A ball-tossing ritual, a version of the courtship game played at traditional New Year gatherings, opens the weekend celebration. Bentonville.
While many Hmong families came to the Ozarks to raise chickens in industrial chicken houses, they hate the taste of supermarket meats. Hmong farms with commercial poultry houses keep free-range birds for the family dinner table. Westville, Oklahoma.
Shana Yang, left, and her sister-in-law Pang Lee assess leftovers after the meal. They and other women prepared the food for a community of about 20 families. It wasn’t too much work, Pang said, in typical Hmong understatement, and included butchering six ducks, six chickens, and a steer. Westville.
A Hmong swidden farmer in Laos clears forest for farmland. Traditional slash-and-burn practices that give time for soil to rest are more sustainable than they appear. Xieng Khouang Province, Laos.
A troupe of dancers practices before taking the stage. They won the dance competition in Tulsa. Minor controversy has attended the dance portion’s inclusion in New Year festivals; the dance is borrowed from ethnic Lao and is not traditionally Hmong. Bentonville.
Festival-goers pose for pictures inside a replica of a traditional home. Hanging inside is a photo of the Hmong general leading troops during the Vietnam War, Vang Pao, a person who has reached Messianic status. Inola, Oklahoma.
Mr. Hmong Arkansas 2017, Tou Choua Thao, helps direct this year’s competition. Few young people compete in the rural pageants, which are popular in Fresno and St. Paul. In 2016 contestants were so sparse that Tou drove in from St. Paul to compete. The following year, not enough men participated in order to hold a Mr. Hmong pageant. Siloam Springs.
Shamanist Hmong believe that each person has several souls. Vab’s husband, Wa Lee, conducts a soul-calling before the family’s New Year dinner, chanting for the souls of each person in the home to return to the body of their owner. He holds a split cow horn to help him divine the directions in which to call. Siloam Springs.
Charles Yang relaxes on a hay bale under a stand of edible bamboo before the New Year chicken ceremony. Westville.
A community elder lwm sub [conducts chicken ceremony], twirling a chicken as members of the community pass through an improvised gate traditionally made of tree branches. Practitioners of Hmong shamanistic ways consider chickens to have special sensibilities due to their keen attunement to circadian rhythms. Westville.
Community members pass through a ceremonial gate, circling in the direction of the sunset to release events of the previous 12 months, and turning in the other direction to make themselves ready for the coming new year. Westville.