How I learned that I come from a colonized peoples, too

In 2018, I was contracted to teach Stress Reduction & Relaxation techniques in a weekly class for Alaska Native Elders, for a local human services agency. When I was introduced into a room of fifty Elders, I introduced myself in accordance to the local custom:

In my mother-tongue, I named myself, my parents and their respective villages, and my grandparents and their respective villages. And then I did the same, in English. I then provided a context for my people.

"My people are from southern Vietnam, where the river meets the ocean, and yet upstream enough that the water is sweet. I am the child of merchants and traders, and people who tended to the land. I am the daughter of fragrant rice.

For almost 70 years, Vietnam was a French colony - right up until the Vietnam War. After the war, my family became refugees, and we were accepted into Australia. I discovered Alaska in 2004 when I spent a summer volunteering in Yakutat, and have lived in Fairbanks since 2008."

And then I provided some context and intention for the Stress Reduction & Relaxation class.

A Native Elder looked at me gently and thoughtfully, "I knew about the Vietnam War, but I did not know that your people were colonized, too."

Too. Like the indigenous peoples of Alaska, where I currently live.

Too. Like the indigenous peoples of Australia, where I was raised.

Same same, but very different. But same same.

I knew in my head that I come from a colonized peoples. This time, it landed in my heart.

I knew in my head because, when I was an undergraduate student at Monash University, I took a year of Modern Vietnamese History and two years of Vietnamese language.

To find my origin story.

My Anglo-Saxon professor of Modern Vietnamese History and my Vietnamese professor of Vietnamese Language....they knew.

They knew why I didn't know.

They knew why I wanted to know.

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I took classes, because my parents could not speak about their homelands, share the myths and legends of our people, or sing the songs of our ancestors. Trauma lives in the unspoken....it is in "the past", and yet, fully lives on in the present through the negative space, the weight of that which is absent.

The weight of this unspeakable past hung heavy over my life, and became a blanket of cultural identity shame.

I remember being asked by teachers. To ask my parents about why we left Vietnam. Or to ask about my family tree. Or to ask about Vietnam.

Just like children of Holocaust survivors, Residential School survivors, and Combat Veterans, children of refugees become disconnected from history.

From their own history.

From my own history.

Now, I know why I didn't know.

I am grateful that I eventually found teachers who understood why I didn't know, and loved me into knowing.