The Karen Farming/Community Gardening Project

As Farmer’s Market season opens here in Minneapolis and St. Paul, I thought I’d draw some attention to a fairly new, but very exciting project that World Relief Minnesota has been developing in partnership with the Karen Organization of Minnesota (KOM) and the Minnesota Food Association (MFA).  

We recently had a two-part post on the Karen ethnic group, currently being resettled in St. Paul.  Though having limited skills in the kinds of work in demand in America, many of the Karen have a lifetime of experience as farmers in their home country of Burma.  Unfortunately, a crowded apartment complex in inner-city St. Paul is a world away from the quiet, terraced hillsides of the Burmese jungle.  When the Karen arrive in America, they find themselves separated from that traditional source of food, income, and identity, and long for a plot of land to tend and call their own.  

In response to this need, World Relief Minnesota began developing a two-part program, first to connect the Karen with community garden plots that would enable them to grow vegetables for their families, and then to train some individuals in larger-scale ventures that could possibly lead to future farm ownership.  Naturally, World Relief Minnesota partnered with KOM in this endeavor; World Relief pursues funding through grants and networks with local churches to find land and volunteers, while KOM connects eligible members of the Karen community with plots and gives them needed training.  Dennis Murnyak is World Relief Minnesota’s Community Gardening Coordinator, while See Nay serves as the coordinator at KOM.  

First Evangelical Free Church in Maplewood has been one of the community gardening program’s major land donors, with over 1000 plots available, 60 of which are being used by the Karen.  Five Oaks Community Church in Woodbury is another major land donor.  Arlington Hills United Methodist Church is one of our newer partners, with 10 plots available for Karen gardeners.  Ramsey County Master Gardeners has offered training as well.  As knowledge of the program has spread throughout the community, there has been a dramatic increase in the demand for plots, but land is in short supply, so donating land is an excellent way for local churches to assist their Karen neighbors.  Another issue has been a shortage of gardening equipment and seed, so as you’re opening up your garages and tool sheds in preparation for summer, keep an eye out for those extra hand-trowels, shovels, and that old rototiller you never use, and consider donating them to those who could put them to good use.

The other half of the Karen Gardening/Farming project began in 2011, in partnership with KOM and Big River Farms CSA, a program of the Minnesota Food Association.  Big River Farms, located north of the metro in Marine on St. Croix, offers a training program for immigrants, refugees and minorities that not only teaches them how to do the day-to-day work of planting, tending and harvesting their crops, but also introduces them to the business side of running a farm. 

This is an important step, as aspiring farmers from Burma find out immediately that skills and practices learned in the jungles of Southeast Asia often don’t translate well to the frozen tundra of Minnesota.  Karen farmers in Burma used mixed methods of wet-rice farming using paddies, and hillside farming using slash-and-burn methods in which the land was cleared of trees and brush, left to dry for two months, then burned and plowed under.  Land was plentiful, crops could be planted all year round, and were of the kind that thrived in Burma’s tropical climate–corn, beans, and peppers.  

Contrast that with Minnesota:  all planting must be done on a rigid, often risky schedule that gambles with the date of the last hard freeze, and after that, a farmer has five months to grow and harvest their crop before winter returns.  Crops that grow in those conditions are kinds that never existed in Burma–See Nay smiled when he told me of his first experience with that strange, cabbage-like plant known as “brussels sprouts.”  Even the tools are different–in Burma, the Karen lacked the financial resources for large, complicated machinery, and made due with long knives for hacking, and two-man saws for felling trees.  In America, it is almost essential to have large machines like tractors, plows and combines, which are expensive to purchase and maintain.

The farming itself is the easy part, however, as the trainees learn of the steep costs for land, seed and equipment, and of the dizzying array of laws and regulations governing commercial food production.  Here, they are not just competing with the farm on the neighboring terrace, but with Pioneer, Monsanto, and ConAgra.  Even small-scale farming comes with unexpected costs: when See Nay inquired about reserving a spot at the St. Paul Farmer’s Market, the cost to rent a stall was $845.

