Traditionally transnational: Cultural continuity and change in Hmong shamanism across the diaspora

The local and transnational practice of Hmong shamanism in Laos

When I conducted fieldwork in Hmong communities in central Laos, I frequently observed two distinct types of shamanistic spirit-calling rituals, one for local Hmong villagers and another for Hmong living in the United States. The most memorable of the first type of healing rituals for local villagers was conducted by the oldest and most respected shaman for a family whose mother had been ill and weak for a while. On the day of the ritual, I rushed up the hill to arrive at the Hmong community early in order to help the villagers prepare for the big community event. Joua ¹ , the elderly shaman, was sitting on a small, old wooden chair in the middle of the family’s dark house in his black dress and non-transparent veil, as he waited with two rattling bells in his hands. Outside many people were busy running around preparing for a feast. They were trying to build a fire, pouring water into a big pot, checking other pots that contained rice and pork soup, and placing tons of thick wooden chopping boards and knives collected from different households on a large plastic mat on the ground.

I saw a number of people I did not recognize, who must have been family members and relatives that gathered from different places, ranging from nearby villages to as far away as the northern part of Laos. The whole ceremony required sacrificing two full-size cows and a number of chickens and pigs in order to make sure the ancestors’ deceased souls are fully fed when they visit and join the feast. A choice cut of meat was also to be given to the shaman in return for his ritual services. Certainly, the large gathering and feast was expensive for the family members. But as I was repeatedly told, this was a way for them ‘to share food and reaffirm their communal bond and sincere respect for the ancestors of the entire family’s clan.’

The social activity and excitement outside the house were a dramatic contrast to the shaman’s world inside the home, which was serene and rather peaceful. Soon, I noticed that the shaman’s ritual began. He started to raise his voice slowly but powerfully as he rattled his bells to summon the spirits of the ancestors. Both his high-pitched voice and the loud clattering of his bells flowed out of the half-open door and mixed-in with the hustle and bustle of the participants outside, who continued to prepare for the feast. The spiritual ritual provided a lot of emotional comfort for the family and gave them hope that the mother would be cured.

Two months after this soul-calling ritual, I ran into the shaman, Joua, again on my way to interview one of the Hmong residents in the village. He was under a tree on the side of the village road and was about to complete a spiritual ritual. Unlike the previous ritual, which was for a local Hmong family, this time, he was conducting a transnational spirit-calling ritual for his six-year-old granddaughter born and living in California, whom he had never met before. His daughter and relatives in the United States had told him that his granddaughter had fallen onto the floor and was injured and requested that he conduct a ritual for her remotely from Laos. He had already conducted the healing ritual for her, and now that she was recovered, he was conducting another one, this time to thank the ancestral spirits. For both of these rituals, there had been no community gathering or feast. Instead, Joua was by himself, chanting in a low voice, spreading rice wine around the corner of the tree, and distributing cooked rice, pieces of boiled chicken, and two cooked eggs to feed the souls of the ancestors. After he was done, I asked whether such an individualized ritual in Laos would be able to bridge the souls of the living in the US and those of the ancestors in the spirit world, despite the geographical distance across national borders. He responded right away. ‘Of course, my ua neeb worked very well,’ he claimed. ‘Living in a distant land or a foreign country does not matter at all! It’s the same thing.’ In a calm manner but with confidence, the shaman slowly walked down to his home with a tiny glass, two split buffalo horns, and a few half-burnt incense sticks.

This was one of many transnational spiritual rituals I observed in Laos, which were private, small-scale, and informal, and had been developed to accommodate the needs of the shamans’ families, clan members, and close friends residing in the US and elsewhere. They often took place on the side of a road, in a corner of a house, under a tree, or in the middle of a hill. Despite the substantial geographic separation between the two countries, Hmong believe that the shaman’s healing power remains effective transnationally.

