Local artist, community organizer, and facilitator for Pollen’s upcoming Global Hip-Hop Night, Tou SaiKo Lee sits down with Tenzin Kunsal to talk about the formation of his multi-dimensional identity, his views on community building, and what’s keeping him busy these days.
Can you tell us more about what you do and who you are?
I’m a spoken word artist, an artist teacher, and an organizer in the community. I practice the art of hip-hop, music, lyricism. I’m somebody that has passion for working with young people as well as my journey into understanding my own culture and cultural identity and history. Being Hmong, there’s some history but it’s all through oral tradition. It’s important to give a voice to that through my arts. I also identify with being from a tribal culture, so being able to experience living in villages in Southeast Asia, staying there, I have a better understanding of what that means. There’s more community as far as working together.
“I practice the art of hip-hop, music, lyricism.”
How did you come to find your own identity as Hmong American?
I’m a Hmong person who grew up in the U.S., but I identify as being ethnically just Hmong because I’m not into creating division between Hmong people that live in other parts of the world. Location just identifies the place they grew up. In essence we’re all one identity too as a people.
I grew up in Syracuse, New York. There weren’t a lot of Hmong people. I had a lot of difficulty explaining [Hmong identity] but I knew that I was Hmong. I grew up with more understanding and ownership of my identity because you start to learn more about the history and the culture. And then you realize the beauty of it and come to embrace it.
A lot of the influences I have are from the U.S.—whether it’s being engaged in hip-hop art forms or being into American sports or being inspired by American artists like Tupac Shakur and Lauryn Hill. I was able to see artists as inspiration for the art I do, and they inspired me to think through myself to find my own identity. Artists and people in the community that have either mentored or given me support, a lot of these people from different backgrounds helped shaped who I am today, so I definitely take ownership of growing up in our country.
“…a lot of these people from different backgrounds helped shaped who I am today…”
Can you talk more about your philosophy on building community and collaboration between communities?
I started getting into organizing because initially it just started as doing work in the arts. And having influential professors that talked about the civil rights movement, it was a natural progression towards organizing. I think that a lot of spaces we created were Hmong and Asian American spaces, which really had me more engaged, organizing around specific issues. For example, the human rights issues in Laos with Hmong people being massacred in certain areas of the country. In a sense, I feel a deep responsibility to work toward that, not just because I’m Hmong but because I have an understanding that there’s a struggle to preserve, to keep the culture alive. Historically, there’s been a lot of oppression and persecution where it’s important to maintain [the culture] through organizing or creativity.
Overall, growing up in a community that is very diverse (i.e., Frogtown Neighborhood), growing up in schools that are diverse, and having mentors that come from different backgrounds, it helped me understand collaboration between communities. But it’s also important to build a base in one’s own community.
What are some ways to approach collaboration?
Initially it’s more about giving space for everyone to have a voice and trying to understand each other’s perspectives going into it, especially if they’re trying to work on something collaborative. You have to make sure the concerns of each community are there as well as their unique circumstances within each community. It’s important to have their own space to have those discussions that might be directly concerned with a specific community but then, at the same time, making an effort to collaborate and coexist with other communities. Building cross-cultural collaboration builds more influence for a community to make decisions, for example, in situations of gentrification.
“Building cross-cultural collaboration builds more influence for a community to make decisions…”
I think it’s more of a process, a very careful process. It’s learning each other’s history and why they’re here and where they’re at now. We have a great opportunity to connect and collaborate more, especially in communities that are very diverse like Frogtown or in South Minneapolis. Sometimes you have to be the first one, meaning that if a Hmong person hasn’t ventured into collaborating with the Somali community, for example, why not try to be the first one or the second one to go in and try to make things work, because I have influence in my own community.
What are some of the biggest barriers for people from different communities to connect with each other or to collaborate?
One is communities that don’t live close to each other that might have a good, strong purpose or reason to collaborate. That’s more about actually making an effort to go and connect. Then there are the communities that live right next to each other and are forced to communicate, interact with each other. I think there are misunderstandings. Maybe they feel like they’re fighting for their resources. They’re not as cohesive and they’re competitive. But in essence, they’re actually put in the position where they have to compete or they feel that they need to compete against each other for resources, but really if they share resources, they can be a lot more influential. But to share resources they have to communicate in a way where they understand each other and learn each other’s history.
Through time we’ve been able to build on that. I see a lot more initiatives and projects where Hmong and African American people are working together and they’re part of the same organization or initiative, because they understand that if they can build together, the community overall will be uplifted, will become better.
In your work with students, what connects you to those of different backgrounds?
