In Winter 2026 ASA 2: Contemporary Issues of Asian Americans speaker series, Pheej Lauj (Pheng Lor), Project Manager and Researcher of the Hmong Agrarian Diasporas Project at UC Berkeley and former Director of the Cultural Heritage Center in Fresno, joined the class as an invited speaker to talk about Hmong history, public health, and the cultural significance of herbal and spiritual practices. The lecture was titled “Hmong Agrarian Livelihoods: Culture, Medicine, and Diasporas.” More than 200 undergraduate students from a range of disciplines─engineering, veterinary medicine, biological sciences, humanities and social sciences─also participate in the course, searching for a great opportunity to interact with a diversity of experiences and current issues that are affecting Asian American communities.

Lor demonstrated how Hmong history, agricultural traditions, and healing practices are still relevant to the lives of Hmong people in the United States on both the historical experience and the present day. Lor began by placing the Hmong community within a larger story of migration and diaspora. He traced Hmong migration from China down to Southeast Asia and then to the United States, Canada, France, and Australia after the Vietnam War and the Secret War in Laos. He stressed the importance of oral history, textiles, and farming culture as a way of keeping and telling cultural history; Lor reflected on his own childhood and his introduction to farming in Fresno, California. From his own experience and examples from his research, he showed how agricultural livelihoods have been central to Hmong identity across different generations and geographies and also as a link to community and home.

A lot of the lecture was devoted to Hmong herbal medicine and holistic health and healing. Lor introduced students to the term tshuaj ntsuab─green medicine─and how medicinal plants have been used for physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being for centuries. He explained the traditional postpartum herbal chicken soup called tshuaj qaib and how it is associated with Hmong culture of childbirth, recovery, and care. And rather than food and medicine being two separate spheres, Lor stressed that many Hmong healing practices are holistic in the sense that nourishment, community support, spirituality, and health are all connected. He also discussed how these practices are still evolving in diaspora communities where practices of culturally relevant food and healing are incorporated into contemporary health care.

Students asked questions about preserving culture, traditional medicine, gender, and spirituality during the Q&A session. Many Hmong students shared their own family experiences with herbal remedies and shamanic practices, which led to a discussion about the intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge and the difficulty of maintaining language and traditions for younger generations. Some students wondered if Hmong healing would provide us a perspective on women’s health that is often ignored in Western medicine. Lor noted that many cultures have good health traditions and called for a recognition of different forms of knowledge rather than a clash of Indigenous and Western wisdom. Students also expressed interest in Hmong language education, agricultural programs, and community resources, and Lor said there was still a lot of work to be done to develop Hmong studies curricula, language revitalization programs, and community-based research projects. The discussion was concluded by noting how cultural knowledge is needed as well as new experiences for younger generations in the history and traditions of the communities that they’re connected to.

About the Speaker

Pheej Lauj (Pheng Lor) 

Born and raised in Fresno, Pheej’s background spans community organizing and non-profit leadership, as well as research and higher education administration. He spent a decade in the Bay Area and Utah before returning to Fresno in 2024. Pheej is dedicated to cultural, agricultural, and environmental activation and progress, and is passionate about bridging resource gaps to underserved and climate-vulnerable communities. Pheej currently serves as the Workforce Initiatives Manager for Rising Sun Center for Opportunity, developing climate-forward workforce and leadership opportunities for early career youth across the Central Valley. He earned his bachelor's in Conservation and Resource Studies from UC Berkeley and his Environmental Humanities graduate degree from the University of Utah.