Situating shamanism transnationally across national borders

In Hmong terms, ua neeb refers to both shamans and the ‘spirit/soul calling’ healing rituals conducted by them.² Ua neeb is a frequently practiced cultural and religious activity that has not only become an integral part of Hmong life in local contexts and communities, but also their transnational religious, medical, and cultural lives in the diaspora. The Hmong have a long history of diasporic dispersal since the 17th century that scholars claim began in southwest China (Jenks, 1994; Entenmann, 2005; Hillmer, 2010; Lee, 2007; Tapp, 1998). In response to ethnic conflicts and persecution, they migrated to various countries in Southeast Asia, including Laos, where they have been living for centuries. During the Vietnam War, many Hmong were involved in and fought for both sides of the local military insurgency. While there were Hmong individuals who fought for the Pathet Lao (Communist government), those who were recruited to participate in an anti-communist alliance with the US Central Intelligence Agency were forced to flee the country after the war and placed in temporary refugee camps in Thailand. They eventually migrated to various Western countries, including the United States, as resettled refugees.

As Hmong dispersed from Southeast Asia to various Western countries, their spiritual rituals and shamanistic practices have also become highly transnational. In this paper, I examine the ways in which Hmong shamanism has spread across the diaspora while being simultaneously transformed in local contexts by focusing on Hmong communities in Laos and the United States. Hmong shamans are present in both countries as well as other parts of the Hmong diaspora and conduct various spiritual rituals for the local clients in each country. In addition, Hmong shamans provide their services transnationally for family members and relatives in other countries across national borders.

This demonstrates how localized religious practices, such as Hmong shamanistic rituals, are not territorially bound or restricted to a specific locality, but have effectively traveled across national borders to various countries while being transformed in the process. Shamanistic rituals have become transnationalized because of Hmong cultural understandings about the birth of shamans and the mobile nature of souls, as well as extensive transnational kin networks and social relations. In short, the diasporic dispersal of Hmong has not led to an erosion or loss of their shamanistic rituals.

At the same time, it is important to note that when shamanism and spiritual healing rituals are practiced transnationally in this manner, there are a number of important changes that emerge in comparison to locally performed rituals and services. As shown by the ethnographic vignettes at the beginning of the paper, most spiritual rituals, especially ua neeb, are a collective group activity that involves a large gathering and sharing of food among family, relatives, and clan members. In contrast, when shamanism is transnationalized between two nation-states, it becomes individualized and also commodified, indicating how practices that are considered ‘traditional’ are subject to constant modification in transnational contexts. Despite undergoing such changes, in migratory contexts, Hmong shamanism has remained resilient because the shaman’s healing power is not seen as incompatible or in conflict with Western biomedical practices and Christianity, and can also be effectively practiced with ethnic others.

The personal accounts and narratives in this paper are from my long-term engagement with Hmong communities since 2003, when I first visited and developed relationships with Hmong in central Laos while working as an undergraduate student volunteer. Many of the Hmong families in Laos had other family members who had migrated to the US as refugees and they have maintained active social interactions across national borders. A few of my Hmong contacts in Laos also immigrated and resettled in Sacramento, California, mainly through marriage migration, whom I also visited and stayed with multiple times since 2008. I subsequently visited the families and relatives of Lao Hmong families residing in California as a transnational ‘messenger’ who delivered news and photos from their old home and village.

I returned to the Hmong communities in both Laos and the US for my doctoral fieldwork that lasted for 14 months and conducted a total of 111 interviews (48 in central Laos and 63 in California) with Hmong individuals of different ages, genders, and generational status and did extensive participant observation in both communities. During these series of visits in both countries, shamanistic spiritual rituals were a very frequent event. I not only observed numerous small scale and large group gatherings for these rituals in each country, but also conducted interviews with Hmong shamans and client families who arranged the rituals across national borders. Discussing the various features of Hmong shamanism was therefore a rather common topic during my interviews.

