2025 marks 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War, the end of the Secret War in Laos, and the beginning of the Khmer Rouge takeover—all deeply significant turning points of our vast community's stories.
In honor of this anniversary, we’ll be hosting a series of programming that commemorate this landmark occasion. From storytelling collection, to a mobile altar, to a digital archive of SEA stories, we’ll be honoring the past, commemorating the present, and illuminating the future of our community with our 50th programming.
We ask our community members to bring with them their stories to be commemorated by future generations, and to bring offerings and memorabilia to honor family members. Items will be preserved for a future exhibition. At the altar, participants will find prompts and tools to help guide and record their conversations.
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Stories shared during the sessions will be transcribed and translated into our four heritage languages to support accessibility and preservation of our stories, which will then be available to access in our future Digital Storytelling Archive.
Details on upcoming events and opportunities to engage with this work will be announced throughout the year. Keep up with our social media, newsletter​, or this webpage!
UPCOMING EVENTS
July 29th, 2025
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Liberal Arts Engagement Hub
Pillsbury Hall, University of Minnesota
310 Pillsbury Drive SE, Room 120
Minneapolis, MN 55455​​
Parking available at Church Street Garage. Bring your parking ticket and we will provide you a voucher to cover up to 4 hours of your parking.
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For more information on parking and directions, click here.
This event is in partnership with:
The 50th anniversary is a significant anniversary that has cemented our legacy as diaspora and refugee individuals, but together this experience has united us in resilience, bravery, and care. Over the next two years, SEAD will work to gather, preserve, and elevate the stories of our community through a multi-leveled project of art and storytelling.
Our hope is to connect the Southeast Asian community to our culture and history, tracing experiences from arrival in Minnesota to the current generations here in the state, through community stories, while also reflecting on how histories are still present, and how this narrative change can influence our futures moving forward. By collecting first-person narratives from our community, capturing their lived experiences of immigration, arrival in Minnesota, and building community here, we will be able to collect these oral histories before they are lost with our elders, while also providing an opportunity for younger generations to engage with this history and what it means for their futures. Minnesota history would not be complete without the Southeast Asians stories who have contributed to Minnesota history through various ways. The 50th is an important milestone to reflect on their resilience and the lives that were built here.
In addition, through this narrative work, we aim to create more avenues to bridge academic knowledge and history with community grassroots efforts through stories and digital publications.
