Members of the band Flyte Tyme, including Terry Lewis (middle center), Cynthia Johnson (bottom center), and Jellybean Johnson (back right), pose for a group photograph in their Halloween costumes. Captured by photographer Charles Chamblis circa 1980.

For details, view the photograph in our online collections database.

Pair of fine silver (>92.5% silver content) slip-on earrings made in a traditional Hmong style. The U-shaped loops curve under the wearer’s earlobes, ending in spirals behind the ears; the front sides of the earrings are decorated with silver cones with beading on their bases. Free-sliding rings on the U-shaped loops hold seven pendants of spiral wire each ending in two flat arrowhead shapes. The earrings were made in refugee camps in Thailand by a Hmong refugee and relative of May Yang. Yang brought the earrings to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1981.

For details, view the earrings in our online collections database.

Wooden top made in June of 1983 by Sying Yang, a Hmong immigrant to St. Paul, when he was 13 years old.

For details, view the top in our online collections database.

Rice cake tub made by Xiong Pao Yang, a resident of St. Paul’s Mcdonough Housing Projects, in 1984.  The tub was used by Yang’s relatives in the St. Paul and Minneapolis area until 1995. The making of glutinous rice cakes is a communal event for Hmong families in which multiple relatives gather together in a single place.

For details, view the tub in our online collections database.

Plastic box and laminated paper recipe cards used by cooks at the New Riverside Cafe in Minneapolis, Minnesota between 1980 and 1997.  The cards in front of the box display recipes for wild rice salad, vegan cinnamon rolls, and a “deluxe” calzone with cheese sauce.

The New Riverside Cafe was the first full-service vegetarian restaurant in Minneapolis and an early example of the cooperatively-owned and -operated business that flourished in the Twin Cities beginning in the 1970s.   The cafe closed its doors in 1997.

For details, view the recipe box in our online collections database.

Miniature version  of a Joseph Nicollet memorial sculpture cast by Paul Theodore Granlund in 1985.   The bronze statuette consists of a cylindrical base supporting a bronze likeness of geographer and explorer Joseph Nicollet (1786-1843) peering through a surveying instrument that frames his figure.  The full-size sculpture sits on the campus of Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, Minnesota.

Hmong paj (flower in English; pronounced “pa”) ornament made of plastic beads and embroidery floss. Ornaments of this type are typically hung in a doorway or from a ceiling. Made in St. Paul, Minnesota circa 1982 by May Yang.

For details, view the ornament in our online collections database.

Story cloth illustrating the participation of Hmong people in the Laotian Civil War (1953-1975), also known as the Secret War, and the subsequent Hmong genocide, resistance, exile in Thailand and emigration to the United States.  The scenes depicted on the cloth include the CIA-operated Laotian town of Long Chien as it appeared from 1967-1974; the flight of the Hmong from Laos into Thailand across the Mekong River; the refugee camp at Vinai; Hmong people studying English at Phanat Nikhom; and their arrival at and departure from a Bangkok airport.  The cotton cloth’s figures are embroidered; its border is appliqued.  Made in 1985.

For details, view the cloth in our online collections database.

American flag and case presented to Bruce Laingen on January 27, 1981, by President Ronald Reagan. Laingen, a native of Odin, Minnesota, was one of 52 United States citizens held in the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1981.

For details, view the flag in our online collections database.

Learn More:

• What’s New post on the Bruce Laingren papers
• Key to the City of Odin, Minnesota, given to Bruce Laingren

Monument used at Itasca State Park between 1975 and 1988 to mark the source of the Mississippi River at the outlet of Lake Itasca in Minnesota.  The monument consists of a partial tree trunk painted brown with a flat rectangular surface cut out on one side.  Text on the monument reads,

Here 1475 ft. above the ocean the mighty Mississippi begins to flow on its winding way 2552 miles to the Gulf of Mexico.

Learn more:

• Have Sticker, Will Travel: Minnesota State Park Stickers