Religious transnationalism, shamanism, and deterritorialization

There has been a recent increase in studies about religion in transnational communities and its impact on the experiences of immigrants, refugees, and diasporic peoples in the host country. Religion plays a key role in transnational social relationships and is part of the continuity of cultures across national borders (Cadge and Ecklund, 2007; Levitt, 2003: 849; McLoughlin, 2013; Tapp, 2013: 103). Scholars have also examined how resettled refugees convert to mainstream religions such as Christianity, which leads to changes in social and gender relationships (see Ong, 2003; Smith-Hefner, 1994; Winland, 1994), and how changes in religious practices caused by migration also influence cultural behaviors and ethnic identities as well as internal social relations (Vertovec, 2001; Warner and Wittner, 1998).

While these studies of transnational religion focus on the continuing relevance of religions brought from the homeland or newly adopted religions in immigrant communities, they tend to focus on ‘mainstream’ religions such as Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. However, some scholars have also examined the transnational and global dimensions of indigenous and non-mainstream religious systems such as shamanism, which have not been globally institutionalized or based on universalist discourses. As many researchers have pointed out, shamanism should not be seen as locally bounded, territorialized, and particularistic (Atkinson, 1992: 307–8; Boyer and Bergstrom, 2008: 113) but rather encompasses global dimensions. For instance, there have been cases of indigenous shamans in Brazil performing rituals for clients outside their localities, including for those who are part of an international medical network (Langdon, 2013). Shamanism also involves individuals who travel across borders. This includes shamans who travel to the US from abroad and incorporate global music into their trance dance to appeal to a wider audience (Cox, 2003), as well as Westerners who romanticize shamanism and visit the Peruvian Amazon to experience its healing effects (Fotiou, 2016). Local shamanistic knowledge about living harmoniously with nature has also been appropriated by certain members of the global environmentalist movement (Vitebsky, 2003).

Although these studies examine how local shamanism can be engaged with transnational and global forces, they do not always discuss the exact mechanisms that make shamanistic practices effective beyond specific localities and across national borders. This paper attempts to provide explanations for why Hmong shamanism has been able to transcend localities and successfully transnationalize. Research on Vietnamese ancestral worship indicates that the cultural concept of ‘mobile souls’ explains why this religious practice has spread transnationally through the Vietnamese diaspora. Mobile souls are seen to accompany migrants abroad and also freely and frequently travel back to their homeland (Hüwelmeier and Krause, 2010; Van Huy, 2003). In addition, technological devices and social media can also enhance the global distribution of small-scale, ancestral worship practices between the homeland and the Vietnamese diaspora (Hüwelmeier, 2016).

Similar to the Vietnamese case of ancestor worship, the Hmong concept of mobile souls also allows the shaman’s power to be transnationally projected across national borders to Hmong diasporic communities overseas. In addition, Hmong believe that shamans can be born anywhere in the diaspora (and not simply in the ethnic homeland) and conduct spiritual rituals in multiple locations. Hmong shamanism is also sustained across national borders through active transnational social connections, which enable Hmong living in the US to communicate and arrange spiritual rituals and services from shamans in Laos.

The migration and birth of shamans

According to Hmong interviewees, when someone becomes ill, that person’s soul is in trouble and has gotten lost. Since shamans are believed to serve as the medium between the souls of the ancestors and their living descendants, they are able to communicate with the souls of both their clients and their ancestors in order to find the exact causes of the illness and request the assistance and guidance of ancestral spirits to help cure the ailment. Shamans also have multiple roles in people’s ordinary lives as consultants, religious guides, and medical healers and provide assistance for various individual concerns, such as emotional distress, anxiety, financial instability, children’s futures, and family relationships through other smaller scale spiritual rituals.