The training program is valuable for helping would-be Karen farmers evaluate the costs and risks of running a farm, and for those willing to pursue that dream, to give them the skills and knowledge they need to be successful and to find the appropriate markets.  The program is 3 years long, with classes during the winter, and on-site training during the summer.  During the first year, the students work part time at Big River Farms for a modest wage, and during the second year, though they take reduced hours, they are given access to their own 1/4 acre plot, paid for by grants and other funding.  By the last year of the program, they will receive no wages, but will have access to their own acre of land and will have the skills to make their first efforts at selling their produce.  So far, See Nay and 3 other Karen participants are well into their second year, and it has been a great success.

Again, there are needs for seed, equipment, and also transportation, as Big River Farms is several miles outside of the metro and inaccessible to those without vehicles or access to carpools.  World Relief Minnesota provides some funding for land and supplies, but more is needed, particularly as the program grows in popularity.  Those willing to donate land, tools, capital, or even time can contact Dennis Murnyak or See Nay for more information. 

For the rest of us, over the coming years, we may see more of our Karen neighbors setting up shop at local farmer’s markets and starting up CSAs.  Let’s support them with our business, and as they provide our families with fresh, locally grown produce, we can help them achieve their dreams.

Refugee Profile: The Bhutanese

The Bhutanese are a fairly recent group of arrivals in Minnesota, and still form a very small community, mostly in St. Paul.  Though they consider Bhutan their home, they are ethnic Nepalis and speak that language, a distinction that caused them many problems in the homeland, and led to their exile, first into India, and then into camps in Nepal.

Bhutan is a tiny country not much larger than the upper peninsula of Michigan.  Located in the eastern foothills of the Himalayas, sandwiched between China and India, the country has recently caught the interest of the West because of its pristine landscape and isolation from the rest of the world.  The country boasts more monks than soldiers, and only legalized internet and television in 1999.

In 1616 AD, Lama Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal established Bhutan as a Buddhist kingdom, and that has been the majority religion ever since.  The dominant ethnic groups are the Sharchops and Ngalops, who originated in Tibet and generally live in the mountainous regions of the north.  However, because of its close proximity to Nepal, there has frequently been cultural exchange and migration between the two countries.  When Shabdrung Ngawang Namgyal wanted to build a burial shrine for his father in 1620, the craftsmen he hired were Nepali.

The largest wave of Nepali immigration came to Bhutan in the late 1890s.  These immigrants, known as the Lhotsampas, or “Lowlanders,” were invited into the country to farm the undeveloped lowlands along the Indian border.  They arrived in large numbers over the coming years, and though they spoke a different language, wore different clothes, and practiced another religion (Hinduism), they lived alongside the Northerners, contributed to their society, and considered themselves loyal to Bhutan and its king.

However, in the early 1980′s, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck of Bhutan became paranoid about the burgeoning Nepali population in the south.  He began a campaign of cultural homogenization, outlawing the Nepali language, shutting down Nepali schools, and demanding that all citizens wear the gho, a garment worn by northerners which was grossly impractical in the tropical climate of southern Bhutan.  The Lhotsampas, alarmed by the sudden discrimination, began organizing against the monarchy and advocated a democratic movement, which brought swift retribution from the authorities.

The Bhutanese army invaded Lhotsampa villages and drove them from their homes, and leaders of the democracy movement were arrested, imprisoned and tortured.  To this day, the government of Bhutan claims that the refugees were “illegal immigrants” who left the country of their own free will.  They make no mention of the harassment and ethnic discrimination imposed on the refugees by local authorities, or the near-impossibility of even legal immigrants to prove their citizenship, or that the many “Voluntary Migration Certification” forms, in which imprisoned or threatened Lhotsampas signed away all rights of citizenship and land, were anything but voluntary.  In all, over 107,000 Lhotsampas were forced to flee to India, nearly 1/6th of Bhutan’s entire population.  The refugees met resistance from Indian authorities, so they continued on to Nepal, where they settled in seven camps along the Nepali-Indian border.

The Lhotsampas lived in the camps for nearly two decades, while Nepal, unable and unwilling to absorb so many people into its own citizenry, tried to work out an agreement with Bhutan that would allow the Lhotsampas to return, with little success.  Life in the camps was generally comfortable, but tedious, with severe restrictions on movement outside the camps and few legal opportunities for employment in surrounding towns.  In 2007, the United Nations High Commission on Refugees decided that resettlement in a third country was the only viable option for the exiled Lhotsampas, and since then, nearly 50,000 have been resettled abroad, 42,000 of them in the United States (with 60,000 approved), and roughly 400 of those in the Twin Cities, mostly in St. Paul, Roseville, Lauderdale and Minneapolis. 

