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Tag: Traditional Arts

Unit 3: Healing and Future Building – Hmong Healing and Future Building

Time Frame

  •  2 class periods

Materials

  • Green Card Entrepreneur Voices – Steve Thao’s video

Connections to the 7 Cs of Ethnic Studies

  • Cultivate: using traditional Hmong arts as an opportunity for identity affirmation and healing
  • Conceptualize: using Hmong arts as tool for visioning, futurisms, world-building, hope, healing, and collective possibilities

Instruction (ICCR)

Important: Please give the class a general trauma warning and create a safe space for the class before beginning the lesson. Today’s class will explore how people use art and music to process hard times and heal. Some of our topics will touch on war, leaving home, and intergenerational trauma, the stress or sadness that families carry across generations, and may trigger certain feelings. Please remind students to be respectful of one another, provide space as needed, and allow students to skip or pass on discussions as needed. Also, remind students to reach out to their mental health providers and tell them these topics were brought up and discussed in class, and made students feel a certain way. Use your best professional judgment to warn the class. 

Ignite: Hmong Musical Instruments

  • Show images of some traditional Hmong instruments on the board. 
  • Ask students if anyone recognizes the instruments or can tell what they are. 
    • Call on a few to guess the instruments’ names or what they are.

Turn and Talk

What song do you listen to when you are sad or down? Why does music work better than just talking to a friend?

Chunk: Hmong Instruments

  • Introduce the Hmong instruments:
    • qeej / lusheng
    • raj / flute
    • ncas / mouth harp
    • xim xaus / violin
  • Show images of each traditional Hmong instrument; then explain what they’re made of and what they are used for.
  • Watch an excerpt of Among Mountains, from 29:00 to 43:00.
    • Neng Thao explains the instruments and their connections to the Hmong language, along with how music is an extension of the language and is often used for courting. 

Turn and Talk

How can playing a traditional Hmong instrument be seen as a form of communication? How is it a form of healing?

  • Ask for a few students to share out loud with the class.
  • Clearly explain to students how music allows for expression, especially feelings. Traditionally, it is a cultural taboo to openly talk and share feelings and emotions, especially while courting. Music allows individuals to express their feelings of love, happiness, or sadness to one another. 

Turn and Talk

Think about a song you put on when you are down. Why does hearing this song feel safer or more comforting than talking with a friend?

  • Sentence Starter: When I am overwhelmed, I like to listen to . . .

Chunk: Steve Thao’s Story 

Watch the “Steve Thao” video from Green Card Entrepreneur Voices.

Group Task

  • Watch: Watch the video together.
  • Discuss: How can art help Hmong understand their family’s history? How can art help Hmong heal from their past?
  • Analyze: Thao said, “Art is a way for us to tell our own stories, rather than having others tell them for us.” What does he mean by this? How can you use art to tell your story?

Chew: Paj Ntaub Artwork 

Introduce traditional Hmong paj ntaub, which is often used to tell stories, especially through story cloths. Share how story cloths started in the refugee camps as a way for Hmong to use their talent to make money. They would make cloth by hand and create story cloths of their journey, history, and experiences. Show examples of story cloths and point out specific symbols and what they represent. (See Flowery Cloth link below.)

Artwork and Paragraph Assignment

  • Pass out a blank white quarter sheet or half sheet of paper to students. Have them draw and color in a story about their life that can be used to inspire or instill hope in others.
    • Students do not have to draw a border.
  • Students should also write and turn in a paragraph reflection about their art and how it can provide healing and hope for others. 
  • Teacher will collect all of the images and create a collage on the wall with all the handouts. The teacher can cut out Hmong patterns or triangles to build a border for the images.

Review: 3-2-1 Exit Ticket

On a slip of paper (regular notebook paper or sticky notes) or a digital form, students must write and turn in:

  • Three specific facts they learned about Hmong arts
  • Two ways that art has shaped the Hmong experience
  • One question they still have about how art can help inspire a better future

Multilingual and ELL Support

  • Provide a sentence stem for reflection:
    • Art can serve to help with . . .
    • Art can help heal…
    • Art allows me to understand . . .
    • I express myself by . . .
    • When I feel _______, I listen to . . .

Vocabulary and Definitions

  • Paj ntaub: traditional Hmong art that is made by a needle stitching onto a fabric cloth
  • Art: something you make using imagination to share ideas and feelings, to make something beautiful, or to show and tell how you see the world  
  • Healing: the process of getting better, stronger, or whole again after you have been hurt, in either your body or feelings
  • Hope: the belief that something good can happen
  • Intergenerational Trauma: stress, trauma, or emotional sadness that is passed down from one generation to the next

Resource List