LEGACY: Leadership Flows Through Pacyinz Lyfoung’s Veins

As we celebrate Asian American Stories this month, we take a look back at the December 2004 story “Leadership Flows Through Her Veins,” by Ka Vang

 

Some members of the Hmong community would say Pacyinz Lyfoung has been shouting for the past 10 years. She doesn’t agree.

“When everything is quiet and you speak softly, it sounds like you are yelling,” explained Lyfoung, a St. Paul-based Asian women’s rights advocate. “She is different from other Hmong women activists because she is not afraid to take chances, speaking up when others won’t.”

Labeled a “radical” because of her tireless work promoting women’s rights and domestic abuse issues in the Hmong community, Lyfoung doesn’t mind a bit. It is in her blood to help others, she said. After all, her maternal grandfather is General Vang Pao, the man responsible for overseeing the Hmong army for the United States during the Secret War in Laos. Her paternal grandfather, Touby Lyfoung, was the first Hmong man appointed to the Laotian King’s Council, the equivalent of a Council of Ministers.

“I come from a family active in the community,” said Lyfoung. “It is part of my heritage. I feel responsible for the Hmong community.”

In fulfilling that responsibility, Lyfoung has compiled a long resume of community projects, including her work as a founding member of Minnesota’s first battered women’s shelter offering culturally and linguistically specific services for Asian women and children. The House of Peace shelter, located between St. Paul and Minneapolis, is run by Asian Women United of Minnesota, a St. Paul-based nonprofit. Its mission is to end violence against women and children. Lyfoung was the first executive director.

“There were gaps in the system and we realized that battered Asian women and children were not being served,” she said. “It was great knowing that we were starting something new.”

Although the shelter officially opened in February 2001, after Lyfoung had left the organization, she was critical in establishing and stabilizing the organization with successful fundraising and program development, as well as community organizing.

She was involved with the Hmong Women’s Action Team, which among other community organizing activities, recognized Hmong women leaders. She was also one of the Hmong Minnesota delegates to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September 1995.

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed. In 1998, Lyfoung was selected as a fellow to the Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute, and she received an Action Award from the Black Indian Hispanic Asian Women. In 1999 she was awarded the Saint Paul Companies’ Leadership in Neighborhood grant.

“She is different from other Hmong women activists because she is not afraid to take chances, speaking up when other won’t,” said Bryan Thao Worra, who has worked with Lyfoung on several community projects. “Sometimes this makes her a very unpopular person because she is rocking the boat and the old boys club doesn’t like it, but she continues.”

Although she is proud and respectful of her Hmong roots, Lyfoung has never played by the rules of the traditional Hmong patriarchal society. Instead, she has done things her way. She was one of the first Hmong people, man or woman, to get her Juris Doctor, graduating in 1994 from the University of Minnesota Law School. And at age 35, when most of her peers are mothers, wives and even grandmothers, she has never been married and has no children. Yet she has no regrets.

“I could have chosen that path for myself, but found it was more important for me to be the mistress of my own destiny and chartering new territories, than go what others thought was the expected and only way, both as a woman and a Hmong.”

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