"GREENS" Hmong Gardens, Farms and Land Ownership in America:
Constructing Environment and Identity in the Carolinas

By: Elizabeth Sheehan
Anthropology Department, University of Connecticut

Two thousand Hmong currently live spread throughout rural counties in North and South Carolina. They own 10 to 200 acre farms, some held by individual families and some owned in common by extended family groups of upto ten. Despite extreme conditions of cultural change, persisting animistic beliefs about the vitality of the natural world and its relationship to human life shape the decisions these land-owning families make with regard to their land. With sound historical reason and logic, some anthropological and cultural geography theorists eschew emphasis on the physical environment as naive determinism.

However, the retention of aspects of a Southeast Asian swidden agricultural system associated with persisting spiritual beliefs in the Carolinas reveals that underlying values result in natural resource conservation. These practices persist because the Hmong use long-term, historical (generalised by some as a concept of nostalgia "kho siab", pronounced "khor shea") and future perspectives to make agrarian and economic decisions. Beliefs about place, land, plants, animals and diet motivate and influence choices to garden, and determine which agricultural methods are used. resource conservation practices employed on Hmong-owned properties follow as an outcome of persisting traditional Hmong ideologies.

Limits in the social environment, such as expensive land, the lack of on- farm employment and the daily "get-ahead" ethos of the American economy, constrain the literal replication of Hmong agrarian life in the Carolinas. Certainly, my respondents view agriculture as a pragmatic economic response to the demands of American social and economic life (for example, "if we garden, we can always have fresh food and can save money"). Economics, however, does not suffice as an explanation for these particular agricultural and land-owning activities. Although land purchases may be economically constrained and activities confined to weekends by the demands of full-time wage labor, Hmong gardens in the Carolinas flourish. Even when spiritually significant land is economically prohibitive, Hmong owned properties often contain or are adjacent to landscapes that have spiritual, aesthetic and/or nostalgic significance.

There are physical constraints to the full reproduction of Hmong agrarian life in the United States as well. Bennett (1969) articulates some of the specific constraints of Saskatchewan topography and climate which influenced the development of an agrarian identity for four distinct cultures. His work informs my analysis of the influence of the physical environment on Hmong cultural reconstruction. Just as climatic factors constrained Hutterite farms, they have limited the size and species found in Hmong gardens in northern American cities, and permitted their expansion further South.

Independent secondary resettlement to warmer, safer and more economically viable rural regions of the United States, such as North and South Carolina, has occurred in part because the landscape physically resembles Hmong visions of home (Feild Notes 1993: 314, 345, 438). The environment 's power to inspire human life in its presence as an actor is illustrated in the story of the urban-space clan leader who travelled the United States in the 1980's looking for a resettlement site. He was on a vision quest. His visual memories of Laos guided his identification of western North Carolina as the right place for the Hmong. Ironically, local residents have confirmed his and other Hmong individuals' observation that this area visually resembles mountainous Southeast Asia. They comment that the United States Air Force used this same area for flight practice during the Viet Nam War because its atmospheric conditions closely mimicked those of the mountains in Southeast Asia (Field Notes 1992,1993. Sherman 1988).

In the spring of 1993, an extended family deliberately sited their uncle's grave in a back woodlot on their 200 acre farm in the Piedmont foothills according to geomantic principles. Although they are prominent members of a Hmong-organized Christian church, senior men in the family, in accordance with the wishes of their elder relative, aligned the grave with a series of intersecting hills on and surrounding the property. It is sited such that two hills bow at the ancestors' feet and a third, lying far behind his head, offers a flat plateau for his spirit's dining table. Here, land form size, shape and directionality mediate for the spiritual and physical survival of a Hmong clan in a difficult social environment.

On another large Hmong-owned farm in North Carolina, a wooden bench has been set beside a stream bed that overlooks a natural grotto. Intricately shaped tree roots form complex patterns in the side of the grottos' red clay walls. That this place has been selected for rest and contemplation suggests that family members recognize this land forms' aesthetic and spiritual qualities.

In a suburban backyard in the same region, older people have constructed a spirit altar on a pole overlooking a garden and medicinal greenhouse. It has been made from a commercially manufactured plastic doll house and is covered by a conical tin roof. This animistic shrine points to a direct spiritual connections between land, gardens and human well-being and the persistence of animistic practices in my study area.

