Star Tribune
A Hmong’s family journey takes them to the banks of Plum Creek
WALNUT GROVE, MINN. – Gao Vang smiles shyly as a woman in a pioneer-style floral dress approaches her ticket counter on a rainy afternoon, hoping to learn about a young girl who lived in a little house on the prairie here 150 years ago.
Vang works a summer job at the gift shop of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum, a veritable mecca of Americana. She hands the woman and her family their tickets and directs them toward the exhibits — the covered wagon, the little red school house and memorabilia from the Hollywood stars in the “Little House on the Prairie” TV show.
Vang, a 14-year-old Hmong American girl, said she loves talking to these visitors who come to her small town in rural Minnesota from all over the world — from Japan, from France, from across America. Later this week, celebrities from the 1970s TV show will arrive in Walnut Grove for the 50th anniversary celebration, including cast members such as Dean Butler and Alison Arngrim, who played the antagonistic Nellie Oleson.
They make the pilgrimage here for Laura Ingalls Wilder, who wrote the series of now-famous books, fictionalized but based on her life on the frontier, that made Walnut Grove famous. Vang is a fan of the books, she said, with its themes on the importance of family and self-sufficiency.
In the books, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s family comes to Walnut Grove as her father searches for a parcel of fertile land. Charles Ingalls brought the family from Wisconsin to New Ulm, Minn., which he thought was too crowded, a town history says. He decided to keep moving, bringing his family to Walnut Grove, where he purchased a sod dugout on the banks of Plum Creek.
A century and a half later, Gao Vang’s family, like Laura Ingalls Wilder’s, would come to Walnut Grove in search of a better life, as part of a story that echoes the town’s past and present.
Journey to Plum Creek
Her father, Ger Vang, brought his family to Walnut Grove after a long journey that began in Laos more than 40 years ago.
Ger Vang is 57, although he is unsure of his exact age. Memories of his youth visibly pain him. Death and bombings is how he describes it. During the Cold War, the U.S. secretly armed Hmong militias in Laos to fight communists in southeast Asia. Then U.S. forces withdrew in 1973, leading to massacres of those who helped them. Ger Vang wound up in a refugee camp in Thailand and came to America as part of a wave of immigration in 1982, supported by Lutheran church organizations.
He arrived in St. Paul as a teenager with little understanding of English, Ger Vang recalled. In the coming years, he’d get a job driving elders in the Hmong community to their doctor appointments and translating for them. He’d meet his wife, Ka Ying Yang, and they’d have eight children together.
But the pair wanted to raise their children somewhere quieter than in St. Paul. They feared their children would follow the path of other Hmong teens by dropping out of school or joining gangs. Ger Vang feared he escaped the violence back home only to find another kind of danger in America. He said he asked friends and relatives where the family should go. They told him to go to Walnut Grove.
Somewhere safe
Walnut Grove saw an influx of Hmong residents in the early 2000s. Only one person was listed as being solely of Asian descent in 2000, but that number would jump to 305 a decade later, according to an account of the Hmong community by local historian Daniel Peterson.
Today the town of about 734 residents is 43% Asian and 22% foreign born, according to the latest census data from 2022. Walnut Grove has a Hmong grocery store on Main Street, with a mural on the side depicting Laura Ingalls Wilder and a Hmong girl in traditional attire.
The Hmong families that first came to Walnut Grove, like Ger Vang, said they were drawn by inexpensive real estate and a desire to raise their children somewhere safe.
Gao’s mother, Ka Ying Yang, 43, is a paraprofessional at the local school. When the Hmong community first moved to Walnut Grove in the early 2000s, there were a few reported incidents of frostiness by longtime residents, including an anonymous letter that suggested that the newcomers should leave.
But Yang said the town has welcomed her family since they arrived in 2018. “I feel safe here. Everyone knows each other,” she said.
Not all of her children like the small-town feel of Walnut Grove. The second-oldest child, Mau Vang, 15, said he misses the family’s home in St. Paul, where there were more people and more things to do. Many children of the original Hmong families who moved here in the early 2000s have left for larger cities for school or better work, a dynamic that has bedeviled many rural communities.
Gao Vang, for her part, said she likes how everyone knows each other in Walnut Grove. She said she’s encountered some racist teasing by other schoolchildren. But when this happens, she has friends who can talk with her in the Hmong language, she said.
She plans to enroll in a Hmong language program at school next year and hopes one day to be an emergency medical technician and save lives.
On any given day, Ger Vang can be found puttering in his garden 5 miles outside town, past the dugout where Laura Ingalls Wilder and her family once lived. Well-known around town as a good gardener, he and his children this year are growing squash, cucumber, cilantro, eggplant and corn, which they sell at farmer’s markets across southwest Minnesota.
