With a population of 46,352, Minnesota is home to the second-largest Hmong community in the United States (California is the first). Hmong refugees relocated here after fighting on the same side as the United States in the Vietnam war. This embroidered storycloth traces the Hmong’s flight from Laos to refugee camps in Thailand and finally to USA.

This storycloth highlights SMM’s Hmong collection, one of the largest assemblages of Hmong material culture outside of Southeast Asia. In the 1990s, Museum curators worked with Hmong culture specialists in building a collection that tracked the Hmong odyssey. SMM connected to the Hmong community through exhibitions and programs, the capstone event was building an entire Hmong house (seen on level 4).
- Tilly Laskey, Curator of Ethnology