Land-owning permits extensive gardening among other activities such as home building and small economic ventures. In North and South Carolina, gardens, featuring Southeast Asian plants that are created primarily with Asian agricultural methods and technologies,recreate Hmong "home gardens". In shaping their land, the Hmong imitate, within climatic constraints, a Southeast Asian upland garden. Most gardens are composed solely of Southeast Asian species, including a few American cultigens that have been grown in Asia for 400 years, but a few also feature some "American" plants.

Hmong gardens in the Carolinas retain some of the ecologically sustainable characteristics of Asian upland horticulture, such as a broad diversity of plants,non-linear mixed variety layouts, interplanted nutrient and seasonally complementary species and the use of organic fertilizers such as animal manures, vegetable composts, and ash (1). Gardens included in my research sample are not exclusively organic (2), however, they are primarily so. Most Hmong gardeners in the Carolinas use manual swidden technologies such as digging sticks and home-made machetes for planting and harvesting. Although some gardens are panted in mechanized rows (especially large rice and corn fields), most are hand planted in mixed beds .

There are several gardens that exemplify how sustainable swidden practices have been retained. In a former South Carolina orchard, burnt peach stumps form the substratum of a circular vegetable garden. Their presence and a respondent's explanation that his grandmother"told us to do it this way" are evidence for the persistence of burning as a clearing technology and the use of ash fertilizer. This example also indicate the mode of this trait's transmission. Bone and ash fertilizer individual herbs in a medicinal greenhouse in North Carolina while several gardens retain burnt and unburnt tree stumps cut in the clearing process. Dried and fresh vegetable compost is often thrown directly onto gardens soil as an additional fertilizer. In many gardens, dried plant material is used as water_conserving around the roots of individual plants. Raised beds that conserve space, soil and water are other indicators of the persistence of a labor intensive ecologically sustainable agriculture that continues beyond economic necessity and outside of its cultural domain.

Given these organic features, is Hmong horticulture in the Carolinas essentially ecologically sustainable? Accounts of Hmong agriculture and its impact on Southeast Asian ecosystems are in opposition. Kundstadter (1988) and Cooper (1984), among others, find Hmong swiddening practices themselves inherently destructive. Tapp (1986), the only one to discuss values in Hmong agriculture, disagrees, citing long-term fallowing practices as evidence that agrarian values produce "care for the environment. "He refers to development pressure such as increase in the lowland population and government forestry as responsible for environmental degradation in the Thai uplands. Although Hmong gardens in the Carolinas are not fallowed for significant periods, as swiddens are, their retention of many of the other sustainable characteristics of swidden horticulture suggests that they, too are ecologically beneficial.

Some ethnohistorians find characterizations of people as influenced conservationists to be romanticizations (Cronon and White 1988). They interpret human behaviour towards the natural environment as a biological and a social construct, built on diverse and physical environments. Rather than being derived from an environmental ideology conversation, in their view, results from meeting immediate physical and social needs. William Cronon's finding on Native American perspectives on land as a subsistence resource and the English one of land as a commodity in colonial New England supports this pragmatic position. While acknowledging the cultural difference in "environmental world views", Cronon's perspective, applied to my study suggests that present_day Hmong in America garden from economical need. My finding indicate that while the Hmong are reacting to immediate social and economic pressures, persisting ideologies concerning longevity strongly influence why they continue to use sustainable practices derived from traditional swidden horticulture when they have the economic means to adopt industrialized methods.

What does the persistence of sustainable agriculture methods, gardening and land owning of the Hmong in the Carolinas contribute towards an understanding of Hmong life in the United States? My research that deep issues of identity and self-definition permeates about the meaning and purpose of agriculture. Hmong agrarian culture, which includes a "land ethic" (Leopold 1949) in its ideology, is a part of an identity constructed in response to new American ecological, economic, religious and secular value systems. My respondents convey a desire for concealment from American society following threats to Hmong ethnic identify and cultural survival both in the present and in recent war and refugee experiences (Tanguay, pers. comm. Field Notes pp. 303 and 319). In a rural suburb of South Carolina, one respondent told me that he moved his children's volleyball court into a back field "to avoid drive-by shootings". Although many other Americans are increasingly concerned about random violence, this decision reflects a more extreme protective sensitivity. Beyond the evidence found in many personal statements of fear, some of my respondents' homes are secluded within their property. Curtains are frequently drawn. Cultural domination intensifies a belief that some hold that they are spiritually and physically at risk. Personal and cultural annihilation is perceived present in the surrounding American social and physical environment.

