Carrigan
November 30th, 2004, 11:11 AM
"GREENS" Hmong Gardens, Farms and Land Ownership in America:
Constructing Environment and Identity in the Carolinas
By: Elizabeth Sheehan
Anthropology Department, University of Connecticut
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~lao/laostudy/garden.htm
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I became interested in a small population of Hmong families living in North and South Carolina when Providence, Rhode Island-based families were reported to be moving there specifically to buy farm land. In addition to work based in Providence, I have conducted field research for two consecutive summers in North and South Carolina, beginning preliminary research by living with two families in Western North Carolina in June 1992. On visits to 21 farms there and in Northwestern South Carolina, I was welcome into the community by family members and leaders. I continued field research based on participant observation and key respondent interviews in the same area in July and August 1993.
Two thousand Hmong currently live spread throughout rural counties in North and South Carolina. They own 10 to 200 acre farms, some held by individual families and some owned in common by extended family groups of upto ten. Despite extreme conditions of cultural change, persisting animistic beliefs about the vitality of the natural world and its relationship to human life shape the decisions these land-owning families make with regard to their land. With sound historical reason and logic, some anthropological and cultural geography theorists eschew emphasis on the physical environment as naive determinism.
However, the retention of aspects of a Southeast Asian swidden agricultural system associated with persisting spiritual beliefs in the Carolinas reveals that underlying values result in natural resource conservation. These practices persist because the Hmong use long-term, historical (generalised by some as a concept of nostalgia "kho siab", pronounced "khor shea") and future perspectives to make agrarian and economic decisions. Beliefs about place, land, plants, animals and diet motivate and influence choices to garden, and determine which agricultural methods are used. resource conservation practices employed on Hmong-owned properties follow as an outcome of persisting traditional Hmong ideologies.
Limits in the social environment, such as expensive land, the lack of on- farm employment and the daily "get-ahead" ethos of the American economy, constrain the literal replication of Hmong agrarian life in the Carolinas. Certainly, my respondents view agriculture as a pragmatic economic response to the demands of American social and economic life (for example, "if we garden, we can always have fresh food and can save money"). Economics, however, does not suffice as an explanation for these particular agricultural and land-owning activities. Although land purchases may be economically constrained and activities confined to weekends by the demands of full-time wage labor, Hmong gardens in the Carolinas flourish. Even when spiritually significant land is economically prohibitive, Hmong owned properties often contain or are adjacent to landscapes that have spiritual, aesthetic and/or nostalgic significance.
There are physical constraints to the full reproduction of Hmong agrarian life in the United States as well. Bennett (1969) articulates some of the specific constraints of Saskatchewan topography and climate which influenced the development of an agrarian identity for four distinct cultures. His work informs my analysis of the influence of the physical environment on Hmong cultural reconstruction. Just as climatic factors constrained Hutterite farms, they have limited the size and species found in Hmong gardens in northern American cities, and permitted their expansion further South.
Independent secondary resettlement to warmer, safer and more economically viable rural regions of the United States, such as North and South Carolina, has occurred in part because the landscape physically resembles Hmong visions of home (Feild Notes 1993: 314, 345, 438). The environment 's power to inspire human life in its presence as an actor is illustrated in the story of the urban-space clan leader who travelled the United States in the 1980's looking for a resettlement site. He was on a vision quest. His visual memories of Laos guided his identification of western North Carolina as the right place for the Hmong. Ironically, local residents have confirmed his and other Hmong individuals' observation that this area visually resembles mountainous Southeast Asia. They comment that the United States Air Force used this same area for flight practice during the Viet Nam War because its atmospheric conditions closely mimicked those of the mountains in Southeast Asia (Field Notes 1992,1993. Sherman 1988).
In the spring of 1993, an extended family deliberately sited their uncle's grave in a back woodlot on their 200 acre farm in the Piedmont foothills according to geomantic principles. Although they are prominent members of a Hmong-organized Christian church, senior men in the family, in accordance with the wishes of their elder relative, aligned the grave with a series of intersecting hills on and surrounding the property. It is sited such that two hills bow at the ancestors' feet and a third, lying far behind his head, offers a flat plateau for his spirit's dining table. Here, land form size, shape and directionality mediate for the spiritual and physical survival of a Hmong clan in a difficult social environment.
On another large Hmong-owned farm in North Carolina, a wooden bench has been set beside a stream bed that overlooks a natural grotto. Intricately shaped tree roots form complex patterns in the side of the grottos' red clay walls. That this place has been selected for rest and contemplation suggests that family members recognize this land forms' aesthetic and spiritual qualities.
