Hello, everyone. Welcome to WFHR's Rapids Report for this May 1st, 2025.
Have your host, James here. We're joined right now by UW Extension's
bilingual community health worker, Kazooa Tao. Kazooa, how you doing?
I'm doing good. How are you, James?
I'm doing all right. Most important question I'm going to ask. Did I get the name right?
You did.
Oh, that feels so good. It's a beautiful name. I want to get it right.
We appreciate you being here. And I personally always enjoy talking with you.
Anybody really at Extension, I always learn things and I know our audience does too.
But whenever we can talk about subjects that I feel like are gray areas that
if I can say just speaking for myself as a multi-cultural person that moved
to Central Wisconsin 20, 30 years ago and kind of before some of the conversations
are being had that we're having now, I'm very appreciative of this.
I love having these conversations and I love the way our communities have become
about this and are so open to these things. And not for nothing, everybody.
There's some really cool stuff going on with our different cultures
and different things going on in Wisconsin here.
And we really get to put a light to some of that.
And today one of the things we're going to be talking about is another side of this.
And because I appreciate if you took the lead on this,
because you're going to know this subject better than I will.
But I'm looking forward to talking about it with you.
Yeah, definitely, James.
So something that we've started talking within not just the
monk community, but the community as a whole is the mental health piece of the world.
We haven't really talked about it. And within the last few years,
it's starting to come up more and more often.
And tied with the mental health piece of it, especially within the monk community
because it's still so stigmatized.
We always say it's because of the intergenerational trauma within the monk community
because there's so much in the history of the monk folks
that they never really truly had time.
And just the skills, I want to say.
The skills to really just mourn or grieve or to really talk about the feelings of things
and just to have those open conversations, right?
So this is one thing. This is one part of the conversation that I can come to
with a little bit of information or a little bit of feeling and experience
because when I was little, something that my mother's aunt, my influence,
taught us about was the feelings of guilt or some of the emotions you have as a Jewish person.
And some of the remnants of the Holocaust or even the plagues or another time
that the Jews, I mean, you look at every single era of human history,
Jews were persecuted and Jews were extinguished at thousands,
at the numbers of thousands and everything.
That's going to have a trickle-down effect on the human brain and human DNA.
This is science. So I'm speaking of one specific group that I know about certainly
but it makes perfect sense that any creed, any group that's really is going to have experienced something.
Now on an American level, on this level, it's incredibly unique and different for the monk population
as it is for every group but speaking specifically for us here in the states
and even in here in Wisconsin when it comes to the monk community.
Oh yeah. And you really hit it on the spot.
I always say that it comes back down to, it's the skills that those who suffered, right?
They're the ones, they're the ones that experience that trauma.
But then they learn these skills and they unintentionally pass down those skills or those behaviors.
And so, future generations are affected by it.
And like I said, it's not intentional, it's unintentional.
And then eventually, I always like to give an example of my husband.
He knows I talk about him a lot just because he's my greatest example of this intergenerational trauma
and how it affects just the community as a whole, right?
And so within the monk community, males are dominant, right?
But they're like the pedestal, the head of the family.
And so, they're not supposed to talk about feelings.
They're not supposed to be showing those feelings.
And that's just something that's been ingrained in the monk community for many, many generations.
And especially because of the secret war in those, they just made it, I want to say 10 times worse, because so many folks were,
some of the many of the males were pulled into the war as young boys, young teenagers, young men, right?
And so, when death did happen within the family, these little boys had to just grow up and be the head of the household.
They had to be the man and take care of the family.
And so, they never truly had time to be kids.
They never truly had time to mourn or grieve.
And so, they, like, feelings just kind of went away.
And so, then it's so difficult for them to start having those conversations now.
But then, so going back to my husband, because of all of this, like, I understand and I recognize these signs of trauma that's being passed down to him.
And then, like I said, it's unintentional, but just with our own children, I see those same behaviors going on.
So, having those open conversation that opened dialogue with him, and he's recognizing those signs too, because as a community, we want to stop passing on this trauma that happened, not even to his generation, not to him, but his parents and his grandparents.
And so, we want to stop this trauma from continuing on to our kids and our grandkids and just the future generations in the monk community.
Trying to end a cycle is difficult at many levels.
But I think a lot of families can speak to a point whether they noticed it or not.
Oh, here's one where we improve this in our family.
It was like this for decades and decades, and this generation changed that.
And maybe going forward, it'll stay that way.
That change will take place in everything.
I always look for ways to connect people to something and say people out there listening are maybe not mong or even Jewish or something along those lines.
But boy, some of the things you said there, especially talking with my father who is Catholic and Italian, I speak incredibly to that generation of these Gary Cooper type, we call it, the strong quiet type, that if you have a feeling, you just bury that.
