of children in the St. Paul School District are Hmong. Some Twin Cities' factories have assembly lines that are up to one-third Hmong. Dozens of Hmong have enrolled at the University of Minnesota; several have earned Ph.D.'s. The state Legislature is appointing citizen organizations to help the Hmong thrive in their new home. The first Hmong elected official in the United States sits on a Minnesota school board.

The Hmong are also fighting against racism and discrimination. After Barnard's radio comments, community leaders organized. They marched, protested, demanded an apology.

The next week, some of Minnesota's biggest corporations -- Perkins Family Restaurants, U.S. West, Kinko's, Prudential and the mammoth Mall of America -- pulled their advertising from Barnard's station, KQRS.

KQRS executives tried to rectify things -- without a public apology. Barnard was not fired, but the station offered to donate money for Hmong college scholarships and to air $150,000 worth of Hmong-community public service announcements.

Hmong leaders said no. Say the word "sorry" or lose more advertising dollars.

On Nov. 5, two days after former pro wrestler Jesse Ventura stunned the nation by becoming Minnesota's governor, the radio station caved.

"KQRS and the morning show staff recognize that comments made on our June 9, 1998, broadcast were insensitive to the Hmong community," Mark Steinmetz, ABC Radio Group president, said on the air. "We apologize for these comments."

Many white locals never understood the uproar. As Campian said, "What did Barnard say that was so bad?"

But for the Hmong, the day someone publicly dared them to assimilate or get out was a defining moment.

"The Hmong experience in Minnesota really is the melding of two cultures," Yang said. "It has not been seamless and no one would have expected it to be. But the good news is the Hmong demanded respect and change after Barnard's comments, and that gives our people great hope."

Today, the Minnesota Hmong community is dealing with another tragedy.

Last fall, another 13-year-old Hmong girl made the newspapers. This time she was the victim. The headlines screamed: "More deaths stun Minnesota Hmong community: White teens held."

According to a Hennepin County police report, sixth-grader Pa Nhia Lor had met three young men, Michael S. Medin, 18, Shea C. Holt, 17, and Johnnie L. Rhodes, 17. In a suburban park, the girl was raped, beaten and stabbed. The girl was then carried to a nearby garage, where she was slowly asphyxiated to death, police say.

"You look at something like that, and it is hard to not think that it was a hate crime that was committed against a little girl simply because she was Hmong," said Ilean Her. "Many people in the Hmong community say that. They say, 'Why else would they hurt her so, torture her so badly, if they did not hate her for some reason?' "

A recent issue of the Hmong Tribune looked back over 12 months of anguish -- and hope -- for the Twin Cities' Hmong community.

The newspaper's editors titled their year-in-review photo essay, "A Troubled Season."

Right next to their photo of six child-size caskets is an inspiring image: a Hmong protester holds a sign reading "Stop Hate" in one hand while waving an American flag in the other.

Pub Date: 3/08/99