Who We Are - Wing Luke Museum

Who We Are
When you hear about Cambodia, do you think of the temples
of Angkor Wat? Or the “Killing Fields” of the Khmer Rouge?
Cambodia is so much more than these images. Picture instead a
rich, deeply-rooted culture sustained by warm and loving people.
Envision a community filled with traditions and master artisans,
connected to its land.

All that was nearly destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in the late
1970’s. Now Cambodian culture is emerging from its horrific past.

The systematic murder of two million Cambodians during the
Khmer Rouge regime, and the exodus of hundreds of
thousands of refugees who survived its atrocities, left a gaping
hole in Cambodian society. As refugees have reinvented
themselves outside of Cambodia, they have contributed to their
adopted homes while also bringing skills and knowledge back to
their motherland.

The French derived the name “Cambodia” from “Kampuchea,”
the country they colonized in the 1800’s. “Khmer” is the French
spelling for “K’mai,” the ethnicity of many Cambodians and how
most refer to themselves. Ancient stories tell how Khmer people
are descended from the Naga, a mythological group of snake-
like beings. Nagas are a common decoration on Cambodian
temples, often appearing as seven-headed snakes. They
represent the spirit of Khmer people, their resiliency and
their roots.

As a snake sheds it skin and emerges anew, so are Khmer
people shedding their traumatic past as they transform their
culture, their identity and their homelands.

Khmer: descendants of the ancient Khmer empire, often used interchangeably with
“Cambodian.” In this exhibit, Khmer Americans includes all people from Cambodia
and of Cambodian descent living in the U.S. Whether refugees, immigrants or U.S.-
born, all Khmer Americans carry the legacy of the Khmer Rouge with them.

Where We
Come From
The land now known as Cambodia has been shaped by wars,
rivalries, colonialism and monarchy.

The ancient Khmer empire included parts of modern-day
Vietnam, Laos and Thailand. The empire reached its glory
between 802 and 1218 AD, growing with the construction of
massive irrigation canals and extensive cities, but troubled by
ongoing wars with its neighbors. Khmer kings often celebrated
military victories by building large structures as tributes to
themselves, including the well-known temples of Angkor Wat
and Angkor Thom.

The kings also transformed the primarily Hindu culture by
introducing Buddhism, which became the dominant religion of
the country.

As later kings fought both the Champa (Vietnamese) and
the Siamese (Thai), pieces of the empire fell under control of
those groups. In the mid-1800s, France began its conquest of
Southeast Asia, easily expanding into Cambodia while the Thai
and Vietnamese fought over the former Khmer empire. France
declared Cambodia a protectorate in 1864, and controlled the
country until King Norodom Sihanouk began negotiating its
independence after World War II.

Full independence was granted in 1953, and Sihanouk became
head of the government. Over the following decade, arts, music,
intellectual thought and independent politics flourished. This was
Cambodia’s “Golden Era,” a time of confidence and growth.

By the late 1960s, however, the growing U.S. war in neighboring
Vietnam began to spill over into Cambodia and Laos. Sihanouk
rejected all U.S. assistance, proclaiming Cambodia was neutral in
the conflict.

But the U.S., determined to have Cambodia as an ally in the
war, threatened Sihanouk’s neutrality and eventually undermined
his government.

Where We
Are Today
Coming to a new country as a refugee is difficult work. You have
to be strong and adaptable, while coping with the trauma you
just survived. You need to care for the children and family who
made it with you, while mourning the loved ones who did not.

What would you do if you were plunked down in the middle of
a strange land with strange people, and no knowledge of the
language or customs or how to survive?

Khmer refugees came with their innate resilience, along with
pain and heartache buried deep inside. They were survivors,
though unprepared to face the poverty and racism they
encountered in the neighborhoods where many settled. They
struggled to earn enough to support their families.

Many refugees found jobs, had new families, finished school.
Some worked in berry fields and canneries, or sewed and
cooked at home. Others opened restaurants or doughnut shops,
providing a livelihood for family members. Still others worked
in social services helping other refugees like themselves,
often starting new organizations and services where none
existed before. Refugee communities also helped revitalize
neighborhoods where they settled.

Others, though, struggled to make their daily lives bearable.
Some were too weighed down by what they had just lived
through, and battled depression, trauma and culture shock.
Physical and mental health problems became common among
refugees, and many children had difficulty staying in and
succeeding in school.

Where We
Are Going
The Khmer American community today includes the refugees who
arrived here after the war, and their children and grandchildren
born in the U.S. Many in the younger generations want to know
the history of their culture and the stories of their elders as they
work through their own identities.

