Tuesday, January 9, 2007
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
P-I COLUMNIST
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Wash., USA)
The news hit the Cambodian community in the heart.
One of its own, a teenage student, was shot dead in a public high school.
The bullet stole the life of 17-year-old Samnang Kok last week in Tacoma.
But its impact rippled through Western Washington, all the way to Seattle's White Center neighborhood, where Dara Duong fights to save local Cambodian Americans from a spiral of violence, crime, despair and cultural disconnect.
He uses unexpected weapons: a tape recorder and pen.
"It is sad for those kids who do not know their history," Duong said last week, reflecting on Wednesday's fatal shooting. A young man of Southeast Asian heritage is the suspected gunman. "When you know about who you are, you get a sense of pride."
We've heard variations on this similar theme. Such self-knowledge can inspire self-respect that builds on cultural or family values, and fosters a deeper appreciation for life.
When I caught up with Duong, 36, founder of the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, he was expecting a visitor -- Soravuth Srey, the president of Seattle's Khmer Buddhist Society, which has two Seattle temples. Srey was adding to the oral history collection of the museum on 16th Avenue Southwest.
Duong's sense of duty arises out of brutal personal experience. He survived the bloodletting that dictator Pol Pot and the communist Khmer Rouge guerillas unleashed on Cambodia, in the mid- to late '70s, a scourge that claimed between 1.5 million and 3 million lives.
Five members of Duong's family, including his father, didn't survive.
For a decade, Duong lived in refugee camps along the Cambodian and Thai border before resettling in the United States in 1999.
Today, Duong seeks out survivors' stories to remind future generations about the fruits of hate. He also wants children of Cambodian immigrants to know their ancestral homeland has a rich and storied history and culture beyond genocide.
Such efforts take on significance against the backdrop of the Tacoma shooting and the back stories of Cambodian refugee resettlements in "Khmerican" hubs such as Long Beach, Calif., and Seattle and Tacoma.
Western Washington is home to most of the state's estimated 20,000-plus Cambodians.
Outside of efforts by U.S. church groups and voluntary agencies, the refugees -- about 150,000 Cambodians came after 1980 -- received welfare benefits, and little else.
Lavinia Limon, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, told The New York Times Magazine, in a 2003 story that touched on Seattle, that the Cambodian refugee program in the U.S. was a "failure."
"Mistake No. 1 was that we didn't treat the Cambodians as different," Limon said. "The scope and breadth and depth of what they endured -- the only thing you can compare it to was the Jewish Holocaust. What they went through is not something you bounce back from without a lot of tailored and targeted and expensive help."
Duong agrees that the Cambodian community faces lingering woes, including post-traumatic stress.
Some of the problems other immigrant groups have faced: language barriers; a scramble for money; a generational chasm between Americanized youths and their less Americanized parents; even jousting cultural rules.
In Cambodia, for example, parents discipline their kids with corporal punishment. In America, kids can call 911 if their parents touch them. This makes child rearing even harder for Cambodian families and makes those youths more susceptible to gangs.
Deep, indelible scars from the Cambodian genocide pose an even greater challenge.
Duong has spoken at schools where Cambodian kids are so embarrassed they claim to be Filipino or Korean.
He also recalled a Cambodian man who showed up at the museum, boasting about having a concealed gun and a Khmer Rouge uniform back at home. The man even said he encouraged his son to carry a gun.
Duong could only shake his head: Didn't he realize he was no longer in 1970s Cambodia?
"We could use more support from the city, county or state governments -- the policymakers," Duong sighed. "We don't want to feel left out."
The Cambodian community, he adds, also must play a part.
"If young Cambodians don't know their story, about why their parents came here, the struggle they went through in refugee camps, about their legacy, they can't appreciate (their richness)," Duong said.
A museum will not stop violence. But a dose of history might make some young people think before they act out in violent ways.
By ROBERT L. JAMIESON Jr.
