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
Diaspora After Dark
Thursday, October 30, 2025
6:00 PM – 9:00 PM CDT
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Theater Mu Studio & Community Room
755 Prior Ave. N
Saint Paul, MN 55104
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Join The SEAD Project, Exposed Brick Theatre, and Theater Mu for a night of Southeast Asian spooky storytelling, community connection, and performances!
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We’ll start the night by thinking about the supernatural and the paranormal—both in stories that have been passed down to us as well as our own experiences. Then over a community dinner, we’ll share our memories and work on turning them into short performances through collaboration and guided acting sessions. All attendees are invited to participate as an audience member, performer, or both! To get into the Halloween spirit even more, come dressed as your spookiest Asian spirit for a chance to win prizes.
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This event is free, but attendance is capped to 40 members, so register today!
This event is in partnership with
PAST EVENTS
Cambodian Heritage Day
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Saturday, September 27, 2025
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Oak Grove Middle School
Bloomington, MN 55431
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This event is in partnership with
Memories of Abundance:
The Diasporic Journey of Southeast Asians in Minnesota
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
Liberal Arts Engagement Hub
Pillsbury Hall, University of Minnesota
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This event was in partnership with:
THE FULL ABUNDANCE CAMPAIGN
Abundance Altar
The Abundance Altar is a mobile, ever-evolving tribute to our shared journey.
As the centerpiece of our 50th programming, the altar is a gathering point for storytelling sessions. Community members are invited to contribute photos, mementos, and offerings that honor the people and histories that shaped us.
Storytelling Collection
This series of first-person storytelling exchanges will center the personal experiences of SEA communities, capturing accountings of migration, adaptation, and renewal since their family’s first arrival in Minnesota, and how individual experiences have shaped community identities and contributed to Minnesota’s cultural and historical landscape.
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We’re collecting these first-person accounts and preserving them in five languages: English, Hmong, Khmer, Lao, and Vietnamese. Through transcription and translation, we’re making our stories more accessible and preserving our heritage languages.
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Select stories will then be featured in a public exhibition and an interactive digital storytelling map.
Digital Storytelling Archive
Our Digital Storytelling Archive will be a living breathing account of our communities’ journey here to America, an attempt to forever cement and preserve our communities’ story through video, photo, and collected stories.
These stories will be compiled into a historically accurate and chronological timeline and made accessible via an online platform.
Exhibition:
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To close out our 50th programming, we’ll host an exhibition that brings together the altar, the stories, and the spirit of everything we’ve created together throughout this programming.
This final event will be both a celebration and a call forward, reminding us of how far we’ve come, and what’s still ahead.
The Significance of 50
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 this multi-leveled project of art and storytelling.
Inheritance for the Future
Our hope is to connect the Southeast Asian community to our culture and history, tracing experiences from arrival in Minnesota to the current generations in the state, reflecting on how histories still reverberate today and how they can inform our future. By collecting first-person narratives from our community, capturing their lived experiences of immigration and building community in Minnesota, we will be preserving oral histories before they are lost with our elders, while also providing an opportunity for younger generations to engage with and define the role of these stories in their lives.
Cultivating in Minnesota
Minnesota history would not be complete without the strong and varied contributions of Southeast Asians. The 50th is an important milestone to reflect on their acts of resilience and the lives they've built here. ​Additionally, 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.
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 this 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 in the state, reflecting on how histories still reverberate today and how they can inform our future. By collecting first-person narratives from our community, capturing their lived experiences of immigration and building community in Minnesota, we will be preserving oral histories before they are lost with our elders, while also providing an opportunity for younger generations to engage with and define the role of these stories in their lives.
Minnesota history would not be complete without the strong and varied contributions of Southeast Asians. The 50th is an important milestone to reflect on their acts of resilience and the lives they've built here. ​Additionally, 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.
THANK YOU TO OUR FUNDERS
This project has been financed in part with funds provided by the State of Minnesota through the Minnesota Historical Society from the Arts & Cultural Heritage Fund.