Resettlement was a contentious issue in the camps, as many believed that the measure was undermining the refugees’ efforts to return to Bhutan.  However, like the situation with the Karen, those Bhutanese refugees living abroad have an opportunity to share their stories and advocate for their people that their compatriots in the camps and in Bhutan do not.  

This is all the more important today, as most Western media coverage of Bhutan consists only of gushing references to its natural beauty, isolation and its standard of “Gross National Happiness,” a measure that is most certainly skewed by not including the many citizens who were driven into exile twenty some years ago, or the many Lhotsampas in Bhutan who are still facing harassment and discrimination, and denied participation in the country they consider home.  Hopefully, with so many refugees from Bhutan predicted to arrive in America and Europe over the coming years, a new conversation will arise, one that will force the authorities in Bhutan to come to terms with their treatment of the Lhotsampas, and to embrace their country’s diversity rather than suppress it.

For more information on the crisis, on life in the the camps, and on the many ways resettled Bhutanese refugees are advocating for their people, click here: 

www.bhutaneserefugees.com

Refugee Profile: The Somalis (Part II)

Throughout the Middle Ages, several states and empires rose and fell in Somalia. During the Golden Age of the Sultanate of Mogadishu, the city dominated 13^th Century trade in the Indian Ocean, and the Ajuuraan State of the 14^th to 17^th Centuries was famous for its castles, coastal fortresses, and its many defensive wars against the Portuguese invaders along Africa’s east coast.  However, Somalia soon found itself divided up between the British and the Italians during the rapid period of colonization that took place in the late 20th century, called the “Scramble for Africa.”  Many years of European domination culminated in an uprising led by the “Mad Mullah” Mohammed Abdullah Hassan.  For 20 years, Hassan successfully drove back the European colonizers and established the Dervish State, until his men suffered crippling  losses during a British air attack in 1920.  

Somalia under the colonialist powers was sharply divided into British Somaliland in the north, and Italian Somaliland along the southern and eastern coasts.  The two colonies frequently clashed during World War II, and both left the country in 1960 when Somalia was granted independence.  In 1969, Major General Mohammed Siad Barre seized control of the government after a military coup, and ran the country under a combination of Marxist and Islamic ideals (though his demand for strong, centralized government and his methods of getting it had much more in common with his Italian Fascist predecessors).

In spite of Barre’s attempts to obliterate the clan system, his own regime was known for targeting and carrying out brutal attacks against certain clans viewed as rivals.  The collapse of the Soviet Union led to diminished support for his regime abroad, and a car accident in 1986 left Barre severely injured and weakened.  In the meantime, the clans that his regime had abused and oppressed began organizing into militias.  In 1991, Siad Barre was driven from Mogadishu, his regime brought down, and with the notable exceptions of Somaliland and Puntland in the north (who quickly withdrew and claimed autonomy from the rest of Somalia), the country erupted into civil war.

Unfortunately, this is the point where most American’s awareness of Somalia begins.  In the coming years, many forces would have their hands in Somali politics, including various warring clans, UN Peacekeepers, the Ethiopian and Kenyan armies, and more recently, the Al-Qaeda affiliated militant group Al-Shabaab.  Though frequently in the news, Al-Shabaab has been struggling, partly out of an inability to unite people across clan divides, but also because of their dismal handling of the famine last year.  Extremist forms of Islam have never been popular in Somalia, and many Somalis resent the intrusion of what they see as a foreign influence into their country.  There were other unwelcome interlopers as well.  The lack of an official government has made the waters around Somalia a free-for-all for foreign fishing trawlers who have decimated the country’s fishing industry, to say nothing for the countries that have been silently dumping toxic waste into the coastal waters, causing many in the north to fall violently ill.  Much has been said about Somali piracy off the Horn of Africa; much more ought to be said about the factors that helped to create that problem.