And there's no judgment from either of us with any of this stuff. You hit it on the head before.
You can't blame for somebody that doesn't know how to handle something. There's no skill set. There's no playbook for these things.
For our generations, let alone for the older generations, it didn't really didn't have a playbook for anything.
It was kind of just the way you did it. You learned from your, you know, the people that raised you.
And that's the way they did it because that's where their ancestors did it and everything.
Going back to what you were talking about with mental health, we have done an amazing job as a society flipping that script and doing a 180 where now we talk about these things and it's great.
But now is when the real work comes in. It's not enough to just say I support mental health.
Now we got to look in the mirror, we got to look at our community, look at strangers, look at ways that we can give each other grace.
And this is a key one here of understanding that sometimes trauma is not even our own. It's been passed down to us.
Oh, definitely. This trauma that we've talked about, it's definitely passed down and sometimes it could definitely be you personally experienced it, right?
And it doesn't have to be just about the monk community. It's the community as a whole. Everybody experiences trauma sometimes in their life.
And if you don't have that recognition that it's there and you don't have that open dialogue, even within yourself or just with others, it's really difficult to move on and create a future that doesn't pass on these behaviors this trauma, the cycle, like you said earlier.
And so it's really, really important, especially just as a community to find that help, whether it's a professional, whether it's just having a circle of friends or a support group around you that they might not truly understand what you're going through, but they're there to listen and they're there to support you no matter what.
And so it's truly important to have all of that regardless of what kind of trauma you're going through, whether it's you personally through generations, whatever it is, right? It's truly, truly important to have that support system somewhere somehow, some shape, some form.
Yeah, you touch on another great thing here too, because we hear the word trauma a lot. And so many of us, if not the majority of us out there have some kind of personal trauma or past trauma.
But the specifics of that type of trauma are very unique to the individual and to the way you heal from it or grow from it or however you'd like to word it. This is something that therapy taught me. I did not think about this. I thought, trauma, okay, one blanket that fits everything.
There's very different trauma for very different things and certainly how you heal from that is going to be different. So seeking that help being, being willing to take in that help is such a great first step and such a brave first step.
One of the things that I feel like we're getting more and more, especially with the younger generation of realizing the strongest people are not the ones that keep things quiet or bury things are the ones that face these things and be brave about them.
And that right there, more power to everybody out there doing those things and in doing that.
One of the things we have an opportunity to do here with you, because who is talking specifically about the monk culture and monk generation. And I feel like one of the things that stops people or keeps them from being empathetic to these things, because I think the majority of people, if not everybody wants to be, is just not knowing, not understanding.
Can we get into a little bit of the historical context that the root causes of some of this? You've already touched on some of it.
Yes, definitely. So I always talk about how pre-secret war, the monk folks originally were from southern China and just through war in itself, in southern China, the monk were displaced.
And so that's kind of where we always say the trauma began. We had our own land, we had our own areas, we had our own families and villages.
But because of the wars that happened many, many centuries ago, thousands and thousands of years ago, that pretty much triggered displacement within the monk community.
And so we were moved down to Southeast Asia, which was great. And they were able to live and thrive in the mountains of Laos and in Vietnam and so many other areas there.
However, with the Vietnam War, because the monk knows those mountains and knew the jungles, they were recruited by the CIA.
And so they were pretty much there to support and the American soldiers within so many different things, just because they knew the country so well, the back roads.
And so because of that, they were seen as an enemy of the Lao Petal, right? Of the Vietnamese kindness.
And so when the Americans withdrew in 1973, it really caused a lot of anguish within the monk community because when they withdrew in 1975, because in 1973 they had signed a peace treaty and all of that beautiful stuff, right?
Which is great, but then the monk alleged vulnerable in their villages and their homes because they had nobody to protect them.
And the communist Vietnamese knew that they had supported the Americans. And so because of that, it was the beginning of the widespread persecution and the violence.
And then eventually the forced displacement, right? So many of these folks had to make the terrible trek through the jungles and the mountains and try to flee to Thailand where there were refugee camps.
And even though some of the families made it, some of the folks made it to the refugee camps, it still wasn't the greatest conditions.
It was a lot of people in these little community homes. And so it was really packed. And there weren't enough resources overall. And even when they did make it, they never truly had the time to mourn those that were lost along the way.
I hear stories from my parents about how so many of the people that they traveled with either had passed away due to illnesses or they were killed or just so many different things, right?
But they had to leave those bodies behind. They never had a true burial. If you go now, so many folks are going back to Laos now.
They really don't know where to find these bodies or where to really mourn or or just to find that like I want to say that sense of closure, right?
And so there really is no closure because the bodies are left on the side of the mountains or next to your tree or wherever it was. And so because of that, like that continues on with that trauma that we talk about, right?
