ANTH 1100 A13, Spring 2022

STUDY GUIDE FOR VIDEO: “Between Two Worlds: The Hmong Shaman in America”
27 min. 1985. Directed and Co-produced by Taggart Siegel. Narrated and Co-produced by
Dwight Conquergood, Department of Performance Studies, Northwestern University, Chicago.
(Available on YouTube in 3 parts)

Background: The HMONG are a large, diverse ethnic group who historically lived in the
mountainous regions of Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Burma in South-east Asia. In southern
China, Hmong are considered a sub-group of the Miao. During the Vietnam War (ended in
1975), Hmong people were recruited by the CIA of the US to fight communist groups in Laos. As
a result, Hmong were subsequently singled out for retribution by their own governments. Tens
of thousands of Hmong people fled to Thailand seeking political asylum. Since the late 1970s,
hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees have resettled primarily in the US, but also in
Australia, France, French Guyana, Canada and Argentina.

Related Book: Anne Fadiman. 2012 [1997]. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong
Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Two Cultures. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux.

What to Look for in this presentation of Hmong life and religious practice in Chicago’s Uptown
neighbourhood and Milwaukee:

a) shamanism
- as healing practice
- as an expression of religious beliefs

b) Hmong ethnomedicine

c) relationship of health and religion

d) migration and cultural change

e) Christian missionization

f) contrast between Christianity and Hmong religion

g) anthropological perspectives on healing and religion

Here is the text of the prayer that appears on screen at end of video:
When you feed the spirits of your mother and your father, grandfather and grandmother, you
say: “Come to defend, come to protect, close the mouths, stop the tongues of the evil spirits.
Don’t allow them to take hold of anyone. Come to us, shelter us from sickness. You come to
eat. Protect us from blows of falling vines in the jungle. Defend us from the snake and frog and
black magic. Come and protect the music of the pipes and the gong. Come and protect my
family, nine or five people. Help them live in peace and a long life. Bring us abundant harvests
and a rich life. When I have food I will call you to eat. When I have wine I will call you to drink.
I will invite you to join everybody in eat and drink.” This is the way of calling and feeding the
ancestors.

How does the video illustrate the following concepts?

shaman
ethnomedicine
medical pluralism
culture-specific syndrome
Hmong Sudden Death Syndrome (“sleeping death” or “nightmare death”)