And yet, in spite of twenty years of civil war, there are signs of hope.  The fighting never killed the Somalis’ entrepreneurial spirit, and they have established a vast telecommunications industry in their country, and even founded a university in Mogadishu that has gone on to become one of the top 100 Universities in Africa.  Al-Shabaab has relinquished control over much of Mogadishu, allowing local business owners and entrepreneurs to flourish.  This recent article from the New York Times highlights the remarkable changes that have come over Mogadishu in just the last few months, partly enabled by financial capital streaming in from the Somali Diaspora (our friends here in the Twin Cities, and elsewhere around the world).  Though much remains uncertain, Somalis abroad have not given up on their homeland, and are proving themselves invaluable in the process of rebuilding.  

Refugee Profile: The Somalis (Part 1)

In the spirit of my last two-parter blog post, I’d like to leave St. Paul and take a trip over to South Minneapolis (and many other communities in Minnesota) to explore the history and culture of another large refugee population we work with at World Relief: the Somalis. In Part I, I’ll give a brief overview of Somalia’s history and culture, and in Part II, go in-depth on the causes and aftermath of the 20-year civil war that has plagued the country and the many ways the Somalis have adapted and reinvented themselves in the Diaspora.

Just how many Somalis live in Minnesota is disputed: the official 2010 census numbers them at around 25,000, which some say is a gross underestimate. Though many equate the Somali community with the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in South Minneapolis, there are growing communities in suburbs like Burnsville, Coon Rapids and Shakopee, drawn there by job opportunities and the appeal of quieter, more family-friendly neighborhoods. Elsewhere in and around Minnesota, there are Somali communities in St. Cloud, Rochester and Duluth, and even in small towns like Willmar, Pelican Rapids, Barron, Wisconsin, and Postville, Iowa.

Somalia is a country in eastern Africa, bordered by Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya to the west, and by the Gulf of Aden on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to the east. It’s tempting to picture Somalia as a lifeless, barren desert, but the country has a semi-arid, monsoonal climate and many areas, particularly along the Shabelle and Jubba rivers in the south, are lush and green. Palms grow in the cities, mangroves along the coasts, and junipers in the mountains to the north around Hargeisa. Dense thickets of acacia provide forage for grazing herds of sheep and goats, and frankincense and myrrh trees are among the trade goods that drew the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut on an expedition to the north coast of “Punt” in the 15^th century BC. Her account of this expedition is the earliest written record we have of Somalia.

The Somalis themselves are an Afro-Asiatic people genetically related to the Oromo, Amhara, and other ethnic groups in neighboring Ethiopia, many of whom have also come to Minnesota as refugees. Traditionally, Somalis lived as nomads and camel-herders, though some groups along the southern coast took advantage of the arable, well-watered landscape and grew crops. Additionally, many of our clients come from urban areas like Mogadishu.

To many Americans, the very name “Mogadishu” conjurs up images of Black Hawk helicopters, gun battles and chaos.  Though much of Mogadishu has been destroyed or overtaken by the militant group Al-Shabaab, and many Somalis are still fleeing the city, prior to the civil war, Mogadishu was considered one of Africa’s premier beach resorts and as sophisticated a city as any in Africa–never mind its centuries of history as a key trading port on the Indian Ocean. Excavations there have turned up coins from 10th-century China, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, and Mogadishu even exchanged ambassadors with Emperor Yong-lo Ti of the Ming Dynasty in 1430 AD, which should give some idea of Mogadishu’s reach in ancient trade. This link contains many photos of Mogadishu and other urban areas in Somalia taken prior to 1991, in which the Italian architectural influences are evident in many of the buildings. 

To understand the Somali worldview, one must understand two things: Islam, and the clan system. Somalis are proud of their Muslim identity, though a survey of various local practices can turn up remnants of older folk traditions as well. In fact, Islam and its radical monotheism found a welcome home in Somalia, as the Somalis (as well as the Oromos), already practiced a kind of monotheism in the worship of the sky-god Waaq. Today, the population of Somalia is almost 100% Muslim, predominantly Sunni. Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, is also widely practiced in Somalia.

Somalia’s clan system is loosely divided into four main clans: the Darod, the Hawiye, the Isaaq, and the Dir, with the Rehenwayn of southern Somalia sometimes included in the list. These major clans are subdivided into many layers of subclans, and most Somalis have a long memory of their lineage and the origin stories behind them. In addition to the main clans, there are many other minority groups, such as the Yibir, Tumal and Madhiban, who have historically been considered “lower class” and have often been subject to discrimination and mistreatment. The clans serve a protective function; Somalia is a land with more people than resources, and having the backing of a large, powerful clan offers not only protection from livestock rustlers and invaders, but financial and community support when disaster strikes. Clan identification still plays an important role in the lives of many Somalis in Minnesota, though the civil war has made it a sensitive topic and it may be best for volunteers not to dig too deeply into their family’s clan allegiances, especially if other, unrelated Somalis are present.