It’s about self-expression or artistic expression of one’s story or one’s struggle. No matter where people live or what their experiences are, they might go through some type of struggle or some type of something that they need to let out. The work with Woodbury schools is a good example because it was mostly white students that came from families that are a little more well off. I was brought in as someone who gives them a more diverse perspective on other people—ethnic people—which is kind of weird but at the same time, I understood what was necessary. I talked to the teachers and they were like, these students, they know nothing about Hmong people and Hmong people live ten minutes away on the East Side, which is really close to Woodbury. We don’t want them to have all these stereotypes. I thought it was pretty noble of them to bring me in. It was about teaching about culture, but it was also about teaching them how to express themselves through spoken word, hip-hop, and songwriting, which they were very open to. The teachers there were very open to it as well.
“No matter where people live or what their experiences are, they might go through some type of struggle or some type of something that they need to let out.”
Can you talk about the significance of having your work and story documented through the films you have been featured in?
The New York Times documentary came out during the time of the Chai Vang case, the Hmong hunter from Wisconsin who had shot the white hunters and there was the whole controversy behind why he did it, how he felt discriminated. Then there was the General Vang Pao case, where he was accused of conspiring with others to overthrow the country of Laos.
Basically there was all this negative press and Hmong people were labeled as basically terrorists at the time. If I’m going to be representing a more positive perspective, then I think it’s important to do that. It just felt like more of a responsibility because they want me to be there and represent an artist that is doing positive things in the community and stuff. That’s why I accepted that documentary.
“If I’m going to be representing a more positive perspective, then I think it’s important to do that.”
Travel in Spirals was more of a documentation of my experience and my journey of living in a Hmong village, the journey of my cultural identity. The third project, We Rock Long Distance, was Justin Schell’s personal project that follows three artists—M.anifest, Maria Isa and me. Going back to the whole beauty of cross-cultural collaboration, I thought it was an amazing idea. I agreed [to take part in the film] because he proved to me that he was someone who is willing to help and support others. Plus, I started to gain a big interest in international work through hip-hop and that is where he was coming from too.
What are some projects you are working on now?
The Street Stops and Mountain Tops is brand new. We started collaborating with two orphanages that we encountered [in Thailand]. From visiting Thailand on a few occasions, we observed that there are artists and young children who want to do arts, but there’s a lack of arts programming. The idea is we can bring Hmong Americans that have gotten training or have experience doing arts there and teach those children, particularly in break dancing and music, and develop teachers over there too so they can continue teaching even after these artists leave.
It’s going back to the whole global hip-hop movement, where a lot of young children in those situations really embrace and feel connected to hip-hop even though it was created in the United States. Bringing artists from the same ethnicity to go over there and teach them in their language that they can understand is, I think for me, it can be a very powerful connection in bridging people. The people that are going there to teach are experiencing something too. They’re experiencing a village life, village community and the ways that we have lived when we lived in the village. We’re doing our pilot trip coming up this winter around the Hmong New Year. That’s a possibility, but essentially it’s building a bridge to that connection here and over in Southeast Asia.
Another project is a Hmong tattoo project. A lot of the younger generation are getting tattoos that symbolize Hmong culture and cultural pride. Even though tattoos have not been part of our culture historically, we’re embracing it. People send me tattoo pictures from France and all over the U.S. I’m hoping to do an exhibition of all these photos. It would be really cool if we just invited all these people into one space too and we can see it in person.
“Even though tattoos have not been part of our culture historically, we’re embracing it.”
I want to really capture my message in the Hmong language so I can make more connections. I started to write more songs in my native language because I want to teach the children in Thailand my songs. In the U.S., the purpose of these songs is to revitalize the language for Hmong youth. It helps them be more motivated to learn their own language as well, to learn through these songs. I want to be very intentional about actually doing it for children and people that want to learn or that might feel they don’t have resources to learn. I’m working on a whole album for that purpose.
“I want to be very intentional about actually doing it for children and people that want to learn or that might feel they don’t have resources to learn.”
As far as expanding my base, I want to continue working with other communities and collaborating. There are no Hmong people that are doing it especially if they’re mediating conflicts the Hmong community has with another community, it would be nice to have a Hmong person help out with that. I think I just like the purpose of it to help mediate and how do we bring communities to a way of compromise and collaboration. I think that would be important for me too in the future.
Is there anything else that you wanted to add?
A big part of the work we do in community is meaningful. At the same time people that give too much of themselves forget to develop, to help themselves. I’d like to encourage other people to do self-care, self-development and create more resources for people that are out there organizing. There are a lot of places of healing, places of support and networking with a lot of people that are doing this type of work, but I feel that is another aspect of collaboration, because it is people from all different communities coming together that have similar experiences because they all do similar work. I would love to, through my own journey, figure out ways to teach others or create a framework for other people to be able to do that. I’m still on my journey though. I’m not there yet. I have a ways to go.
“I’d like to encourage other people to do self-care, self-development and create more resources for people that are out there organizing.”