By Michael Weber | [email protected]
OROVILLE — A new museum highlighting Hmong and Iu Mien cultural history is underway in Oroville.
The city of Oroville held a press conference Tuesday to hand the keys over to the Lao Veterans of America, Northern California chapter for a future Hmong and Iu Mien cultural history museum.
President Kay Cha said his organization will be working towards making a museum and space to teach youth and other communities about the Hmong heritage in Butte County.
“Our building here, its main purpose is to meet and provide history for other communities and youth to learn,” Cha said. “So someday, when they ask the youth, ‘Where do they come from?’ they know where they come from.”
Cha said many Hmong people came to Oroville beginning in 1986 after the Vietnam War and that there are many veterans in the community.
His organization was first working with people who didn’t know how to speak English and set them up with help for any resources they needed. Now, Cha said they will focus on historical education.
The building will serve both as a cultural history museum of Hmong and Lu Mien people focused around the Vietnam War and a location to meet for the Northern California Lao Veterans of America, the Butte Lu Mien American Association and the Hmong Cultural Center.
Before securing the new location, Oroville Mayor Chuck Reynolds said Hmong community members didn’t have a formal place to go to meet and gather for celebrations, and would often meet at leaders’ houses.
Reynolds met with Cha who said they had been promised a place for more than 50 years but no one followed through.
Cha said they had been meeting with Reynolds monthly before they finally found a location for the future museum, an annexed city property located on Broderick Street between Bolt’s Antique Tool Museum and the Oroville Chinese Temple.
“We have decided to present this to the Hmong and Mien people so they can gather here,” Reynolds said. “They will have a place to call their own in Oroville.”
Kae Saechao, president of Butte Lu Mien American Association said he has plans for the building as his organization works on preserving community and culture and supporting youth in education.
“We’re thankful we’re being recognized,” Saechao said. “Back then, we all lived together, we all fought together, and so we’re all brothers and sisters.”
Saechao said his goal is to put pictures of veterans along the wall with artifacts to show his community’s history and culture.
Lao veteran Vang Thai said he has many pictures and articles from the Vietnam War that he wants to bring to the museum.
“I’m very happy for the city of Oroville, and the residents of American people, Hmong, Mien, Lao people in Butte County,” Thai said.
Read the original article at Enterprise-Records
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