Q&A: LEAP Student Grantee Quincy Yangh on Animal Kinship in Hmong Shamanism
Quincy Yangh M.E.M. ’24, a Master of Environmental Management student at Yale School of the Environment (YSE), is a Law, Ethics, & Animals Program (LEAP) Student Fellow, and 2023 LEAP Student Grant recipient. This summer, Yangh explored the enduring and evolving relationship between the Hmong Shaman community and animals, meeting with the Hmong Shamans diaspora across the U.S.. Through this project, he hopes to share a different perspective on human-animal relationships and illuminate how his community has preserved and upheld its profound relationship with animals despite centuries of displacement, erasure, and imperial violence. Yangh recently presented his work at the American Academy of Religion’s 2023 Annual Meetings.
LEAP Postgraduate Fellow Laurie Sellars spoke with Yangh about his LEAP student grant research. The conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.
How did your interest in and project examining Hmong Shamanism’s relationship with nonhuman animals develop?
I grew up in the Hmong Shaman community, where I was always around animals. A lot of my loved ones had farms and my parents are gardeners, so I've had a close relationship with animals since I was young. In grad school, one of my goals was to explore the relationship Hmong people have with animals, especially in a time where we're considering our relationship with the environment, both in the academic space and in the Hmong community. Being a LEAP Student Fellow made me realize how important it is to explore our relationships with animals and that people are thinking about it very seriously and thoughtfully. That was a big motivator. The second motivator was that I took a class at YSE, The Biopolitics of Human-Nonhuman Relationships, where I was exposed to multispecies ethnography. How do we learn about creatures and plants? What can we learn when we center their lives and their relationships? This project was birthed out of both my personal upbringing in the Hmong Shaman community and the academic literature that spoke to me.
This summer, I wanted to take a deeper dive into what Hmong relationships with animals are like and how those relationships have changed in the last several decades, because there's been a big culture shift within the Hmong community. It’s like a check in. Within the Hmong Shaman community, we don't typically spend intentional time unpacking our relationship with animals, so my approach was, “Let me explore that a little bit more.” For my fieldwork, I was in Minnesota and Washington, where I talked to many Shamans. For context, Shamans are the spiritual, cultural, and religious leaders in the Hmong Shaman community. Their role is to do a well-being check on humans and the environment. For us, Shamans have the power to communicate with different land, human, and animal spirits — they’re facilitators of knowledge across different beings and entities. I wanted to talk to Shamans to find out what our relationship with animals is like because they have a unique relationship with them. I also spent time talking to farmers who use animals in their farming, as they're oftentimes the closest ones to animals. I chose Minnesota and Washington — and spent some time in California speaking to the Hmong community, too — because there are robust agricultural and environmental communities there, so I was able to interview many elders and listen to stories in these areas.
What was it like conducting these interviews? What did you discover through your fieldwork?
One of the main things I learned is that our relationship with animals is very much still intact, but it's also changing a lot. For example, in the past, Hmong ceremonies entailed a lot of animals, like sacrifices or using feathers from chickens. But in the U.S., it's changed. There's been a movement of Shaman and spiritual practitioners away from using animals in ceremonies, which raises questions about why this change is happening. They’ve found different, innovative ways to conduct ceremonies without involving animals, like using statues or stones or finding alternative ways of healing. Farmers and Shamans are aware of the consumption industry and mass consumerism, and one of the reasons why some practitioners are staying away from using animals is because they don't believe in this industrial complex. They say, “If we’re going to use animals for ceremonies, it's important that we build kinship with them. If we're not raising or taking care of them, that's fundamentally changing our relationship with them.” In the U.S., where animals are so disconnected from our daily interactions, these practitioners are avoiding using them because they don't see it as ethical. It's changing the conversation of where things are headed. I was originally curious whether people were talking about this, but in my interviews, it turned out that people talk about it a lot.
Halfway through my summer research, I also realized the importance of looking at archives, like myths and folk stories. I added another layer to my project with archival research and spent time at Hmong cultural centers looking at documents about how the recent displacement of Hmong people transformed our relationship with animals. The Hmong are indigenous to Southeast Asia, across Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, and southern China. When the Vietnam War happened, there was a lot of political unrest. The region was in chaos because of the war, and the Hmong community migrated to the U.S. and other parts of the world as refugees. Traditionally, we're a an agricultural-based community, and learning how the move to the U.S. transformed the Hmong’s relationship with animals was fascinating. Elders and spiritual leaders discuss how migration was the first time this community was exposed to the meat industry, and it brought up moral and ethical questions of when or even if we should use animals in ceremonies at all. This story couldn't have been explored without exploring the archives as well as interviewing Hmong community leaders. Both brought up what war and displacement do to our relationship with animals. It was not only a good way to check in with myself and my community, but also to see where the conversation is headed and how excited elders are that students and academics are asking these questions.
Did you discover similar changes in Hmong communities’ relationships with animals outside of the U.S.?
It's happening everywhere. Many Hmong went to Switzerland, France, and Australia, and their relationships with animals are changing as well because day-to-day access to animals is different. Elders and Shamans who talk to the transnational community are discussing these issues. They consult with each other on questions like, “Is it right to use an animal for this ceremony?” Or for those who have lost information about how we build kinship with animals, they'll ask, “What do you remember from growing up? How do we treat this animal ethically?” There's a learning communication.