Intensive use of "green medicine" -medicinal herbs, their preservation in newly adopted greenhouses, and frequent consultation with Hmong and American healers and religious are some indicators of the prevalence of fear within this Hmong community. Hmong in the United States connect fresh food with physical and spiritual well-being, with maintaining a healthful identify. If one is home, eating made food, then one is securely Hmong even in the context of American society. Purchasing land salvages and perpetuates Hmong culture by reunifying kin in a common social space such as they can re-invent traditionalist that offer protection from American culture. Traditional agriculture in this setting represents a reconstitution of Hmong cultural identify. Hmong gardeners conserve culture by protecting a horticultural continuity into an unfamiliar social and physical environment.

Gardens appear to be a dogged attempt by Hmong refugees immersed in America culture to resist cultural extinction. My research indicates that Hmong identity defined in juxtaposition to American culture. One Hmong gardener described their planting methods as "unorganized" and "lazy" compared to Americans. Against what he perceived to be my American standard, Hmong farming methods were described as ineffectual. His interpretation of Hmong ways in light of American technology conveyed a humorous, slightly distinction.

Hmong culture appears to have a rigid "backbone". Structural boundaries and internal cohesion are maintained while "Americanizing". Most Hmong who live in the Carolinas have had experience living in urban centers in the Northeast, Mid-west or in California. As they move to states with small or non-existent refugee populations, their identity is contested from without. Entrenched racial discord coupled with economic in the rural American South puts the Hmong in a precarious position. They have found available land in peripheral rural areas. Industrial development threatens their newly purchased farms since these lightly populated areas have earmarked for industrial and residential expansion. Although economic in the South are favourable than other regions to the Hmong , religious, cultural and racial tolerance is not, This result is an ever flourishing but hidden Hmong traditionalism. Farming may be that segment of the pre-existing cultural system selected for a concentrated release from the pressure of contact (Bee 1974). I argue for the persistence of an agrarian culture that in its "everyday forms of peasant resistance"(Scott 1985) seeks to replicate its former physical environment as a hedge against domination. Horticultural methods and land purchases result from persisting spiritual practices meant to ensure health, economic security and longevity.

To explicate how these traditional agricultural values and practices function to secure identity, I situate my respondents' em,ic replies within theories of cultural change. Those that explain persistence seem most appropriate to my research. The acculturation models advanced by Spicer (1961) and Champagne (1989) apply well to what I have observed of Hmong responses to American society. While cultural change in the Hmong community in the Carolinas seems to involve some replacement of Hmong traditions by "American" practices, agriculture is compartmentalized.

Champagne's analysis of acculturation in Native American groups broadens my explanation of Hmong cultural resistance to American domination as it is manifest in a "home gardening" identity. He interprets Native American self-determination as organised resistance to colonialism. However, my findings reveal that Hmong resistance occurs not as an organised political activity but more in the form of "every day acts of resistance: (Scott, 1985). The Hmong response has been non- integration and isolation of American cultural characteristics and selective incorporation of modern agricultural technologies (Spicer, 1961).

Garden activities are differentiated by gender. Men contribute their wages and labor to gardens and farms, negotiating with the external social environment to finance them. They garden, innovating with new agricultural technologies and incorporating those that fit pre-existing Hmong horticultural techniques. For example, men rent gasoline-powered rototillers for late summer plowing. Women maintain garden culture. They serve as cultural conservators who labor daily in the gardens and kitchens. Women introduce their children to plants that define the Hmong palate and pharmacoepia. As they process garden-grown herbs and foods, Hmong women convert the physical environment into a meaning-laden society. Beliefs about prosperity, health and generational continuity from food are translated by women through their working of a garden. Just as Symonds (1991) points to the pivotal role and subsequent status derived from the cyclical Hmong cosmology, I would like to suggest an analogy in the agricultural sector. Garden produce is used in extensive food rituals from new American-style birthday parties for children and Thanksgiving dinners to large American-adapted Hmong clan gatherings. Women are responsible for physical well-being and regeneration in Hmong culture. Their work enacts cultural definition.

