A Free People: Tracing Our Hmong Roots

Dave Moore

Master Communications, Inc.

About this ebook

Hmong students interviewed their elders in the community to capture the history and culture of their people. A minority in every country where they have lived, they value their independence and self-sufficiency. This book reunites the Hmong youth, who have become alienated from their culture in living in the United States, to Hmong culture and inspire self-esteem as well as helping others learn about this amazing culture. An excellent collection of stories, writings and photographs by Hmong students in Minnesota. Hmong people are refugees from Laos via Thailand.

About the author

Dave Moore was born on April 6, 1936 in Minneapolis, MN. He received a BA and MA from Yale University. For more than thirty years, he taught high-school Social Studies and English in Spring Valley, MN, Park Forest, Illinois, the Army High School in Mannheim, Germany, and at Edison High School in Minneapolis. 

During the winter of 1981, Dave first met Hmong refugees from Laos, when about 300 young Hmong men and women were enrolled at Minneapolis Edison High School, where he was teaching. Unable to speak their language, he could not communicate with them, nor were any of them in his classes. But that spring, he organized the Hmong boys into a Boy Scout Troop, the purpose of which was to learn something about America and have some fun at the same time. Minnesota Hmong Troop 100 was a success from the start, with a membership of about eighty boys. Over the years, Dave heard many personal stories of privation, war, defeat, escape, loss and sometimes triumph from the boys. Recognizing a need to record these experiences, Dave has authored two books about the Hmong people, "Dark Sky, Dark Land: Stories of the Hmong Boy Scouts of Troop 100" and "A Free People: Our Stories, Our Voices, Our Dreams and A Free People: Tracing Our Hmong Roots is a new edition of this book.

Dave Moore, a Scoutmaster, is now retired from Teaching, but not from Scouting. He spends virtually all of his time working with his Scouts.