To Tell the Truth

• Main Author: Jacques Lemoine
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Hmong Studies Journal 2009-01-01
• Series: Hmong Studies Journal
• Subjects: Hmong Studies; Hmong Culture; Asian Studies
• Online Access: http://hmongstudies.org/Lemoine2008.pdf

This paper is inspired by the reading of Dr. Lee’s article in Hmong Studies Journal, Vol. 8: “Diaspora and the Predicament of Origins: Interrogating Hmong Postcolonial History and Identity” and my recent, albeit too short visit to Minnesota in order to receive my Eagle Award in Hmong Studies and participate in the Center for Hmong Studies’ Conference: “Cultivating the Past, Interpreting the Present, and Enriching the Future”, at Concordia University, Saint Paul (April 12, 2008). There I met three fascinating Miao scholars from China.1 There was some confrontation in our respective approach to (H)mong2 studies from opposite viewpoints: their, the Miao imagined nation, mine, the (H)mong transnational ethnic group. Once more, I have the feeling that it is the duty of a scholar of my generation to see that (H)mong studies avoid the political and scholastic fantasies of the time, and keep progressing in the only right direction: scientific knowledge. I deal here with three issues: a) the recent development of (H)mong studies in China, b) the content and meaning of a so-called “Hmong/Miao transnationality”, c) the faithfulness to (H)mong culture.