Kinship networks and family relations as the basis of transnational continuity

Although cultural understandings about shamanistic births and the mobile soul help explain the ability of diasporic Hmong to transnationally maintain shamanistic practices, it is important to remember that religion is not simply constituted by cultural beliefs, but also by social relations. Hmong are able to effectively practice shamanism across borders in the diaspora because they use transnational kinship networks to plan, communicate, and arrange shamanistic and spiritual activities between the United States and Laos. Hmong kinship does not simply consist of biologically related kin (family and relatives), but a broader clan system based on shared surnames and clan exogamy that has remained remarkably resilient in the Hmong diaspora despite migratory dispersal (Lee, 2018). This has been a critical factor that explains the transnational continuity of Hmong shamanism.

Because shamans have migrated to and are born in the US, Hmong in the US can find shamans in their local community to perform spiritual and healing rituals. However, many of them also use transnational kinship networks to request services from shamans in Laos. When US Hmong arranged rituals remotely in this manner, they mostly relied on shamans who were family or relatives in Laos. Hmong in the US who do not have extensive and direct transnational family connections rely on members of their broader clan network in Laos in order to find and consult with a shaman who is a clan member. Hmong people have created contact lists of clan members living in different countries (which are usually posted on their walls, doors, refrigerators, or kept in notebooks) and used them to communicate with clan-based kin who are not part of their immediate family or relatives. This becomes the basis for a transnational clan kinship network across national borders that Hmong can use to obtain information, exchange economic resources, as well as obtain assistance for urgent concerns such as illness. Even clan members who are not biologically related (as part of the family or relatives) are obligated to extend familial hospitality and assistance to other clan members both locally and transnationally across the Hmong diaspora. Because such transnational kinship networks are extensive, there were only a few individuals in the US who found shamans in Laos who were completely outside their clan.

In my research, Hmong in the US were more likely to transnationally contact shamans in Laos through their kinship networks, and fewer Lao Hmong clients sought out US Hmong shamans for transnational spiritual services. I attempted to inquire why US Hmong choose to arrange spiritual rituals remotely in Laos instead of asking shamans in their local community, as well as why Hmong in Laos do not seem to demand US shamans’ services as much. However, there were no really decisive answers or clear explanations, and I was generally told that the decision to consult with a shaman locally or transnationally is totally ‘up to the patient/client’s family.’

Since the efficacy of shamans in both countries remains the same according to Hmong interviewees, it is possible that US Hmong tend to rely on shamans in Laos to a greater extent because it may save time and labor and reduce the cost of the ritual. If a local shaman in the US conducts the ua neeb ritual, it often becomes an extensive and collective event that involves the entire clan and includes a feast and an animal sacrifice. When the ritual is conducted transnationally from Laos for US Hmong, such an extensive gathering is not always a feasible option, so the ritual can be performed individually by the shaman in private (see below). In such cases, because the Hmong family in the US cannot be present to witness the shaman’s spiritual rituals in Laos, they sometimes request photos or video recordings from the shaman as evidence that the ritual was actually performed.

There are a few cases when shamans in Laos decide that a large group gathering and feast is necessary, and their US Hmong clients have to arrange the feast either in their own local community or even travel to Laos. During my fieldwork, I observed a number of US Hmong who visited their families and relatives in Laos in order to be present at spiritual rituals and fund the feasts, although their visit may also be part of larger trips for vacations. Rarely, but equally interestingly, individual shamans from Laos can be invited to the US to conduct their spiritual ceremonies and services. In such ways, Hmong have used international kin relations to successfully conduct shamanistic rituals transnationally across the diaspora. Even if the shaman is living far away, US Hmong believe that such deterritorialized, shamanistic rituals are just as effective as those conducted in their own local communities. The best evidence of the effectiveness of the shaman’s transnational power is of course when the patient recovers from the illness.