I’ll end this post on that note. Next week, I’ll pick up with the Italian and British colonial period, the Said Barre regime, and the civil war of 1991, and some thoughts on how media portrayals of the conflict in Somalia—and the Somalis themselves—are often in conflict with the reality.

 

For Further Reading:

Abdullahi, Mohamud Diriye. “Culture and Customs of Somalia.”

(This is a fantastic book written by a Somali-Canadian scholar. Most of the information in this post that I didn’t cite with a link came from this book—it describes the history of Somalia in detail, and many of the nomadic folk traditions, though it doesn’t seem to have much information on modern urban life or on the Diaspora.)

In my last post, I left off with the arrival of Adoniram Judson and the establishment of a a Christian community among the Karen in Burma. Today, I’ll provide some of the context for why there is a refugee crisis in Burma, and the role that refugees can play in empowering their brothers and sisters still at home.

Not long after the time of Adoniram Judson, British imperialists made their mark on Burma, establishing a colony there and favoring the Karen on account of this already present Christian community.  Politics of that time were complicated. If the Burmese accused the British of favoring the Karen to exploit religious and ethnic tensions (something colonial powers were known for), the Karen rightly point out that the Burmese were mistreating ethnic minorities long before the British arrived. The British granted the Karen access to education and positions of authority that they had long been denied, so it is no small wonder that the Karen supported the colonizers.

However, Burmese resentment was growing, as the British treated them with all the sensitivity and tolerance we’ve come to expect from European colonial powers, and the Karen were accused of being collaborators. During World War II, the Karen sided with the British and American forces, while the Burmese sided with the Japanese invaders. After the war, the Karen, sensing a storm brewing, formed the Karen National Union (KNU) in 1947 and began pressuring the British to grant them an independent state. The British promised to do so, but when they finally granted Burma independence in 1948, their answer to the Karen problem was a tepid “work it out amongst yourselves.” The Karen, along with many other minority ethnic groups, now had to face the wrath of the Burmese majority, and thus began what is currently the world’s longest-running civil war.

The refugee crisis that exists today is a product of Burma’s long, downward spiral into chaos and oppression after the 1948 Independence. The dictatorial government, when not busy obliterating their country’s economy, cultivating its drug trade, and being chummy with North Korea, often sends its troups into ethnic minority areas, razing villages, planting land mines, raping, torturing and killing. The armed wing of KNU, known as the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) has been waging a defensive guerilla war with the Burmese Army for over 60 years, and other minority ethnic groups, such as the Kachin and the Shan, are in the same situation. According to the NGO Free Burma Rangers, Burma has an estimated 1 million Internally Displaced Peoples (essentially refugees who stay within their own country), and 1 million refugees who have fled the country, typically into crowded refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border.

The camps are often a nightmare in and of themselves. Thousands of people live in cramped, unsanitary conditions in small spaces in a phenomenon known as “human warehousing.” Thailand, swamped on all sides by refugees from Burma, Laos and Cambodia, is not known for its generous policy toward refugees, often threatening to force them back to Burma, and making it illegal for them to find work or even leave the camp. Still, the Karen have made the best of their situation, even gaining international attention for their innovative education programs in the camps. In 2006, the United States government approved the resettlement of refugees from the Tham Hin camp, with more camps to be considered in the intervening years, and in the last couple of years, most of our arrivals at World Relief have been Karen.

This, then, is the tragic story of our new neighbors in St. Paul, many of whom still carry the wounds—physical and otherwise—of those 60 years of civil war. Nearly all have left loved ones behind, either to languish in the camps, or living a harried existence in the mountains, always trying to keep one step ahead of the Burmese Army, which has promised, among other bone-chilling threats, that “in twenty years, the only Karen person you will see will be in a museum.”

