IMMIGRANT PATHWAYS Exhibit highlights Hmongs journey to US BY BETH SCHWARTZAPFEL

For centuries, the Hmong people of Thailand and Laos had no written language. As farmers, they didn’t really need it. They knew the tastes, colors, smells, and sounds of their lives, as well as the stories of their people. Anything worth remembering was committed to memory. So it’s fitting that the story of the Hmong people’s journey to the United States, on display at the Providence Children’s Museum through September 25, is told through such objects as traditional clothes, jewelry, and harvest crops.

"I don’t know what she’ll remember about this," says Janice O’Donnell, the museum’s executive director, motioning toward 5-year old Nia Kile of Cranston, who was busy plucking rubber carrots from the ground. "But she’s been exposed. Next time she sees [a traditional Hmong story cloth], she’ll say, ‘Huh. This looks familiar.’ And when things are familiar, you’re more open to them."

The Hmong at Heart exhibition has three components, each of which details one leg of the Hmong people’s journey: a village house in Laos, a refugee camp in Thailand, and a home in the US. The interactive items in the village house include a rice pounder, which resembles half of a heavy wooden seesaw. Pao Yang of Providence knows exactly what it is. "I remember pounding rice when I was a kid," he says, smiling. "I was too small, so I had to use both hands and jump up and down on two feet." A few minutes later, Sophia Sniffen, three, of Providence, does just that. "She’ll definitely remember the rice pounder," laughs her mother, Ondine Sniffen.

The exhibit, part of a 10-city tour, was created by the Madison Children’s Museum, in Wisconsin. It is one of seven similar exhibits funded by the Vermont-based Freeman Foundation, a private foundation that seeks to promote understanding between the United States and Asia. Of the seven, Hmong at Heart is the only one telling the story of an Asian community arriving in the US as refugees. That, says O’Donnell, is a big draw. "There is a Hmong population in Rhode Island, and there has been since the first refugees came," she said. "There is also a larger Southeast Asian community here who have the same refugee story."

Indeed, following the exhibit as it spills into a second room, one encounters "Voices of Hmong Rhode Islanders," a shelf displaying the many disparate pieces that, collectively, shape lives of current residents. A package of shrimp soup, for example, is next to a bottle of sports drink. Hmong CDs and story cloths are laid out by a baseball. A teenager who speaks in one of the exhibit’s videos sums it up: "My generation, we kinda take the good ideas from both cultures and kinda mix them together."