murder (and racism?) in the northwoods
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Both the jury foreman and Wisconsin’s
Attorney General say race was not a factor in the conviction of Chai
Vang for murdering six Rice Lake, Wisconsin deer hunters. Last year’s
shootout between the Hmong hunter and a group of whites
over trespassing brought national attention to northern Wisconsin. But
an Oneida-Anishinaabe journalist and publisher says most tribal hunters
in the territory were willing to give Chai Vang the benefit of the
doubt. Nick Vander Puy from the Superior Broadcast Network reports.
click here for live stream broadcast of Wisconsin Public Radio reporter Gil Halstead talking about the need for language translation in trial.
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In southern Sawyer County where the murders occurred, the region is not far from the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Paul DeMain, Publisher of “News From Indian Country”, says tribal hunters have had similar, racially motivated confrontations, but, luckily the outcome was never so devastating.
“And it’s an area in the past that has been hunted by tribal hunters,some whom had had their tires punctured, cars vandalized while they’re out in the woods, in the same kind of confrontations over privately owned parcels of land, it’s mixed private and public ownership, so it’s sometimes difficult to ascertain exactly where you are.”
DeMain says the shootout territory is dangerous for tribal hunters.
“But after that particular confrontation they pulled out for the day. They just didn’t feel comfortable in the woods. They’ve known people to take potshots at’em, you know, just to kind of scare’em off.”
DeMain heard Chi Vang testify and says some doubt about the Hmong hunter defending himself.
“And once he got going, once the buttons were pushed, if there was a shot fired at him, he returned fire, being a military trained sniper, he decided that he was going to finish the job, this was it, it was either me or them, and it turned out to be them.”
Vang was convicted on all six counts of first degree intentional homicide and three counts of intentional homicide.
The following is a poem by Sandy Lyon, written after hearing the first news reports of the shooting. Lyon had been driving in the area of the shoot out and saw the trucks of family members of the dead hunters go racing down the county road.
“In My Brother’s Shoes”
a poem by Sandy Lyon
Imagine that you are only five feet tall,
You’re Asian
(and maybe look Indian)
and you find yourself lost in the woods, south of the Reservation,
surrounded by big white guys who are
shouting
“gook-chink- and “you f*@#ing Asian” at you
as they make you leave the spot
that you thought
was public land......and then one of them calls in reinforcements
on ATV’s
and then
a guy
raises
a gun
and aims it at you,
and
shoots
and misses you.
Then lets say that you have a small semi-automatic rifle with you, the inexpensive kind that small hunters like you carry, legally.
And let’s say that you were born in the jungles
in Laos
in ‘67
during the ‘Nam war
and let’s say that you are Hmong and your people are mountain people who hunt.
And then lets say that you had been trained in the US military.
And that gun in your hand is a military rifle.
And you feel you are in a lynching,
your own lynching.
And you are scared.
What might happen next............................
Web Design by Sandy Lyon
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