aria
Former Moderator
- Joined
- Dec 4, 1977
- Posts
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This actually happened a week ago, but I've been meaning to post it here. While it absolutely dominates the news up here in the Minnesota-Wisconsin region, its amazing how its got very little in national news.
Basically this guy is sitting in a tree stand that sits on another's property (it isn't certain whether the guy knew that), when he's approached by a party of other hunters he opens fire and shoots everyone who approaches him, totaling eight other people -two of which came in later on ATVs. Six died. He was apprehended when he simply ran out of bullets and went to the road. Underscoring this is he's Hmong from the Twin Cities (where, despite being an exceptionally white city, has an enormous population of Hmong and Somali... random, I know).
This article talks about the tensions underlying the situation, I think the story's just amazing... In a way I'm surprised in all these years we've never had a similar case of a hunter going nuts and offing other hunters (its not like the orange jackets help).
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November 28, 2004
A Hunt Turns Tragic, and Two Cultures Collide
By STEPHEN KINZER and MONICA DAVEY - NYTIMES
DOBIE, Wis., Nov. 27 - The two gatherings, less than 200 miles apart, seemed to be separated by whole worlds.
In this isolated village deep in the pine and cedar woods of the Upper Midwest, mourners trudged through falling snow on Friday to Our Lady of Lourdes Church to remember one of six hunters, all locals, killed near here a week ago.
To the southwest, across the state line in Minnesota, thousands of Hmong immigrants streamed into a downtown St. Paul auditorium for three days of New Year's festivities with papaya salad, traditional courtship games and young women in dresses covered in gently clinking coins that echoed through the halls.
The only link between the somber Wisconsin gathering, which followed the most violent rampage in anyone's memory here, and the mostly festive Minnesota gathering, one of the most important annual meetings for Hmong people, was a shared concern: the depth of the scars left behind by the shootings last Sunday that left six white hunters from the North Woods dead and a Hmong immigrant from St. Paul in jail, accused in the deaths.
In three decades, St. Paul has drawn at least 25,000 Hmong immigrants, transforming it into what they call 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 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, meanwhile, are made up mostly of people of European descent. Many come from Scandinavian, German, Czech and French Canadian backgrounds.
For all their differences, the native Wisconsin residents and the Asian immigrants from St. Paul share a love of hunting.
For generations of Wisconsin families, the deer season has come to mean a time to bond with friends, to wander the woods and to pass along life's secrets to the next generation. For the Hmong, hunting is one of the rare realms in which America's fast-paced culture meshes neatly with their old ways from Laos, and Hmong elders have come to use it as a chance to share at least one rural cultural tradition with the youngest among them, some of whom never saw the hills of Laos.
In the November deer season, the two groups have often met in the woods and sometimes clashed, but mostly quietly until last Sunday. Some here said they fear those tensions will now grow.
In Wisconsin, mourners said they were still dazed by how a day of deer hunting turned into a killing spree after a group of local hunters confronted Chai Soua Vang, 36, of St. Paul, who, police say, was using their tree stand to hunt on their property.
The police say Mr. Vang, a naturalized citizen and former army national guardsman who immigrated 24 years ago, opened fire on the hunting party after he was told to leave.
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."
In St. Paul, many at the Hmong New Year events said they feared retribution for the killings. Some said they would not hunt for a while. Many said they were embarrassed by the acts another Hmong-American was accused of, but the case also made them recall experiences with ethnic misunderstanding.
Some said they wondered whether there was more to the case - and thought they might have gained some understanding when they learned Mr. Vang had told the police that the local hunters used ethnic slurs against him and fired at him before he started shooting. A police statement by a hunter wounded in the incident makes no mention of any ethnic slurs.
"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.
[con't in next post]
Basically this guy is sitting in a tree stand that sits on another's property (it isn't certain whether the guy knew that), when he's approached by a party of other hunters he opens fire and shoots everyone who approaches him, totaling eight other people -two of which came in later on ATVs. Six died. He was apprehended when he simply ran out of bullets and went to the road. Underscoring this is he's Hmong from the Twin Cities (where, despite being an exceptionally white city, has an enormous population of Hmong and Somali... random, I know).
This article talks about the tensions underlying the situation, I think the story's just amazing... In a way I'm surprised in all these years we've never had a similar case of a hunter going nuts and offing other hunters (its not like the orange jackets help).
----------
November 28, 2004
A Hunt Turns Tragic, and Two Cultures Collide
By STEPHEN KINZER and MONICA DAVEY - NYTIMES
DOBIE, Wis., Nov. 27 - The two gatherings, less than 200 miles apart, seemed to be separated by whole worlds.
In this isolated village deep in the pine and cedar woods of the Upper Midwest, mourners trudged through falling snow on Friday to Our Lady of Lourdes Church to remember one of six hunters, all locals, killed near here a week ago.
To the southwest, across the state line in Minnesota, thousands of Hmong immigrants streamed into a downtown St. Paul auditorium for three days of New Year's festivities with papaya salad, traditional courtship games and young women in dresses covered in gently clinking coins that echoed through the halls.
The only link between the somber Wisconsin gathering, which followed the most violent rampage in anyone's memory here, and the mostly festive Minnesota gathering, one of the most important annual meetings for Hmong people, was a shared concern: the depth of the scars left behind by the shootings last Sunday that left six white hunters from the North Woods dead and a Hmong immigrant from St. Paul in jail, accused in the deaths.
In three decades, St. Paul has drawn at least 25,000 Hmong immigrants, transforming it into what they call 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 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, meanwhile, are made up mostly of people of European descent. Many come from Scandinavian, German, Czech and French Canadian backgrounds.
For all their differences, the native Wisconsin residents and the Asian immigrants from St. Paul share a love of hunting.
For generations of Wisconsin families, the deer season has come to mean a time to bond with friends, to wander the woods and to pass along life's secrets to the next generation. For the Hmong, hunting is one of the rare realms in which America's fast-paced culture meshes neatly with their old ways from Laos, and Hmong elders have come to use it as a chance to share at least one rural cultural tradition with the youngest among them, some of whom never saw the hills of Laos.
In the November deer season, the two groups have often met in the woods and sometimes clashed, but mostly quietly until last Sunday. Some here said they fear those tensions will now grow.
In Wisconsin, mourners said they were still dazed by how a day of deer hunting turned into a killing spree after a group of local hunters confronted Chai Soua Vang, 36, of St. Paul, who, police say, was using their tree stand to hunt on their property.
The police say Mr. Vang, a naturalized citizen and former army national guardsman who immigrated 24 years ago, opened fire on the hunting party after he was told to leave.
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."
In St. Paul, many at the Hmong New Year events said they feared retribution for the killings. Some said they would not hunt for a while. Many said they were embarrassed by the acts another Hmong-American was accused of, but the case also made them recall experiences with ethnic misunderstanding.
Some said they wondered whether there was more to the case - and thought they might have gained some understanding when they learned Mr. Vang had told the police that the local hunters used ethnic slurs against him and fired at him before he started shooting. A police statement by a hunter wounded in the incident makes no mention of any ethnic slurs.
"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.
[con't in next post]