Some learn about their heritage through language classes,
cooking and dancing lessons, and events offered by community
organizations. Some express their identity through art or
music. Some use their work as professionals to build bridges
between the Khmer communities they grew up in and the larger
communities they live in now.

Many still struggle with the effects of the trauma their parents and
grandparents endured. The challenges they face in education,
health care, criminal justice and other arenas have not disappeared,
but they are slowly receding with each new generation.

Some Khmer Americans return to visit or work in Cambodia,
bringing knowledge and skills to build democracy, education and
arts. They join Khmer refugees from other countries, especially
France and Australia, in redefining what it means to be Khmer.

Khmer people recognize the legacy of war and genocide, and the
cascading effects of trauma on the generations in their community.
Yet they do not want that past to fully define them. Today, they are
balancing their new-found culture with a commitment not to forget
the past that molded their Khmer identity. In the process, they are
growing a wholly new skin, woven from healing, discovery, history
and determination.

How Many Khmer?

The 1980 Census was the first to count Khmer in the United States. Of the 16,044
Khmer identified that year, nearly half had been admitted as refugees. With changes to
refugee admission policies during the 1980s, the Khmer American population grew to
149,047 in the 1990 Census.

As of the 2010 U.S. Census, there were 276,667 Khmer Americans living in the United
States. Washington state was home to 22,934, with 19,240 living in the Seattle–
Tacoma–Bellevue metro area.

Many Khmer, however, believe the census numbers to be low — maybe half of the real
population — because of low participation in the U.S. Census by Khmer Americans.

“Cambodia”     “Kampuchea”
                        “Khmer”
“K’mai,”

The Worst Time
In Our History
Concerned that Sihanouk was allowing North Vietnamese supply lines
to cross into Cambodian territory, the U.S. began secretly bombing
eastern Cambodia in 1969. Then, in 1970, the U.S. supported a
government takeover by one of Sihanouk’s generals, Lon Nol.

The bombing and the coup drove many rural residents to support the
Khmer Rouge, an anti-American, nationalist movement waging war
against the Cambodian government. Before long, the Khmer Rouge
controlled almost half of the country’s rural areas.

Unable to defeat the fervent nationalists, Lon Nol’s troops and the
Cambodian government fell to the Khmer Rouge in April, 1975. Many
people had supported the Khmer Rouge, and tentatively welcomed
the new leaders. However, under the ruthless command of Pol Pot,
the Khmer Rouge began nearly four years of executions, intimidation,
imprisonment and torture. Phnom Penh and other cities were forcibly
emptied, and the entire population was pressed into forced labor in
the countryside to carry out the Khmer Rouge’s distorted vision of a
communist, agrarian society.

The regime initially targeted anyone who was educated, professional,
foreign or part of the Lon Nol government. Many thousands were
tortured and executed; far more died of starvation, illness and lack
of medical care. As life in the countryside deteriorated and food
became even more scarce, Khmer Rouge leaders began purging and
executing their own members.

Historians estimate that nearly two million people died from murder,
starvation and illness during the three years, eight months and
twenty days of the Khmer Rouge rule. The phrase “Killing Fields”
barely describes the unfathomable horror of thousands of bodies
dumped into mass graves or left to rot in rice fields.

Where We Waited
For Relief
In late 1978, Vietnam invaded and quickly defeated the weakened
Khmer Rouge, installing an interim government. Most teachers,
doctors and other professionals had been executed, leaving the
country with few resources to recover from the horror of what is now
known as “Pol Pot time.”

Thousands of freed labor camp prisoners fled to Thailand. People
walked for many days along roads or paths littered with debris and
bodies, hiding from Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese soldiers. Refugee
camps sprang up in Thailand along the Thai-Cambodian border.

Arriving at the camps was a relief, but life there was very hard.
Refugees lived in flimsy tents or miserable shacks with crumbling
walls, squalid conditions made worse by shortages of food and water.
Thailand did not welcome them, and Thai soldiers harassed, robbed
and raped the refugees.

Bowing to international pressure, the U.S. passed the Refugee Act in
1980, allowing refugees from all over Southeast Asia to come to the
U.S. Many families waited in the camps for several years until they
could be resettled, and many children were born there.

Unlike immigrants from Cambodia who had come to the U.S before
1975 to study or work, these refugees had not chosen to leave their
homes and were unprepared to start over in a strange place. Still
reeling from years of violence and trauma, and haunted by their quick
decisions to escape, many feared further disruption by immigrating to
the U.S. Would they ever be reunited with their families? They didn’t
even know who had survived and who had been left behind.