When ‘traditions’ become transnationalized: Individualization and commodification

When shamanistic rituals that were initially practiced in local communities travel across national borders and spread to other countries in the diaspora, a number of significant changes emerge as Hmong cultural ‘traditions’ are practiced transnationally. Although traditions are often understood to be cultural forms inherited from the distant past and thus more faithful to original practices (Hobsbawm, 1983: 8; see also Bendix, 1997), it is quite clear that they have been constantly altered and remade over time. Scholars have commonly argued that traditions are in the constant process of recreation and always subject to change because of contemporary agendas and pressures (Briggs, 1996; Clifford, 2004: 156–9; Graburn, 2001: 10; Handler, 1986: 2; Linnekin, 1983). This is especially the case when previously localized cultural ‘traditions’ are deterritorialized to multiple diasporic locations by migrants and practiced across borders, which cause them to become modified and transformed in new transnational contexts (Tsuda, 2016). In this sense, they remain transnationally ‘traditional’. However, these practices continue to be perceived as ‘traditions’ that have been maintained and passed down in their original form from the ancestral homeland.

In the case of the Hmong diaspora, transnationalization has made traditional shamanistic cultural practices more individualized and also commodified so that they accommodate both shamans and patients/clients living in each respective country. Indeed, the distinctive nature of cultural ‘traditions’ is their adaptability (as well as flexibility) to modify and transform their procedures, logistics, and many other structural components, especially in the context of transnational migration.

Mutual co-existence: Shamanism, biomedicine, and religious and ethnic others

Although a number of scholars who have examined religion among transnational migrant communities note how immigrants’ homeland religions can be in conflict with the mainstream host society (Cadge and Ecklund, 2007; Levitt, 2003), the Hmong I spoke to felt that shamanism could co-exist with Western biomedicine and Christianity and be applied to ethnic others in multicultural societies. In fact, traditional cultural practices do not simply erode and eventually disappear under such forces of Western modernity (Graburn, 2001; Tsuda, 2016: 234).

Although Hmong shamans recognize that their traditional healing rituals are under pressure from Western biomedicine, they did not necessarily believe that shamanism is threatened by and in fundamental conflict with modern medicine. In contrast to depictions of Hmong shamanism in the United States as completely incompatible with and opposed to mainstream American medical systems (see Fadiman, 1997), many Hmong themselves did not necessarily resist or reject Western biomedical care but instead adopted a much more accommodating position. Moua Xiong, for example, a senior shaman in Sacramento, who had served Hmong in Laos and the US for nearly 45 years, spoke about this as follows:

Yeah, for me, it is completely fine to go to hospitals. Actually, my [US-born] youngest daughter is a nurse working at the hospital. In the past, she would not want to listen to me at all. She said, ‘Your way is old and incorrect.’ But right now, she says it’s ‘50 and 50.’ She means that American doctors cannot be right 100 percent of the time, just as ua neeb can’t be 100 percent right … If a person is almost dying, the family will bring the sick person to practice ua neeb. There are cases that those people actually ended up living a normal life. Other people who couldn’t be cured by ua neeb might go to the hospital and can get better.

In addition to biomedicine, Christianity is another Western influence that supposedly challenges the legitimacy of Hmong shamanism, since a number of Hmong in the US have converted to Christianity. Indeed, during services at a Hmong Christian church in Sacramento, numerous sermons stressed how the Hmong community needs to leave behind ‘old traditions’ like shamanism (‘belief in ancestors and ghosts’) and become a ‘new,’ ‘modern’ ethnoreligious community. Although Christian Hmong may be influenced by such teachings, many of them told me during interviews that they ‘respect and tolerate’ Hmong shamanism. Similarly, many accounts from my interviewees who believe in ancestor spirits and shamans indicate that Christian religious conversion within the Hmong community does not have to conflict with shamanism. Even senior shamans in Laos claimed that ‘there is nothing wrong about being a Christian’ since ‘all religions are supposed to teach how to be a good person.’