Being resettled in a third country (like America) is a long, difficult journey. Less than 1% of refugees registered through the UN are approved to be resettled, making them the tiny peak of the tip of the iceberg, and as someone who works in resettlement, I often wonder how my Karen neighbors must feel about the process. I know that many of them were activists and leaders in their communities before coming to America, and devoted their lives toward peace, recognition, and a homeland for their people. What must it feel like, then, for them to find themselves and their families climbing into a cramped bus with their allotted two bags, to set off on the long, bumpy journey to the airport in Bangkok, leaving that homeland and that life behind?

Is that really the end, or is it possible that this fraction of a percent of refugees coming to St. Paul and Minneapolis have a unique, powerful role to play on behalf of their people still in the camps, to tell their stories and raise awareness in a nation that is both financially and diplomatically powerful? I knew nothing about the Karen until they began moving into my community; before that, I knew of “Myanmar” as a country in Southeast Asia that changed its name a lot for some reason, and something about Buddhist monks protesting the government. Now, I understand the magnitude of the human rights abuses taking place there, as do hundreds of other government workers,  journalists, ESL teachers, volunteers, coworkers, classmates and friends who have built relationships with their new Karen neighbors.

There are now Karen students attending college, and KOM and the Minnesota Food Association have organized a training program for Karen farmers to take the skills learned in the rice fields to the urban farms and community gardens of St. Paul, with hopes of them moving into farmer’s markets in the near future. Soon, the Karen will be starting businesses, becoming community leaders, writing their congressmen and women, and achieving careers as journalists, writers and artists who take advantage of our freedoms and protections in America to tell the stories they were forbidden to tell in Burma. The situation in Burma appears to be improving, but there is much that is still uncertain, and the Karen are understandibly cautious. There is still work to be done.

The question that the rest of us have to ask is how we, as natural-born citizens, English speakers, and those privileged enough to know the culture, can best come alongside them and help them learn the systems, first to gain stability and security, and then to tell their stories. Again, I have to push the power of relationship-building, where we serve as the “connectors” who help them access the support systems around them, so they can establish the stable footing they need to take the next steps. Here in America, the Karen have the power to speak and advocate for those still living in the shadow of Burma’s corrupt government, and those of us involved in resettlement have the power to hand them the microphone.

Refugee Profile: The Karen (Part 1)

Over the past few weeks at RefugeeResettlementMN, we have discussed the problem of substandard housing, gone in-depth over the Twin Cities’ wonky transit system, and reflected on art and identity for those affected by war.  Today, I’d like to take a step back from the resettlement side of things to dive more deeply into the culture and history of some of our new neighbors.  After all, one of the unexpected blessings of fostering a welcoming, hospitable community is in the cultural contributions that our guests bring with them, weaving a new color of thread through an already vibrant and beautiful tapestry that makes up the Twin Cities.

The Karen are some of the newest arrivals to Minnesota, beginning as a slow trickle in the early 2000s, their numbers increasing dramatically when the dire situation along the Thai-Burma border led to more aggressive resettling abroad in the middle of the decade.  As of 2012, there are about 3,500 Karen in the Twin Cities, with the majority in St. Paul.  In 2009, the Karen Organization of Minnesota was founded in the North End neighborhood, and its predominantly Karen staff provides services to the Karen community and often partner with us on various projects.

The Karen themselves are a cluster of related ethnic groups that have historically lived along the Thai-Burma border.  They are one of the “Hill Tribes:” groups that migrated south from China and Tibet, and settled in the mountainous regions of Southeast Asia, where they live a subsistence lifestyle of hunting, fishing and rice farming.  In that respect, they have much in common with the Hmong, who made a similar journey to the Thai-Laos border from southern China.  A subgroup of the Karen—an offshoot of the Red Karen (“Karenni“) called the Kayin Lahwi (also “Padaung”)—are known in the West for the copper or brass neck rings worn by the women, which give the neck an elongated appearance by putting pressure on the collarbone.

The Karen tell of their ancestor’s journey across the great “river of running sand,” quite possibly the Gobi Desert of northern China, to find a new home in the humid jungles of Burma. They built their homes on stilts, hunted, fished, weaved, and grew crops through slash-and-burn farming, though the environmental toll of this practice has led many Karen in modern times to switch to more sustainable paddy-farming along river basins.  Their vast oral tradition of poems, songs and folktales bore many striking resemblances to Biblical stories, leading some early historians to believe they were the Lost Tribes of Israel, and others (slightly more plausibly), to suggest that they may have crossed paths with Chinese Nestorians on their journey south. 