Not many Hmong residents participate in Little House on the Prairie events in Walnut Grove, such as an annual pageant or this weekend’s 50th anniversary cast reunion.
Gao Vang’s parents said they’re proud that their daughter works at the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum.
Her mother hopes she can be an example for others in the Walnut Grove Hmong community. “Hopefully, it will inspire more Hmong people to join in,” Yang said.
Ger Vang joked that he is happy that his daughter makes more money at her part-time summer job than he did at full-time jobs when he first came to America.
“I just say I’m lucky I come to the right country, you know?” Ger Vang said. “The best country in the world.”
Star Tribune
Special counsel Smith asks court to pause appeal seeking to revive Trump’s classified documents case
WASHINGTON — Special counsel Jack Smith asked a court Wednesday to pause prosecutors’ appeal seeking to revive the classified documents case against President-elect Donald Trump in light of the Republican’s presidential victory.
Smith’s team has been evaluating how to wind down the classified documents and the federal 2020 election interference case in Washington before Trump takes office because of longstanding Justice Department policy that says sitting presidents cannot be prosecuted.
The case accusing Trump of hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate had been seen as the most legally clear-cut of the four indictments against Trump, given the breadth of evidence that prosecutors say they had accumulated. That included the testimony of close aides and former lawyers, and because the conduct at issue occurred after Trump left the White House in 2021 and lost the powers of the presidency.
But U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the case in July, ruling that Smith was illegally appointed by the Justice Department. Smith had appealed her ruling to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals before Trump’s presidential win last week over Vice President Kamala Harris.
Prosecutors asked the 11th Circuit in a court filing Wednesday to pause the appeal to ”afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy.” Smith’s team said it would ”inform the Court of the result of its deliberations” no later than Dec. 2.
The judge overseeing the federal case in Washington accusing Trump of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election canceled all upcoming deadlines in the case last week after Smith’s team made a similar request.
Smith is expected to leave his post before Trump takes office, but special counsels are expected to produce reports on their work that historically are made public, and it remains unclear when such a document might be released.
First, they must live in St. Paul. Then, their incomes must be no more than 400% of current Federal Poverty Guidelines — about $120,000/year for a family of four — or their medical debt must be 5% or more of their annual income. Also, only debt owed to participating providers like hospitals will qualify for the program.
“Health is not only about buildings, hospitals, or clinics — health care is about meeting the needs of patients where they are and doing whatever we can to improve health outcomes and decrease cost,” Fairview Health Services President and CEO James Hereford said in a statement.
Undue Medical Debt CEO and President Allison Sesso also issued a statement, which read, in part: “Medical debt is a psychological burden, in addition to a financial one, that can cause patients to avoid necessary care.”
She added: “Simply having medical debt creates stress which undermines people’s health.”
Officials said national medical debt has reached about $220 billion and affects more than 100 million Americans. About 54% of insured adults carry medical debt, officials said, while 41% of people without insurance face even greater challenges, often delaying necessary care in order to pay for food and housing.
In Minnesota, the Medical Debt Fairness Act that recently went into effect bans medical debt from being reported to credit reporting agencies. It also ensures medical providers cannot withhold medical care despite unpaid debt. St. Paul and Undue Medical Debt officials said they hope to partner with the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office to explore ways to build on the Debt Fairness Act.
Orono City Council Member Matt Johnson resigned Tuesday, putting the city on track to replace four of its five elected leaders in 2025.
Johnson, who had two more years left in his term, submitted a one-sentence letter to the city Tuesday asking that his resignation be accepted that day. Reached by the Star Tribune Wednesday, Johnson declined to comment on why he chose to resign.
His departure comes one week after local elections, in which voters selected a new mayor and two new council members to take over next year. Former Orono School Board Chair Bob Tunheim will replace Dennis Walsh as mayor in January. New Council Members Steve Persian and Jacqueline Ricks will replace Council Members Richard Crosby and Maria Veach.
City leaders will need to hold a special election next year to fill Johnson’s seat and will need to figure out how to fill the vacancy until then, Orono City Administrator/City Engineer Adam Edwards said during Tuesday’s council meeting. He said more details on that process will be presented at a meeting later this month.
The political turnover is happening at a time when Orono is grappling with contentious issues, including the future of its fire department.
Orono is home to about 8,000 people. It borders a portion of Lake Minnetonka and surrounds the city of Long Lake. The two cities are locked in a lawsuit and face a trial next year, as Long Lake officials accuse Orono of trying to poach their firefighters after Orono broke off to form its own department.
In a court filing this week, attorneys representing Long Lake asked a judge to postpone some court dates, writing “we are cautiously optimistic that the parties may be able to reach resolution of their dispute in the new year, once the new Council is in place.”
