The Hmong first arrived in Australia in 1975 from war-torn Laos,
settling in Australia as a small population of under 2,000. In
Australia, as in other resettlement countries, the Hmong have been
active in founding local and national associations, and there is
alarm about the younger generation's loss of traditional
cultural heritage. The Australian Hmong is a small community, but a
dynamic and rapidly changing one. This collection of
interdisciplinary papers-ranging across anthropology and
linguistics, musicology, material culture, gender issues and
sociology-gives the general reader an introduction to this
fascinating and relatively unknown community as well as an
understanding of the wide range of issues that research on the
Hmong in Australia has covered to date. Both editors have extensive
experience of Hmong populations in Asia and bring this experience
to bear on a project that deals solely with the Hmong in an
Australian context. The contributors to the book represent
virtually all the serious researchers who have devoted their
attentions to the Hmong in Australia.
