Behind Wisconsin's hunting tragedy
By Greg Butterfield
On Nov. 21, eight deer hunters were shot during a conflict
over a hunting stand in Sawyer County, Wis. Six of them
died.
The accused shooter, Chai Soua Vang, is an immigrant from
Laos and a member of the Hmong ethnic group. All of those shot
were white.
Vang, a truck driver from St. Paul, Minn., told police that
the white hunters surrounded him, assaulted him with racist
slurs and fired at him first.
Vang says he was hunting on public land. He got lost and
wandered onto property owned by Terry Willers and Robert
Crotteau. Willers confronted him, called in others riding
all-terrain vehicles, and then took the first shot as he was
trying to leave, Vang says.
Vang, a U.S. Army veteran and sharpshooter, returned fire.
Vang ran into the woods and later surrendered peacefully.
Survivors of the shooting denied any abuse of Vang.
Vang's statement was taken by Sawyer County sheriffs without
a lawyer present. The authorities claim Vang waived this
right.
On Nov. 29, Vang was charged with six counts of murder and
two counts of attempted murder. The state attorney general's
office is prosecuting the case. A team of high-profile
Wisconsin defense attorneys will represent Vang. They are
expected to seek a change of venue from rural, mostly white
Sawyer County.
While many details of the case are still unclear, the
incident has put a spotlight on the issues of racism and
national oppression, class division and property ownership, and
the hunting culture in rural Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Racist backlash feared
The shootings have heightened fears of a racist backlash
against the Hmong, who are concentrated in regional cities like
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Eau Claire, Wis. St. Paul is
home to 24,000 Hmong immigrants, the largest concentration in
the U.S., and their U.S.-born families.
"People are afraid there's going to be some kind of
revenge," Ying Vang, director of a Hmong community center, told
the Associated Press.
Hmong community members have reported harassment on the job
and in school, vandalism, threatening letters and other
incidents since the shooting.
Fears of retaliation have been fueled by statements in the
media. David Hecker, a friend of Crotteau and Willers, told the
Min neapolis Star-Tribune: "Hmong hunters may not be as safe
hunting. That could become a reality."
Hmong hunters were urged not to go back into the woods for
the remainder of the nine-day deer season, which ended Nov.
28.
Since the shooting, many Hmong hunters have come forward
with their own experiences of being confronted by racist whites
in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
One man, Tou Vang, told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that his
hunting party was run off public land by white hunters who shot
at them, just a few miles from the site of the Nov. 21
shootings. That incident was in 2001. A Hmong bow hunter was
chased out of a deer stand by two gun-toting men earlier this
year, AP reported.
While St. Paul business groups and politicians hurriedly
called a news conference to denounce Vang, other people were
skeptical and said they wanted to hear more about his side of
the story.
Ilean Her, director of the Council on Asian-Pacific
Minnesotans, said many in the community empathize with Vang and
wonder, "Why did he feel like he had to shoot them? If it's
just one against so many, what did they do to him that made him
a threat?
"The community would say they always knew something like
this would happen," Her said. "They're shocked that it
happened. But at the same time you're not that surprised."
Hmong used, then discarded by U.S.
The Hmong hail from Southeast Asia, primarily Laos and
Thailand. During the 1960s and 1970s, the U.S. courted Hmong
leaders and recruited their people to fight against the
national liberation movements in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Gen. Vang Pao, father of the alleged shooter, commanded a Hmong
"secret army" organized by the CIA. (New York Times, Nov.
24)
After the liberation forces triumphed in 1975, Washington
offered the Hmong special visas to emigrate en masse, as part
of a campaign to destabilize the new socialist government in
Laos.
Tens of thousands came, first to California, then to the
Midwest. Once they reached U.S. shores, however, the ruling
class no longer valued them as a tool of anti-communist
propaganda. To the U.S. rulers, the Hmong were just another
oppressed group to be exploited and scapegoated for
capitalism's ills.
From their agricultural society, the Hmong were transplanted
into mostly white cities devastated by corporate restructuring
and ill-equipped to provide for the needs of a
non-English-speaking population. Thus the Hmong were a
ready-made target for politicians and bosses eager to divert
anger away from their own actions.
According to the 2000 census, 60 percent of Hmong in the
U.S. live in poverty. A study by the University of
Wisconsin-Eau Claire's Hmong Population Research Project states
that the unemployment rate of Hmong in Wisconsin is five times
the state average.
This, along with their homeland's hunting traditions,
explains the growing popularity of deer hunting among the
Hmong. Nearly a quarter of Wisconsin's Hmong residents took out
hunting licenses in 2003.
Like many of their impoverished Native and white neighbors,
Hmong families rely on hunting for survival.
The land problem
Conflicts over hunting, access to land, race and class have
come to a boil in northwest Wisconsin since a precipitous
decline in the timber industry, small farms and mining in the
late 1970s.
The Wisconsin State Independent Living Council, an advocacy
group for the disabled, notes that "Northwestern Wis con sin is
a beautiful place ... [with] lakes and trees ... [but] in
socio-economic terms living in Northwestern Wisconsin is less
attractive." The council notes that in Sawyer County, where the
shootings took place, 21.7 percent of households have an annual
income below $10,000 a year.
Land ownership has been consolidated in the hands of
agribusiness, timber companies, tourist resorts, land
speculators and wealthy retirees. These landowners have
drastically restricted access to hunters at a time when more
people need to hunt to feed their families.
Public lands open to hunting are modest and overused.
Options are limited for those who aren't family or friends of
landowners or can't pay for the privilege, as many affluent
"sportsmen" from outside the region do.
Privately owned lands often abut public hunting areas and
are poorly marked, which can lead to tragedies like the Nov. 21
shootings.
The reality is that many poor and working-class hunters have
no choice but to take the risk of trespassing in order to feed
their families.
Just days after the Sawyer County shootings, another violent
confrontation between hunters and a landowner was reported near
Baraboo in central Wiscon sin. No shots were fired, but the
landowner was hospitalized and one hunter jailed on assault
charges. All those involved were white. (Capitol Times, Nov.
27)
While media attention focuses on the grieving families of
those killed in Sawyer County, progressives in the region have
also joined with Hmong community members in vigils against
bigotry.
To build lasting unity among poor and working-class Hmong,
Native, white and other workers in these areas will require a
movement to demand jobs or income, health care, housing and
education for all.
The have-nots of all nationalities have a common interest in
demanding that those who hunt primarily for food should have
first priority and access to uninhabited private land.
The writer grew up near the shooting site and
hunted for food in the area during the 1980s.
Reprinted from the Dec. 9, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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