In a suburban backyard in the same region, older people have constructed a spirit altar on a pole overlooking a garden and medicinal greenhouse. It has been made from a commercially manufactured plastic doll house and is covered by a conical tin roof. This animistic shrine points to a direct spiritual connections between land, gardens and human well-being and the persistence of animistic practices in my study area.
Land-owning permits extensive gardening among other activities such as home building and small economic ventures. In North and South Carolina, gardens, featuring Southeast Asian plants that are created primarily with Asian agricultural methods and technologies,recreate Hmong "home gardens". In shaping their land, the Hmong imitate, within climatic constraints, a Southeast Asian upland garden. Most gardens are composed solely of Southeast Asian species, including a few American cultigens that have been grown in Asia for 400 years, but a few also feature some "American" plants.
Hmong gardens in the Carolinas retain some of the ecologically sustainable characteristics of Asian upland horticulture, such as a broad diversity of plants,non-linear mixed variety layouts, interplanted nutrient and seasonally complementary species and the use of organic fertilizers such as animal manures, vegetable composts, and ash (1). Gardens included in my research sample are not exclusively organic (2), however, they are primarily so. Most Hmong gardeners in the Carolinas use manual swidden technologies such as digging sticks and home-made machetes for planting and harvesting. Although some gardens are panted in mechanized rows (especially large rice and corn fields), most are hand planted in mixed beds.
There are several gardens that exemplify how sustainable swidden practices have been retained. In a former South Carolina orchard, burnt peach stumps form the substratum of a circular vegetable garden. Their presence and a respondent's explanation that his grandmother"told us to do it this way" are evidence for the persistence of burning as a clearing technology and the use of ash fertilizer. This example also indicate the mode of this trait's transmission. Bone and ash fertilizer individual herbs in a medicinal greenhouse in North Carolina while several gardens retain burnt and unburnt tree stumps cut in the clearing process. Dried and fresh vegetable compost is often thrown directly onto gardens soil as an additional fertilizer. In many gardens, dried plant material is used as water_conserving around the roots of individual plants. Raised beds that conserve space, soil and water are other indicators of the persistence of a labor intensive ecologically sustainable agriculture that continues beyond economic necessity and outside of its cultural domain. . . .
Constructing Environment and Identity in the Carolinas
By: Elizabeth Sheehan
Anthropology Department, University of Connecticut
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~lao/laostudy/garden.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I became interested in a small population of Hmong families living in North and South Carolina when Providence, Rhode Island-based families were reported to be moving there specifically to buy farm land. In addition to work based in Providence, I have conducted field research for two consecutive summers in North and South Carolina, beginning preliminary research by living with two families in Western North Carolina in June 1992. On visits to 21 farms there and in Northwestern South Carolina, I was welcome into the community by family members and leaders. I continued field research based on participant observation and key respondent interviews in the same area in July and August 1993.
Two thousand Hmong currently live spread throughout rural counties in North and South Carolina. They own 10 to 200 acre farms, some held by individual families and some owned in common by extended family groups of upto ten. Despite extreme conditions of cultural change, persisting animistic beliefs about the vitality of the natural world and its relationship to human life shape the decisions these land-owning families make with regard to their land. With sound historical reason and logic, some anthropological and cultural geography theorists eschew emphasis on the physical environment as naive determinism.
However, the retention of aspects of a Southeast Asian swidden agricultural system associated with persisting spiritual beliefs in the Carolinas reveals that underlying values result in natural resource conservation. These practices persist because the Hmong use long-term, historical (generalised by some as a concept of nostalgia "kho siab", pronounced "khor shea") and future perspectives to make agrarian and economic decisions. Beliefs about place, land, plants, animals and diet motivate and influence choices to garden, and determine which agricultural methods are used. resource conservation practices employed on Hmong-owned properties follow as an outcome of persisting traditional Hmong ideologies.
Limits in the social environment, such as expensive land, the lack of on- farm employment and the daily "get-ahead" ethos of the American economy, constrain the literal replication of Hmong agrarian life in the Carolinas. Certainly, my respondents view agriculture as a pragmatic economic response to the demands of American social and economic life (for example, "if we garden, we can always have fresh food and can save money"). Economics, however, does not suffice as an explanation for these particular agricultural and land-owning activities. Although land purchases may be economically constrained and activities confined to weekends by the demands of full-time wage labor, Hmong gardens in the Carolinas flourish. Even when spiritually significant land is economically prohibitive, Hmong owned properties often contain or are adjacent to landscapes that have spiritual, aesthetic and/or nostalgic significance.