However, with life in the camps so hard and the future so uncertain,
many felt they had no choice but to resettle when they were offered
the chance.

What Happened
When We Got Here
In the early 1980’s, Khmer families began arriving in the U.S. They
were exhausted and traumatized from surviving the Khmer Rouge,
spending years in refugee camps and being uprooted from their
homes, families and friends.

Most did not know the language and had no experience with Western
cultures. Many Khmer refugees were rural dwellers with limited
education and job skills to survive in urban America, where they
had been settled into low-income housing projects. Living under the
Khmer Rouge had left them afraid and suspicious.

In the U.S., the refugees became known as “Cambodians,” a name
they had never used for themselves. Most Americans knew very little
about Cambodia, except what they had learned from news about the
wars in Southeast Asia.

Between 1975 and 1990, over 120,000 Khmer refugees arrived in the
U.S. With refugees also coming from Vietnam and Laos, nearly one
million Southeast Asian refugees landed in the U.S. during that time.
Local resettlement agencies were overwhelmed and, with limited
federal support, they struggled to provide a range of language,
housing and job training services for so many people with vastly
different needs.

Nearly 5,000 Khmer came to the Seattle area, making it the fourth
largest resettlement community of Khmer refugees in the U.S.
Many nonprofit agencies in Seattle welcomed the refugees and
arranged sponsorships through local organizations, churches and
individuals. Sponsors became an indispensible lifeline for many
Khmer refugee families.

Other Khmer refugees later resettled to this region because of the
large community here and the support services available.

Health
Khmer Americans have more health problems than other immigrant
groups, even other Southeast Asian refugees.

Rates of depression, anxiety and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD) are highest among Khmer, especially elders. Elders also face
social isolation and a lack of culturally appropriate services.

The effects of trauma have also been passed on to younger
generations born in the U.S. Studies have shown that more than half
of the children of survivors may experience PTSD symptoms. What
may be viewed as typical intergenerational miscommunication and
conflict may be more directly the result of trauma to older generations
and lack of information about it for younger generations.

Khmer Americans also experience high rates of heart disease, high
blood pressure, cancer and diabetes. Many of these have been linked
to inactivity, trauma and depression. Severe malnutrition during the
Khmer Rouge years has also led to ongoing health problems for many.
Children born during that time may have suffered cognitive deficits
from lack of nutrition.

Education
When refugee families began arriving in the U.S. in the mid-1980s,
many schools did not know how to deal with the large influx of
refugee children coming from rural areas and refugee camps, with
little or no English.

The refugees found that schools had limited resources for teaching
English to non-English speakers. There were also no family support
workers to help students and families access other services, and
very few Asian American educators and staff to serve as role models.
Children also faced teasing and harassment by other children who
had never met Southeast Asians before.

Most schools had no translators to help parents. Many parents
had limited education themselves, and did not understand the
school system or the expectations for parent involvement in
American schools.

Many Khmer families still have not overcome those challenges. Khmer
American children continue to confront expectations that all Asians
are smart and successful — the “model minority” myth. Instead, Khmer
Americans have been less successful in school than most other
refugees and immigrants. The 2010 census showed that nearly 40% of
Khmer Americans aged 25 or older do not have high school diplomas,
and more than two-thirds have not attended college.

Deportation
As young Khmer refugees arrived in their new schools and
neighborhoods, they faced discrimination. Many banded together
for support and protection for themselves and their families. Growing
up under the Khmer Rouge and in refugee camps, they believed that
violence solved problems. With easy access to guns, their groups
became violent gangs and many kids wound up in the criminal
justice system.

Most of these youth had been born in Cambodia or refugee camps.
They didn’t know that unless their parents had naturalized them
as U.S. citizens, U.S. law mandated they be deported if they were
convicted of any of a long list of crimes, including minor offenses.
As a result, several thousand Khmer Americans, mostly young men,
were ordered deported for crimes ranging from shoplifting to murder.

When these laws went into effect in 1996, Cambodia had no
agreement with the U.S. to accept individuals being deported.
Instead, many of these youth were held in U.S. immigration
detention for years. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, the
U.S. government pressured the Cambodian government to agree
to take the former refugees.

Since June 2002, nearly 500 returnees have landed in Cambodia.
Many have struggled to adapt to a country they left as children, or,
for those born in camps, had never seen. Some don’t speak Khmer;
most don’t read or write it. They are foreigners in what is supposed to
be their home.

Others still live in the U.S. knowing that they could be detained by
immigration officials again and deported at any time.

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Seattle

(PTSD)

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