A little background on the hunting massacre that recently took place in Wisconsin: given how the media is portraying this, you might think it°’s just a bunch of good old boys gone bad when in truth it’s simply a cultural expression of the Hmong. You see Chai Soua Vang, the person accused of the crime, is Hmong.

I first met the Hmong while in the central highlands of Buon Me Thuot, Vietnam. The Hmong are an ancient and very primitive people. They are fierce fighters and excellent hunters. They buy their wives and practice polygamy. If you simply brush against a married woman her husband will kill her for the transgression. If you want sex there are women in special long houses for that.

The Hmong do not understand the concept of private property. If they are somewhere you are not, they consider that place to be theirs, even if you own it. It’s culturally stupid. This is part of what happened in the hunting murders that took place in Wisconsin. Chai Vang was there before the other hunters were. Had these hunters been culturally aware of the Hmong, they would’ve know better than to ask him to leave.

This is why the Hmong in Oregon use AK-47’s to pick mushrooms in the mountains. And it’s why you had better move when you see them coming, even though you might have been there last year and it’s on public property.

When I worked with the Hmong in 1971, I was always amused that many of them still believe the world to be flat, even though the Green Beret had proved the world to be round in the middle 1960s. I guess it takes time for some things to sink in.

But, we can’t judge this. As any Democrat or liberal will tell you, all cultures are equal and no one culture is better than another. One thing you can be sure of is that Chai Vang will be civilized enough to cry racism.

James Coats

Oak Harbor