Neither theory holds much weight, but wherever the stories originated, they gave Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson ample common ground with the Karen when he preached the Gospel to them in the early nineteenth century, his first convert being Ko Tha Byu, who became a devoted evangelist among his people.  To this day, around 15-35% of the Karen in Burma, and 90% of the Karen in Minnesota, consider themselves Christian, with the rest practicing animism, often syncretistically with Therevada Buddhism.

Unfortunately, this new religious movement did not endear them to the ethnic Bamar (Burmese), who were majority Buddhist and had been persecuting the Karen on ethnic grounds for many centuries already. In my next post, I’ll explore the British period and the origins of the current civil war, with some comments on the often unspoken benefits of refugee resettlement in the world of human rights advocacy.  In the mean time, here are some more resources on Karen life and culture: 

The Karen People of Burma: A Study in Anthropology and Ethnology, by Henry Ignatius Marshall

(This was published in 1920.  Therefore, don’t expect a lot of up-to-date political info, and do expect a fair amount of European ethnocentrism. However, if read judiciously, it says a lot about Karen-Burmese relations prior to the Civil War, and has a lot of good information about village life and folk art).

KarenWebsite. Has some cultural information and folktales

Cultural Profile from the Center for Applied Linguistics

Not About Bombs: Exhibit at the Intermedia Arts Center

World Relief Minnesota is a sponsor for “Not About Bombs,” an art exhibit by the Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project featuring the works of five Iraqi women.  Today, I stopped by the Intermedia Arts Center to see the exhibit for myself.

“Not About Bombs” was created as an opportunity for female Iraqi artists to create art from their own perspective, foregoing the stock themes of war and violence in favor of a more internal, intimate exploration of identity and change in the aftermath of conflict.  Five artists have displayed their work: Sundus Abdul Hadi, Tamara Abdul Hadi, Julie Adnan, Dena Al-Adeeb, and Sama Alshaibi.  It’s a small exhibit in a small space, but the works are both strong and thought-provoking.

In Julie Adnan’s The Cloth Speaks, a beautiful model dons a variety of outfits: a sweater, a sundress, and a negligee, but also a burqa, a niqab, and in one frame, she clutches an assault rifle, with a jihadist slogan scrawled across her forehead.  In the next frame, she is back in jeans and a blouse, but with a kaffiyeh worn around her neck, for fashion as much as for making a political statement.  The model is French, not Arab, and her expression and posture is the same in each frame, yet each picture evokes a different emotional response, a different stereotype.  Whether we see her as confident or demure, immodest or oppressed, kind or threatening, it is her coverings that we judge her by.

Equally compelling were two works by Tamara Abdul Hadi, The Next Generation and My Window, which juxtaposes two groups of women.  The Next Generation shows a group of Iraqi teenagers at their graduation, all bright colors and proud smiles as they stand in front of their flag to have their pictures taken.  But My Window, photographed in black and white, shows a line of tired-looking older women in black robes: war widows waiting to pick up their pensions.  The contrast between the hopeful optimism of the youth and the cold despair of the widows is jarring, and leaves one wondering which group’s legacy would prevail in Iraq in the coming years.  Her sister, Sundus Abdul Hadi, also presents a series of photographs: the current unrest in the Arab world depicted as young men bravely leaping (or falling?) into the sky.

Along with the photography, the exhibit also featured a short film, Baghdadi Mem/Wars, by Dena Al-Adeeb, and Sama Alshaibi.  The film depicted three different scenes: a woman frantically recording a line from an Iraqi poem–a piece of her culture and history.  Another hand erases it; she quickly begins to write again.  Two women are trapped in an ever-shrinking padded room, embodying the claustrophobia of war, and then find themselves alone in a snowy field, showing that even in apparent “freedom,” one can still feel isolation and loneliness.

This, of course, is one person’s interpretation of each work in the exhibit; we all bring our own perspectives with us when we approach art, be it through the written word or the visual arts.  I would encourage anyone who can to come down to the Intermedia Arts Center, near the intersection of Lyndale and Lake Street, and see for themselves what they can find in the works of these talented artists.  There is a suggested donation of $3, and IARP is currently raising money to bring three of the artists, Dena Al-Adeeb, and Sundus and Tamara Abdul Hadi, to the venue on March 3rd for a Q&A.