P-I COLUMNIST
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (Seattle, Wash., USA)
The news hit the Cambodian community in the heart.
One of its own, a teenage student, was shot dead in a public high school.
The bullet stole the life of 17-year-old Samnang Kok last week in Tacoma.
But its impact rippled through Western Washington, all the way to Seattle's White Center neighborhood, where Dara Duong fights to save local Cambodian Americans from a spiral of violence, crime, despair and cultural disconnect.
He uses unexpected weapons: a tape recorder and pen.
"It is sad for those kids who do not know their history," Duong said last week, reflecting on Wednesday's fatal shooting. A young man of Southeast Asian heritage is the suspected gunman. "When you know about who you are, you get a sense of pride."
We've heard variations on this similar theme. Such self-knowledge can inspire self-respect that builds on cultural or family values, and fosters a deeper appreciation for life.
When I caught up with Duong, 36, founder of the Cambodian Cultural Museum and Killing Fields Memorial, he was expecting a visitor -- Soravuth Srey, the president of Seattle's Khmer Buddhist Society, which has two Seattle temples. Srey was adding to the oral history collection of the museum on 16th Avenue Southwest.
Duong's sense of duty arises out of brutal personal experience. He survived the bloodletting that dictator Pol Pot and the communist Khmer Rouge guerillas unleashed on Cambodia, in the mid- to late '70s, a scourge that claimed between 1.5 million and 3 million lives.
Five members of Duong's family, including his father, didn't survive.
For a decade, Duong lived in refugee camps along the Cambodian and Thai border before resettling in the United States in 1999.
Today, Duong seeks out survivors' stories to remind future generations about the fruits of hate. He also wants children of Cambodian immigrants to know their ancestral homeland has a rich and storied history and culture beyond genocide.
Such efforts take on significance against the backdrop of the Tacoma shooting and the back stories of Cambodian refugee resettlements in "Khmerican" hubs such as Long Beach, Calif., and Seattle and Tacoma.
Western Washington is home to most of the state's estimated 20,000-plus Cambodians.
Outside of efforts by U.S. church groups and voluntary agencies, the refugees -- about 150,000 Cambodians came after 1980 -- received welfare benefits, and little else.
Lavinia Limon, executive director of the U.S. Committee for Refugees, told The New York Times Magazine, in a 2003 story that touched on Seattle, that the Cambodian refugee program in the U.S. was a "failure."
"Mistake No. 1 was that we didn't treat the Cambodians as different," Limon said. "The scope and breadth and depth of what they endured -- the only thing you can compare it to was the Jewish Holocaust. What they went through is not something you bounce back from without a lot of tailored and targeted and expensive help."
Duong agrees that the Cambodian community faces lingering woes, including post-traumatic stress.
Some of the problems other immigrant groups have faced: language barriers; a scramble for money; a generational chasm between Americanized youths and their less Americanized parents; even jousting cultural rules.
In Cambodia, for example, parents discipline their kids with corporal punishment. In America, kids can call 911 if their parents touch them. This makes child rearing even harder for Cambodian families and makes those youths more susceptible to gangs.
Deep, indelible scars from the Cambodian genocide pose an even greater challenge.
Duong has spoken at schools where Cambodian kids are so embarrassed they claim to be Filipino or Korean.
He also recalled a Cambodian man who showed up at the museum, boasting about having a concealed gun and a Khmer Rouge uniform back at home. The man even said he encouraged his son to carry a gun.
Duong could only shake his head: Didn't he realize he was no longer in 1970s Cambodia?
"We could use more support from the city, county or state governments -- the policymakers," Duong sighed. "We don't want to feel left out."
The Cambodian community, he adds, also must play a part.
"If young Cambodians don't know their story, about why their parents came here, the struggle they went through in refugee camps, about their legacy, they can't appreciate (their richness)," Duong said.
A museum will not stop violence. But a dose of history might make some young people think before they act out in violent ways.
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