Even Hmong folks who stayed in Southeast Asia are re-thinking their relationship with animals. There's a financial component to this as well. When you raise your own animals, you don’t pay for the meat. So, in Southeast Asia, where many animals are multi-generational, there's not a financial component. There, they might feel more inclined to use animals or sometimes less inclined because there's less access. In Western countries where there's more access to meat, they might feel more inclined to use animals because they have access right away. The entire diaspora has a lot of questions about our relationships with animals and to land, especially as migrants entering new spaces. In some ways, these questions have also brought us together. We’re in conversation, which I think is a beautiful thing.
Were there any interview experiences or stories from the archive that stood out to you?
One that stands out was an interview with a Shaman elder about our relationships with chickens. There is a folk story about why we listen to the chicken: why do we wake up to the call of a chicken, and why are we super close to chickens, especially in ceremonies? It goes back to the belief that the chicken accidentally ate the Hmong Book of Knowledge many millennia ago. We use chickens during ceremonies because they have knowledge that we don't have. And that reinforces — although it's not as salient — a conservation approach to preserving and centering the vitality and well-being of animals. The belief is, “We need to take care of chickens because it's this animal of knowledge.” Learning this, I thought, “No wonder we’re always thinking about chickens in the day-to-day. No wonder so many of us raise chickens.” It's because the chicken’s inherent existence has a power for us to look back to.
In this interview, the elder said, “This is conservation.” It might not seem like traditional conservation, but the spiritual and cultural importance of chickens has made the Hmong community across generations take care of and advocate for chickens. It just doesn't fit into the traditional narrative of what conservation is. Seeing that link was transformative because we have these cultural and spiritual reasons to preserve animal and plant life. The outcome is still conservation in the same way that an ecology and biodiversity perspective advocates for, but how you get there is really different.
The entire diaspora has a lot of questions about our relationships with animals and to land, especially as migrants entering new spaces. In some ways, these questions have also brought us together. We’re in conversation, which I think is a beautiful thing.”
— Quincy Yangh M.E.M. ’24
It's also not necessarily that chickens need our saving or that they’re subhuman: they’re equal to humans because they hold knowledge in a unique way that's only possible because they’re chickens. They have their own mode of existence. In some interviews, I asked what makes animals and humans different. It's an important question to ask: if beings are different, I want to honor the fact that we all have different functions. I want to honor our differences and acknowledge that we’re one kind. The response I would get is that fundamentally all living things have a soul — the spirit — but the body you’re in is different. It’s like the clothes you’re wearing are different: we have the same soul as animals, but they wear different clothing. Chickens take the form of the chicken, and we take the format of a human.
Another important topic in my research — a taboo topic in Shaman and indigenous cultures in general — is animal sacrifices. In my experience, one reason why folks in conservation, the mainstream environmental movement, or the fight for animal life shut off indigenous and Shaman communities is because of animal sacrifices. I brought this up in my interviews, and folks acknowledged that this conversation is happening. I also asked them to describe what sacrifice is. I learned that in a Shaman ceremony or ritual, the spirit of the Shaman talks to the spirit of an animal. They’re in a state of negotiation, which sounds foreign in a non-Shaman/non-indigenous lens, and the animal can only be sacrificed upon mutual agreement. To ensure that the agreement happens, a Shamanist spiritual leader makes a bargain: “If you let us use you for this ceremony, then many lifetimes from now, I will come back and serve you as an animal.” It might look like slaughter, but it's not like that at all. As Shamans, we have spiritual or unseen ways of ensuring dignity for animals and plants and have considered the ethics of what it means to take a life. In my own upbringing, we were told, “If you're going to eat meat, then you need to grapple with what it means to take the life of an animal.” This summer was the first time I examined animal sacrifice, and it was important to learn about how it's rooted in gratitude, which is oftentimes missing in the literature on Shamanism.
Consent is fundamental to these sacrifices, but there isn’t a consensual process in the meat industry in the U.S. I imagine that animal advocacy could be more inclusive if we bring Shamans and indigenous people into it. There are many ways to build collaboration across different communities. For that to happen — at least from a Hmong Shaman perspective — I want to articulate that there's a consensual process that's not being practiced in the meat industry, and it's changing our communities’ relationship with animals. I cultivate that seed of interest in the future.
Having completed your fieldwork, what do you hope folks — including Hmong and non-Hmong communities — will take away from your work?
I would like to reassure the Hmong community that we are having conversations about our relationship with animals. Despite war, despite displacement, despite all the violence in our recent history, our relationship with animals remains intact: these conversations are happening. Despite all that’s happened, we've resisted and preserved these precious animal and land kinship practices that can be found nowhere else in the world. That's such a big win for our community.
For non-Hmong communities, I hope my work showcases that there is more than one relationship with animals. There are different value systems and cosmologies that inform our relationship with animals; they can and do contribute to the same conservation, sustainability, and biodiversity goals that the mainstream environmental community and discourse advocates for. There are a lot of exciting things going on, and I’d like to share that with non-Hmong communities.
I was nervous that there would be resistance to my research, but I've found an abundance of support, especially from other indigenous communities who are also thinking about animal life in this way. I thought people were going to be mad at me for doing this type of research or resist it, especially given the taboo-ness of animal sacrifices. It's been reassuring to have everyone I've talked to be supportive, regardless of their upbringing or background. I’d just like to invite and urge people who have an alternative relationship with animals to talk about it more and trust that the broader environmental and animal justice community will receive it with care.
