TVN

[tvn96-blog]

Notebook #5

In creating my zine, I was able to explore much more into a side of my family history that is rarely talked about. I also have noticed for a while that Vietnamese generations who have lived in the United States since they were young or were born here are not taught much about their past. I remember strictly learning about the Vietnam war through the U.S. perspective and leaving it at that. Even though I knew my dad's family had lived through the war and my grandpa had served in the Southern Vietnamese army, I was never intrigued enough to ask about it. Neither were my family keen to talk about those times. I think my situation can be said the same for many other young Vietnamese living in the United States. I would like to think that the me back then was not aware of the ongoing hardships brought about by the war and are still affecting people today. As in Christina Sharpe’s book, I was not in the wake.

Throughout this class, I was able to see how the Vietnamese people’s struggles are similar to many other group’s struggles. The course running through each group’s struggles can be connected, similar but also different. While they can be similar, we should also acknowledge the differences that they have.

Through my zine, I wanted to bring up the topic amongst other young Vietnamese and to get them to become aware of it, more so than they have before. They were my intended audience for the zine as I felt it could help pique their interests on the subject and possibly get their own families to answer their questions. A lot of the information and knowledge on the Southern Vietnamese servicemen are not available as these people tend to keep hush on such topics. We are slowly losing these sources of knowledge, myself being an example as I was never able to ask my grandpa about his story before he passed away recently.

I've learned to question and inquire more about a subject and not just let it be or accept just one side of the story. I've had to also challenge my current beliefs and to see the varying degrees of struggles each group we learned about in class faced and are still facing. Although I haven't been able to fully comprehend all of what was talked about in the duration of the course, I feel that I have been able to further take away and learn valuable skills that will help me when facing ongoing racial issues.

[tvn96-blog]

The Trek

ETHN2 Final Zine

[oburgundy-blog]

Notebook #2

I plan to stick with my object – the Miami Illinois dictionary – my tribal language dictionary. As I’m beginning to research how the dictionary came to be (our last native speakers passed in the 1960s,) I found out that a UC Berkeley student in the 1980s decided to do his dissertation on our language. I’m already suspicious of universities in general; I know that the universities in Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana have my ancestors in their Anthropology Departments, and so this project for Ethnic Studies has piqued my curiosity about where in the UC system important writings/remains/”artifacts” about my tribe might be housed. I’ve got to go to the library before discussion so that I can look at microfiche.

I’m excited about what I will find but it’s often soul crushing at the same time. Case in point, I am Peoria but that name incorporates or is a morphed version of the pronunciation of early French colonizers. But just in beginning research for this, I found that my tribe might have originally been called the Illinois, also colonizer language, but actually something like or closer to Illiniwek, and that has got me twisted up right now. If we don’t even call ourselves what we have always called ourselves, why? I view this as one mode of vanishing the natives. Also, I am now wondering if it is tied to the fact that one of the states of the United States of America is named after my people and that’s not an association the powers that be want people to know and understand.

I feel like since I started college my entire existence is couched in the assimilation of my family, the shame of being from Oklahoma, the unknown family histories, the mandate to “marry white”, the poverty, the dysfunction. It’s all tied to our history, a history that is hidden from us and somehow forgotten by us simultaneously. There’s this feeling I have that as I dig deeper I won’t be able to separate out the national blinds of my history and existence; they are all intertwined. Being an American Indian, obviously, colonization. The assimilation of my family, pretending to be white, not ever talking about family history, etc. is one form I see of creating whiteness, creating an American. Additionally, the land which once was ours but has been taken, bought, sold, allotted and more is the making of Mother Earth into property, something to be taken and ripped of resources for numerous purposes, a foreign concept to my ancestors, but the way of thinking about land for the last 500 years. I’m just now in the last few years beginning to understand the impact to my tribe due to loss of language. I’m thinking now about language loss tied to citizenship like how folks a few years back tried to push for English to be the national language. I’d like to explore this more.

Some of the information I wanted to share:

The place on Amazon to buy the dissertation (book) by the white PhD student for $75.

https://www.amazon.com/Miami-Illinois-Language-Studies-Languages-Americas/dp/0803215142/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1485665855&sr=8-4&keywords=miami+illinois

The Myaamia Center - where members of one of my sister tribes do fabulous work!

http://myaamiacenter.org

A link to our online dictionary:

https://myaamiadictionary.org/dictionary2015/

An article on Indian Country Today about Daryl Baldwin, one of the authors of our dictionary, that mentions he became one of the MacArthur Fellows, aka the genius grant, for his work on language and culture revitalization for his tribe.

https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/education/native-education/myaamia-language-preservationist-wins-genius-grant/

[icymilktea-blog]

I found your notebook entry very well written and reading it from an outside perspective it seems that you are Native american yourself and this your object is most likely a personal one. I like that you did your analysis and incorporated many aspects of history into this, I think your zine is focused on Native American (American Indian as you word it) identity and trying to regain this identity after being subjected to the United States government’s authority and deliberate discrimination. Some quotes I found really powerful were “If we don’t even call ourselves what we have always called ourselves, why? I view this as one mode of vanishing the natives.” and “Additionally, the land which once was ours but has been taken, bought, sold, allotted and more is the making of Mother Earth into property, something to be taken and ripped of resources for numerous purposes, a foreign concept to my ancestors, but the way of thinking about land for the last 500 years.” I think these two really stood out to me as being packed with a punch and got me really thinking about the message behind it.

