The Hmong are an Asian ethnic group from the mountainous regions of China, Vietnam, Laos, and Thailand. Hmong are also one of the sub-groups of the Miao ethnicity (苗族) in southern China. Hmong groups began a gradual southward migration in the 18th century due to political unrest and to find more arable land. Hmong people, who known to be fiercely independent, are rich in their culture, art, religion, family life and martial history and are distinguished by costume/dress (fabric patterns represent fruit, vegetables, farming, chickens, eggs, etc.)
During the first and second Indochina Wars, both France and the United States governments recruited thousands of Hmong people in Laos to help fight against invading military forces from North Vietnam as well as communist Pathet Lao insurgents, known as the secret war, during the Vietnam War and the Laotian Civil War. Hmong people were singled out for retribution by the Marxist Pathet Lao, and Vietnamese Army, when they took over the Laotian government in 1975, with the support of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV), and the politburo officials in Hanoi as well as the communist governments of the former Soviet Union in Moscow, North Korea, Cuba and China. Hundreds of thousands of Hmong refugees fled to Thailand seeking political asylum. Thousands of these refugees have resettled in Western countries since the late 1970s, mostly the United States, but also in Australia, France, French Guiana, Canada, and South America. Others have returned to Laos under United Nations-sponsored repatriation programs.