There are physical constraints to the full reproduction of Hmong agrarian life in the United States as well. Bennett (1969) articulates some of the specific constraints of Saskatchewan topography and climate which influenced the development of an agrarian identity for four distinct cultures. His work informs my analysis of the influence of the physical environment on Hmong cultural reconstruction. Just as climatic factors constrained Hutterite farms, they have limited the size and species found in Hmong gardens in northern American cities, and permitted their expansion further South.
Independent secondary resettlement to warmer, safer and more economically viable rural regions of the United States, such as North and South Carolina, has occurred in part because the landscape physically resembles Hmong visions of home (Feild Notes 1993: 314, 345, 438). The environment 's power to inspire human life in its presence as an actor is illustrated in the story of the urban-space clan leader who travelled the United States in the 1980's looking for a resettlement site. He was on a vision quest. His visual memories of Laos guided his identification of western North Carolina as the right place for the Hmong. Ironically, local residents have confirmed his and other Hmong individuals' observation that this area visually resembles mountainous Southeast Asia. They comment that the United States Air Force used this same area for flight practice during the Viet Nam War because its atmospheric conditions closely mimicked those of the mountains in Southeast Asia (Field Notes 1992,1993. Sherman 1988).
In the spring of 1993, an extended family deliberately sited their uncle's grave in a back woodlot on their 200 acre farm in the Piedmont foothills according to geomantic principles. Although they are prominent members of a Hmong-organized Christian church, senior men in the family, in accordance with the wishes of their elder relative, aligned the grave with a series of intersecting hills on and surrounding the property. It is sited such that two hills bow at the ancestors' feet and a third, lying far behind his head, offers a flat plateau for his spirit's dining table. Here, land form size, shape and directionality mediate for the spiritual and physical survival of a Hmong clan in a difficult social environment.
On another large Hmong-owned farm in North Carolina, a wooden bench has been set beside a stream bed that overlooks a natural grotto. Intricately shaped tree roots form complex patterns in the side of the grottos' red clay walls. That this place has been selected for rest and contemplation suggests that family members recognize this land forms' aesthetic and spiritual qualities.
In a suburban backyard in the same region, older people have constructed a spirit altar on a pole overlooking a garden and medicinal greenhouse. It has been made from a commercially manufactured plastic doll house and is covered by a conical tin roof. This animistic shrine points to a direct spiritual connections between land, gardens and human well-being and the persistence of animistic practices in my study area.
Land-owning permits extensive gardening among other activities such as home building and small economic ventures. In North and South Carolina, gardens, featuring Southeast Asian plants that are created primarily with Asian agricultural methods and technologies,recreate Hmong "home gardens". In shaping their land, the Hmong imitate, within climatic constraints, a Southeast Asian upland garden. Most gardens are composed solely of Southeast Asian species, including a few American cultigens that have been grown in Asia for 400 years, but a few also feature some "American" plants.
Hmong gardens in the Carolinas retain some of the ecologically sustainable characteristics of Asian upland horticulture, such as a broad diversity of plants,non-linear mixed variety layouts, interplanted nutrient and seasonally complementary species and the use of organic fertilizers such as animal manures, vegetable composts, and ash (1). Gardens included in my research sample are not exclusively organic (2), however, they are primarily so. Most Hmong gardeners in the Carolinas use manual swidden technologies such as digging sticks and home-made machetes for planting and harvesting. Although some gardens are panted in mechanized rows (especially large rice and corn fields), most are hand planted in mixed beds.
There are several gardens that exemplify how sustainable swidden practices have been retained. In a former South Carolina orchard, burnt peach stumps form the substratum of a circular vegetable garden. Their presence and a respondent's explanation that his grandmother"told us to do it this way" are evidence for the persistence of burning as a clearing technology and the use of ash fertilizer. This example also indicate the mode of this trait's transmission. Bone and ash fertilizer individual herbs in a medicinal greenhouse in North Carolina while several gardens retain burnt and unburnt tree stumps cut in the clearing process. Dried and fresh vegetable compost is often thrown directly onto gardens soil as an additional fertilizer. In many gardens, dried plant material is used as water_conserving around the roots of individual plants. Raised beds that conserve space, soil and water are other indicators of the persistence of a labor intensive ecologically sustainable agriculture that continues beyond economic necessity and outside of its cultural domain. . . .