We don't we don't talk about the trauma because sometimes that silence is so much better than having that open conversation because I might have to relive that trauma and I don't want to.
And so so many of our older folks have been silent for so so many years. But right now the conversations are happening.
It's it's staggering to me sometimes to see the parallels between certain creeds or or or faiths and all these things. And to hear so much of the the among journey is so similar to the Jewish one.
It's just odd sometimes when you think of this. And I think I've also Native Americans and in other groups and stuff. And there's such similarities there that I hope it creates empathies between all these groups and everything and understanding while also support.
And support from everybody because while support from these people that I mentioned or any ethnic ethnicity really, I think that's understandable. We need everybody to be a part of this and everybody to care about these things, especially people that it does not maybe directly affect because your voice is so impactful in the in getting help and getting attention and awareness to these topics and spreading more and more of this information.
I want people to know about this. Certainly it applies to and can help. But I think everybody in fact I know everybody could be benefited by this. The information that I've talked about with when it comes to generational trauma or any of this stuff with veterans oftentimes comes up and the way we can help each other with these things.
And this is a person who has given their freedom and stuff for our country. And yet and I'm talking about something that happened to generations ago as somebody and yet we're able to find a common bond and some commonality and some healing in that.
There's there's a big part of what we're talking about today that I think can be done with that as well when we're talking about PTSD or anything else.
Another part of this that I think is really integral to the conversation is the transmission of trauma across generations. Again, you've done a great job talking about this a little bit.
And my God, you're doing a great job just in general on this topic. It's such a big topic. When it comes to that, the transmission of this. Can we touch on that a little bit more?
Yeah, so with the trauma, like I said, I like giving examples of things that are more personal or from people that I know of because I can have that conversation about, oh, this is what generational trauma looks like and these are the effects.
But when it's real life situations where we've seen it personally or we've heard of these these instances, right? I feel like it's more people are like, oh, they're humans. They're actually the ones that going are going through this trauma. And so it's real, right?
And so, especially within the monk community, it's very trauma's transmitted through so many different ways. And like I said earlier, we don't, within the monk community, we don't talk about feelings, right? Emotions are like, we just don't talk about emotions.
We don't talk about the feelings of isolation. We know that when we're not talking about feelings, we're isolating ourselves from just our families, our communities, other people as a whole. But because of that, we just don't talk about it because it's what's ingrained in us.
And so, so many of these things are, like I said earlier, unintentionally driven to our children. And so unconsciously, like our children are absorbing the fear driven behaviors, right?
There are super cautious about everything you're there doing just because that's kind of how mom or dad or grandparents were doing it. The avoidance of risk, right?
They're afraid to take that next risk, the next step because what if? And it's always living with the what ifs. And so we need to change that mindset and say, okay, if I did this, there's this possibility. So trying to look at the positive side of things.
And then something else that has been really difficult is just because of, I feel like just because of how the CIA and the American soldiers pulled out of those that mistrust of Americans. And it's getting so much better, but a lot of the older generation, they still have that, I don't know if I should trust this authority.
I don't know if I should trust that person or not because of previous experiences overseas, that trauma and that experiences carrying over. And so all of these behaviors are trickling down to their children, to their grandkids, and maybe even great, great grandkids if they don't recognize those behaviors, right?
And so it's so difficult. And then something that we always joked about growing up was our parents always wanted us to become doctors and lawyers because you know what, that's American dream, right?
And so that pressure to do amazing and become a doctor, sometimes the parents pushed their children way too much. And so it's to compensate for the lost opportunities from the war.
And so and from the displacement. And so then it's, are they truly helping their children or great grand children or just the future generations, right?
They're putting all this pressure on them.
Kazoo, if you wouldn't mind, and gosh, I appreciate you really going through the, in the depths with this one with us, can we talk about how the community has responded to this a little bit, the response, the resilience to this topic?
Yeah, definitely. So within the month community, I feel that I know that it's the trauma, right? It's becoming more recognized and people are starting to really start having those conversations, not just within themselves, but with others.
In the community. And so, and it could definitely be by just like storytelling or by giving many lessons, right?
So there are so many different organizations like the Mung Institute, based in Madison, they have these little mini workshops for our, for our children, for the future generations to learn more about, about what our culture is and what our history is about, right?
So that there's not that huge gap between our parents and our grandparents and the future generations, so that there's more of that understanding overall.
And so then we also have, I feel the other thing is that the younger generations, they're becoming more vocal. And so that definitely is helping with the stigma behind mental health and just with the trauma between the different generations, right?
They're, they're having those conversations now. And so these young, young folks now are moving forward. They're stepping forward and trying to blend in cultural norms with the new, like modern approaches, right?
And so that right there, I feel that is a huge step forward within our Mung community as a whole. Just being able to understand that, you know what, we can still hold our traditional values and our culture.