Most Hmong women with access to even a small yard in North and South Carolina harvest food daily for their families fresh from the garden. Over half the women I met in the summer of 1992 were garden cultivators. They averaged 52 years old in age, ranging from 25 to 70. Most were married and over 45. In North and South Carolinas, the several women gardeners who maintain greenhouses in medicinal herbs are, on average, 54 years old. Most of these herbs are perennials brought as cuttings in rolled-up shirt sleeves from Southeast Asia. Although greenhouses were probably constructed by men, they are considered women's domain. Potted plants also line many suburban and urban yards, and the porches of "green medicine women". Potting is a variant of greenhouse adaptation. It allows for seasonal mobility and, especially important for perennial plants, it is the mechanism for propagation (Robertson, pers. comm.).

Plant healers, known as "green medicine women", have considerable reputation in the community. My respondents report that these women can afford herbal cares and that their efficacity is spirit dependent. They are said to withhold passing on complete identification and combinations of herbal medicines to younger people, in effect maintaining their power. The community's health is seen as dependent on "green medicine women" with claims such as "we were never sick in Laos... now Western doctors are very interested in green medicine".

Although men and women grow annual food plants together, much of the Hmong diet and especially pharmacoepia are, as perennials, in the domain of women. Through their roles as nurturers of children and living matter, they ensure the culture's continuity. Understanding women's activities, their beliefs and self-perceptions is crucial to predicting the longevity of Hmong agriculture in the United States. Will young women garden and cook only with fresh ingredients and/or become "green medicine women"? Several of my respondents indicate a desire to perpetuate their mothers' garden if on a smaller scale and with American adaptations. One young mother of three would have herbs "to be healthy" in her garden while a medical school graduate wants a flower garden with Hmong herbs in her backyard. In the next twenty years, many members of this community will make decisions about the further use of their family land. Whether gardens are included will be an important indicator of persistence and change in Hmong cultural identity.

Do the Hmong living in the Carolinas and throughout the world have an inherently "ecological" or holistic world view that mediates their relationship with their natural environment? Are they aware of the finiteness of natural resources? If so, are they then "ecologically noble savages" who have developed "... ethical restraints in relationship to non- human nature" (Cronon and White, 1988)? Do they, like some Native Americans, believe that their actions facilitate and perpetuate natural cycles? Do they operate from a "source of environmental values and choices" which shapes their treatment of land (Callicott, 1982; and Booth and Jacobs, 1990)? Are there social rules or restraints that govern Hmong agricultural behaviour and their relations with the natural world as manifested in agriculture? Do the Hmong in the United States operate as "resource consumers" rather than "conservative and self-renewing" of the rainforest, as Kunstadter (1988) found with the Hmong in Thailand? Does establishing gardens and land-based ethnic enclaves constitute an Asian- American "Arcadia" for the Hmong?

Many of these questions await further research. However, my findings indicate that Hmong landowners in the Carolinas have a persisting world view that significantly influences their treatment of the natural environment. It informs their decisions about land purchases, the siting of buildings within a property and the type of agricultural technologies they retain. Their relationships with "non-human" nature are governed by their beliefs about relationships between themselves as human beings and the cosmos. For the Hmong in the Carolinas, the natural environment is to be perpetuated via land owning and agrarian activities because it is the foundation of human longevity, literally in the foods grown on the land and spiritually from within and in the surrounding land forms. Their agrarian practices serve to conserve natural resources because in doing so human life is conserved. Soil and water resources benefit directly through frugal Hmong gardening practices while the use of hand technologies prevents soil erosion. While the Hmong do not seem to directly seek the conservation of natural ecosystems, their choice of horticultural system replicates the biological characteristics and dynamics of a natural ecosystem as nearly as any human-made system can. Hmong cultural values and their resistance to domination result in the replication of a horticulture that is ecologically as well as socially beneficial.

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