They speak for themselves
Quote of note:
"We don't have any population of Asians," Mr. Jarvela said, and Census statistics largely bear him out. Here in Barron County, the 2000 census counted just 145 people of Asian descent, less than 1 percent of the population.
Mr. Jarvela said he had never heard about clashes between white and nonwhite hunters, but he added that because northern Wisconsin was very large, "if you happen to have an incident, nobody knows about it."
Worlds Collide in North Woods Hunting Ground
By STEPHEN KINZER and MONICA DAVEY
Published: November 28, 2004
In three decades, St. Paul has drawn at least 25,000 Hmong immigrants, transforming it into the Hmong capital of America. Even there, it has not always been an easy fit, with so many Hmong refugees arriving so rapidly, often with no English and little education or urban job skills. The Hmong are from large farming families from the hills of Laos, where the Central Intelligence Agency recruited many of them to be part of an anti-Communist secret army during the Vietnam War.
The northernmost edges of Wisconsin are made up mostly of people of European descent. Many come from Scandinavian, German, Czech and French Canadian backgrounds.
Waiting for the start of Friday's funeral service for Mark Roidt, 28, one man turned to another and said, "This is going to be a horrible week."
His friend replied, "The worst week ever."
Mike Katterhagen, another mourner, said he and many of his neighbors felt anger about what happened, but he said, "I don't know if you can place it at who."
Asked if people here have a negative attitude toward Asians or people of other races, Mr. Katterhagen replied, "Personally, I don't." Then he added, "Some people, I think, may have it."
"I mostly ignore what people call me, but it does hurt." said Va Pao Xiong, a college student in Wisconsin who was celebrating the New Year in St. Paul on Friday. "They have called me 'chink' and things like that. And it makes you wonder whether they even understand who the Hmong people are, where we come from, or what we've been through."
Like many others here, Mr. Xiong, who is 24, has distinct and painful memories of his family's flight from Laos. After Communists won power there, the Hmong people, who had rescued downed American pilots and fought North Vietnamese soldiers, said they found themselves under attack and began fleeing through the jungles, escaping across the Mekong River and ending up as refugees in Thailand and elsewhere.
In part as a show of gratitude for their sacrifice in the Vietnam war, the United States has allowed tens of thousands of Hmong people to come here.
"Young people now don't seem to know anything about all that," Mr. Xiong said.
"It's difficult to be Hmong-American right now," said Mee Moua, a Hmong in the Minnesota State Senate. "There's an expectation that the Hmong-American community ought to be answerable, or ought to be responsible for this one man's action."
Ms. Moua said that was absurd: "Don't hold our community to blame for something one individual has done."
Nearly everyone interviewed at the New Year celebrations said they had experienced name-calling at some point. Elee Vang, who is 19 and was crowned Miss Deaf Minnesota this year, said she was once spit at by a white boy on a bus. Workers at Tswvtxos Yang's old manufacturing job used to call him Bruce Lee, he said, as if he and Mr. Lee, the late kung fu film star, were close enough.
Tou Ger Xiong, a Hmong comedian, rapper and motivational speaker from St. Paul, said his father, who speaks little English, was once approached by a white hunter who simply demanded his gun. He said another white hunter ordered his brother to leave a tree stand he had built on public land, and threatened to use a chainsaw to tear it down.
But Laurel Steffes, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, said she was unaware of tensions between Hmong and white hunters.
"We've had our ear to the ground since this happened," she said, "and we're not picking up on that at all."
People here say that the complaints by some Asian hunters of insults or harassment from white hunters are exaggerated.
"I haven't heard any anger against the Hmong," said Patty Behrndt, manager of a bookstore in Rice Lake, the main town in this part of the North Woods. "Not anger, just disbelief and confusion. People aren't able to make out why or how. You hear talk now about racism, but I don't see it."