But we can move forward with society as well. And so that's really great.
And something else that we, when I talk about we, we talk about the community, right?
So the Mung American Center in, in Wassa, they're having the geeky project and it's a project where the Mung veterans are coming together and they are recording their stories.
And then there's, it's being transcribed and made into a booklet or a video or, or there's still a lot of specifics to work out. But the stories are being preserved for future generations because our elders are getting older.
And so we want to educate these younger folks and just understand why, why the older generation, why they're the way they are.
And why they had to live with all this trauma. And so, you know, it's just all these little things that are happening.
And then just trying to preserve the, the history and the culture while understanding and having those, open conversation that open dialogue about trauma and how we can support one another.
It's a difficult thing to balance, but it's, it's getting more and more figured out in an organic way, many ways, by the younger generations.
I want to piggyback on what you're saying and certainly credit into families like you and your husband that are doing the groundwork on this stuff right now.
While also, I want to credit a lot of the older generation as well that is seeking help, that is reaching out, that is trying.
It's so difficult to do for us in our generations and everything, let alone the older generations, I find it so cool and so brave when we hear and we see these stories.
And a lot of that includes maybe not sitting down with a big group of people, but doing some of the things you're talking about and sharing their stories and having them recorded so that future generations can understand more and more of the work that was put in and where we came from.
This all started with generations of moments and time and everything and handed down stuff.
It's going to take generations to fix it, but I think one of the positives of this is that it is fixable, that this is something that we can do, that we put the time and the effort into and I maintain this.
I don't believe that in the whole universe you're going to find anything stronger than the human spirit.
And what we can do when we put our minds together and when we come together, whether it's as a community or as a whole, and kind of going with that, moving forward, healing, breaking the cycle, Kazooa.
I wanted to touch on that a little bit as well as the future and what to expect here with closing reflections on that.
As a monk community continues its journey of healing and empowerment, James, it's super important to embrace both not just our individual, but as a collective.
It's an effort that everybody has to be a part of.
Like I had said earlier, we need to make sure that we have those spaces, whether it's in a big group or small, one-on-one conversations so that they can share their histories, their experiences.
I have somebody that I've been working closely with and this person has actually was able to just cry and mourn something from 40, 50 years ago.
They just needed that time to actually do all of that, right?
So just making sure that you all create that space for them, but then also like making sure that we talk about our identity and preserving a culture and celebrating the resilience.
And it shouldn't just all be about trauma, it should be about all the wins too, because there's so many good things that came out of it as well.
And so then like something else that I've been working on really hard is we're in central Wisconsin, we're in a rural community, right?
So it's really hard to find mental health therapist.
Overall, but to find one that knows about the history and the culture of the monk folks is very difficult, but there are those out there who are willing to learn and willing to support the monk community.
And so it's been very empowering and very just eye-opening that there are folks out there who are willing to support this beautiful cause.
Yeah, to the individuals that are struggling with this or anything, I think one of the most beautiful parts of this, whether we're talking about your culture or mine or all cultures really, we're still here.
We're here and that means that somebody down the line kept this going, kept these stories being told so they could be repeated and remembered, kept our bloodlines alive so we could still be here.
This is a gift that we've been given, a humble one. And I think one of the best things we can do with it is again supporting each other being there for each other and healing as communities, as people, as whether it's as individuals or as communities and moving forward.
And we're able to do that a lot better with some of the information and some of the conversation we've had today, Kazoor. Thank you so much for that.
Yeah.
If people have fault questions if they'd like to know more about this, because to be honest with you gang, we scratched the surface of the subtopic.
I know we've been talking for half an hour, but we've really just scratched the surface of it.
So if people have fault questions or would like to know more, talk with you a little bit more about this, how can they reach you?
Yeah, James, if people do have conversations or they have questions, I am more than willing to come and have those conversations with you, whether it's a phone call in person.
You can call me at our extension office here in Wood County at 715-421-8440.
And I do a lot of presentations for the community, not just about the trauma, but about the monk culture as a whole, right?
So if you're a business or if you're an organization and you're like, hey, we want to know more about this, I'm definitely more than willing to come and talk to you about it, because this is the passion of mine.
I want to bring that awareness, not just about mental health, or about the generational trauma, but just about the monk folks here in Wood County, just because we are a huge part of the community.
And I want to continue having those conversations, because we will be here.
And I have a feeling this might be part one of two parts, where we get back together and talk a little bit more, especially where we get down to the really root of this as far as how individuals can help others.
And can not encourage you enough to reach out to Kazooa and find out how you can help out individually or as a group.
And there's such great work that can be done when we do it together. Thank you again for the time, Kazoo.
Yeah, thank you for having me, Gaby James.
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