[tvn96-blog]

Zine pages 

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Zine sample page

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zine cover

[tvn96-blog]

Notebook #3

Father’s account of life during the war

My father recounts the difficult times in his family while my grandfather was in the prison camps. During those times, the older children had to sacrifice their education in order to help their mother provide food on the table for the family. The girls would work at a noodle shop making and rolling noodles for long hours. Often days, the family would have little to nothing to eat. Without their father, the family relied on their mother as the backbone of the family.

Grandfather’s Life

From my youngest aunt’s retelling of my grandfather’s story, I can sense that he went through a lot during this time. He was born in the North in Hai Phong to a rich family. His father was a judge who worked with the French and was very fluent in French. As a young master, his family lived in a mansion with several cars and a household staff. Although they were from the North, his father was more close to the American and French side and thus, when the Northern Army took Hanoi, his family fled their comfortable lives and left behind everything to flee to the South. If they were to be caught, they would be killed. The house that they owned has turned into government property and is now occupied by other people. My grandfather was very active and had enlisted into the Southern Vietnamese army. After the war ended and he was put into the prison camps, he still remained strong and made it through. We actually have a picture of him in his uniform along with my grandmother. The two are pictured alone and the date of when the photo was taken is unknown.

[tvn96-blog]

Notebook #2

Notebook #2

Vietnam refugees to America

http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/vietnamese-immigrants-united-states

As of 2014, Vietnam immigrants are one of the six largest immigrant groups

Vietnamese population grew significantly after 1975

“roughly doubling every decade between 1980 and 2000, and then increasing 26 percent in the 2000s”

Vietnamese immigrants’ top destinations: United States, Australia, Canada, France

Green card holders: family sponsored or immediate relatives of citizens

Settlement: California, Texas, Washington, and Florida

2010-14 1 in 3 immigrants resided in Los Angeles, San Jose or Houston

80% of immigrants aged 18-64, largest group

1st wave of immigrants to US:

Early refugees were part of a U.S.-sponsored evacuation and consisted mainly of military personnel and urban, well-educated professionals associated with the U.S. military or the South Vietnamese government

2nd wave:

Vietnamese refugees, commonly known as “boat people,” arrived in the late 1970s. The majority of these arrivals came from rural areas and were often less educated

3rd wave from 1983 and 2004:

Many of the Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the United States between 1983 and 2004 were initially resettled in states with large immigrant populations, including California, Texas, and Washington State—a fact largely reflected by the geographic distribution of Vietnamese immigrants today.

http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/O-W/The-Vietnam-War-and-Its-Impact-Refugees-and-boat-people.html

Lucrative passage business: those able to pay could afford to leave the country

Vietnamese refugees that fled to Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and the Philippines, where some would stay permanently while others waited for political asylum such as in the United States

When those countries couldn’t accept any more refugees, a United Nations meeting was called upon and “utilizing an executive order to raise immigration quotas, President Carter doubled the number of Southeast Asian refugees allowed into the United States each month. Agreements were also reached with Vietnam to establish an orderly departure program. These developments combined to slow the exodus of refugees in 1980 and 1981. By 2000, more than two million Vietnamese had left the nation of their birth to start new lives in foreign lands.”

“Bribes and exit fees were necessary to leave Vietnam legally during the era of massive emigration from 1977 to 1980.”

[tvn96-blog]

Notebook #1

Object: Family picture taken during the Vietnam War

During the tumultuous times of the Vietnam War, my grandfather had served in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam as a communications officer working to transmit signals and messages to and from the army to the United States Army. Originally born and raised in Hai Phong near Hanoi, he and his family fled their homes and comforting lives as the Communist Army closed in on Hanoi. He had married my grandmother while in Hanoi and had their first son, my eldest uncle, while living there. As they fled down south, my following aunts and uncles were born in different provinces of Central Vietnam, and finally the rest of my aunts and uncles, including my father, were born in Ho Chi Minh City, then called Saigon.

The family photo that I am looking at today was taken in 1969, the exact date unknown. This was taken close to the end of the Vietnam War, which was in 1975. In the photo a family of ten are photographed with two adults and eight children age ranged from twenty down to two. Taken in a photo studio, the adults are dressed formally. This photograph, along with another few, would be the last few that they would take before the war ended and my grandfather would become a prisoner of war for six years from the end of the war to 1981 as recounted by my father. It was not until January 1994 that they would be allowed to leave Vietnam to come to California. The agreement between the Vietnamese government and The U.S. government had allowed for the releasing of Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the Southern Vietnamese army, servicemen and their families to America. This family photo also be the last time that the whole family is photographed or physically gathered together as my grandfather could only bring half of his family over to America. He chose to bring his wife and five of his younger children. He would spend the rest of his life bringing the rest of his children over slowly by himself. His wife, my grandmother, would passed away in 1996, the same year I was born, and he would go on to support his children and eventually reuniting his whole family in 2010.

The family portrait was a symbol of hope for my grandfather to continue to support his children and bring his lifelong dream of reuniting his family once again. It would take him 20 years after his wife’s death and 22 years after leaving Saigon to reunite and help situate his children in San Diego.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/14/us/old-soldiers-the-last-refugees-free-to-leave-vietnam.html?pagewanted=all

17 year flood of Vietnamese refugees to USA

High ranking officials > boat people > remaining servicemen or people connected to United States army during the War

1990 agreement allowed more than 50,000 former prisoners and family to come to USA (mostly Southern California)

Little Saigon in Santa Ana

Release program brings Vietnamese population to over a million

Disconnect between those who arrived earlier (in 1975) vs later (in 1990s)

Remaining immigrants would be those who are waiting to reunite with family members currently in the USA

Those who had stayed suffered through Communist internment camps