In addition, Hmong shamanism is inclusive and can be adapted to multiethnic and racially diverse societies as well. In other words, it operates across both territorial and ethnic boundaries. As Langdon (2013) notes, shamans have engaged in a ‘dialogical process’ with their service recipients not only across geographic locations, but across racial boundaries as well (see also Fotiou, 2016; Taussig, 1987). Shamans themselves can also be ethnically diverse or racially mixed and they perform for both domestic and international clients. There have been occasions when Hmong shamans provide services to non-Hmong individuals in both the United States and Laos. Despite the particularism often attributed to local and indigenous religious practices, they can be based on a discourse of universality akin to world religions like Christianity. One elderly shaman told me about an American doctor who was treated and apparently cured by a Hmong shaman in the US after treatments offered by hospitals failed. Similarly in Laos, I was also told stories about the friendship between Hmong shamans and the (majority) Lao loum people. Two elderly Lao men became ‘friends’ with Hmong shamans after undergoing ua neeb for their illness and distress in the past. Although there is no common acceptance of Hmong shamanism in Buddhist Laotian society, the shaman’s healing power is known to other ethnic groups and there are certainly individual Buddhists who seek out Hmong shamans when they face limited options to treat their illness and health problems. These are important examples of how the shaman’s power is not only transnational, it is also universal and can be applied to ethnic and religious others.

The ability of Hmong shamanism to co-exist with Western biomedicine and be applied to those of other ethnicities and religious backgrounds demonstrates its inherent flexibility. This enables traditional cultural and healing systems like Hmong shamanism to persist in transnational, diasporic communities, despite being increasingly subject to the supposed pressures of modernity and ethno-religious diversity in various countries.

Conclusion: The continuity of ‘traditions’ in transnational contexts

For diasporic peoples such as the Hmong, who have scattered to numerous countries around the world in response to a long history of persecution and war, the continuity of ethnic cultures is of fundamental importance for both the persistence of their transnational communities and as a marker of cultural and ethnic identity. Despite centuries of dispersal and displacement, shamanism has remained one of the core cultural practices of the Hmong diaspora. This indicates that it is not simply a place-based religion that is tied to specific localities, but it can also effectively travel through the diaspora and constantly reinvent itself in transnational contexts as it relocates to other countries.

The spiritual practices of the Hmong have been able to successfully transnationalize because of their cultural beliefs about shamanistic births and the mobility of souls. This ensures that shamans will be born in any country, allowing diasporic Hmong everywhere to enlist the services of local shamans. In addition, shamans do not simply provide spiritual services to clients who are in physical proximity but also to diasporic communities abroad because they can project their power anywhere in the world in a deterritorialized manner. Because the spiritual world is not bound by physical space or barriers, the shaman is able to instantly invoke the mobile souls of his living clients and their dead ancestors, wherever they happen to reside. Finally, extensive family relationships and clan kinship networks between Laos and the United States also enable Hmong to practice shamanism transnationally by receiving the shaman’s healing power and ritual services from abroad. In this context, shamanism has been successfully transferred from Laos to the US, becoming an important source of cultural continuity in the Hmong diaspora.

Nonetheless, when cultural traditions like shamanism are transnationalized, they are invariably transformed in the process as they move across localities. Although shamanistic rituals in local contexts are supposed to be a collective, community event based on social exchange, they become both individualized and commodified when practiced transnationally across borders. In fact, what makes a cultural practice continue to be ‘traditional’ is not its unchanging nature, but its ability to adapt in the face of transnational modernity while retaining the essential elements that connect it to a distant and unknown past.

In addition, not only has Hmong shamanism effectively crossed national borders, it claims to have also overcome ethnic and religious borders by encompassing non-Hmong and religious outsiders within its spiritual healing power while co-existing in a complementary manner with Western biomedicine. Instead of being threatened by the forces of modernity, such ‘traditions’ effectively incorporate the modern in order to remain relevant and even thrive in a globalized world. Shamanism has shown an uncanny ability to operate in both territorialized and deterritorialized contexts by embracing continuity and change as well as medical and ethnoreligious diversity in various contemporary societies. If these are some of the hallmarks of modernity, it seems to me that Hmong shamanism has always been modern.