Honoring Pang Xiong Sirirathasuk Sikoun 1944-2020

Yuam tsum na zoo rau tib neeg, lawv thiaj lis hwm koj.

You must always do good for people, so they will respect you.

-Pang Xiong Sirirathasuk Sikoun

Pang Xiong Sirirathasuk Sikoun, 76, path-breaking Hmong craftsperson and community organizer, passed away on December 22, 2020 from COVID-19. Pang's Funeral & Burial Service took place on January 9, 2021.

The Sirirathasuk Sikoun Family invites you to attend a Memorial for Pang Xiong Sirirathasuk Sikoun: In Celebration of Her Life & Legacy on Saturday, August 27, 2022 from noon to 8 pm at the Kimberton Fire Company (Main Ballroom), 2276 Kimberton Road, Phoenixville, PA 19460. RSVP to [email redacted]

This GoFundMe campaign continues to help Pang's family cover medical bills, funeral, burial & memorial expenses. Every gift is meaningful! The Siririathasuk Sikoun Family are the sole recipients of this GoFundMe campaign. Pang's six sons & their families express their sincere gratitude for everyone's kindness & support.

Beloved and influential matriarch of a large extended family, Pang is regarded as a major force who sustained Hmong culture for generations of American-born Hmong community members, and introduced Hmong traditions to the wider national community. Dynamic, generous, brilliant, creative, open-hearted, traditional and forward-thinking, highly skilled in multiple media, and an industrious worker, Pang was an innovator in Hmong arts, culture, foodways, lifeways, and self-help/economic development strategies.

Pang was born June 7, 1944 in the mountains of northeast Laos in Xieng Khouang Province, the most heavily bombed place on earth. Her earliest memories and first three decades were shaped by war in the region.

When Pang was seven, her mother, Mao Vang, died. As the oldest of 14 children, Pang took on many responsibilities for the family. Pang’s father, Xia Kao Xiong, a traditional healer and leader, introduced his daughter to aspects of Hmong culture, ordinarily not shared with young daughters. From the women in the family, she learned to make traditional clothing and Hmong paj ntaub, delicately pieced and folded reverse appliqué that conveys Hmong history and culture.

By the time she was 10, Pang was fluent in Lao and Thai languages, helping her family sell produce and farm products to refugees from the escalating war in Laos. Pushed out of their home villages, Pang and her family evacuated to Pa Dong. Pang’s family worked at a farm nearby and she became a businesswoman, setting up a food stand along the roadside. Her first husband, Charoon Sirirathasuk, a handsome Thai paratrooper and medic serving the Royal Lao Army, regularly stopped by the stand. They were married on April 25, 1961. For 15 years, Pang lived in Sukhothai, Thailand, with Charoon’s family. Pang and Charoon had six young sons. Pang managed a home, farm, a successful restaurant business and did tailoring, while Charoon continued to serve in the Royal Lao Army.

In 1975, the Pathet Lao came to power and Hmong people, who had allied with the Royal Lao Army, fled to safety. Some 40,000 Hmong made their way to Thailand, walking through the mountains and floating across the Mekong River. Learning that Pang’s family was alive and in Ban Vinai Refugee Camp in Thailand, Pang and Charoon sold their property, livestock and car and registered at the camp, quickly becoming staff. Using her nursing skills, Pang taught hygiene as well as sewing, crafts and culture.

Between 1976 and 1979, when Pang resided there, the Ban Vinai Refugee Camp housed more than 45,000 people. Conditions were difficult but it was the largest settlement of Hmong people in the world. Pang was among those teaching classes in paj ntaub, Hmong dance, music, manners and values, and organizing cultural performances. Life went on in the camp, and children were introduced to Hmong culture in old and new ways. There, Pang was a teacher, learner, organizer, entrepreneur and artist, at a time when Hmong women’s needlework developed as an artistic means of expression, a way of sharing Hmong stories in cloth, and as an economic development tool. For the next four decades, Pang continued to maintain connections to Ban Vinai art and artist networks, and to build artistic and economic avenues for Hmong people.

In 1979 Pang, Charoon and their family moved to Philadelphia to join Pang’s brother Chao Song. Pang was 35 years old, among the tens of thousands of displaced Hmong refugees making lives in new lands. Culture became a lifeline and resource for Hmong people searching for familiar ways, beauty and hope. Widely known as an eloquent Hmong spokesperson, Pang was deeply committed to introducing “Americans” to the hearts, minds, and spirits of Hmong people.

Within weeks of her arrival, Pang accepted an invitation to perform Hmong and Lao dance at Drexel University. Within months Pang, Charoon, and their two oldest sons began working at Friday, Saturday, Sunday Restaurant, introducing touches of Hmong cooking and influencing the newly emerging Philadelphia restaurant renaissance. An excellent cook, Pang catered events, formally and informally, over the years.

Within a year, she was working with the Folklife Center of International House of Philadelphia, shaping new contexts for Hmong community members to perform, teach, document, study and share Hmong culture. These included local and national public settings like the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife (1980, 1986), and a number of regional, national and touring exhibitions—as well as Hmong community settings, where Pang was a leader in documenting and teaching Hmong traditions: a priority as the immigrant generation sought to respond to a wide range of crucial local community needs, and to bridge the gap between the world they knew and the American world of their children.

In the late 1970s, more than 20,000 refugees from Southeast Asia were resettled in urban Philadelphia. Among them were some 3,000 Hmong people. As time progressed, Philadelphia was not especially hospitable. Anti-Asian violence, especially in West Philadelphia and against Hmong, took a huge toll. Many Hmong families moved away.

Pang and the Xiong clan are among those who chose to stay. From her arrival in 1979, she used folk arts and cultural traditions to advance cross-cultural understanding and Hmong peoples’ well-being. Over the past 41 years, Pang distinguished herself as an insightful, unparalleled teacher, organizer, collector, artist, entrepreneur and advocate for peoples’ cultural heritage.

Shortly after arriving, Pang began to study English at Community College of Philadelphia. She brought paj ntaub to stitch during class, and her teachers wanted to buy it. “That’s how the selling started here,” she said. One teacher arranged for Pang to sell crafts at Headhouse Square in 1991, one of many fairs at which she regularly appeared. Another advised her to hold an Open House: her annual Christmas sales of community-made paj ntaub and other crafts at the family house have continued for 41 years. With over 1,000 people on Pang’s mailing list, visitors were treated to delicious home-cooked meals, making guests feel like family. Countless individuals and institutions have purchased work and feature Hmong arts in their collections because of Pang.

These ongoing sales opportunities provided work for many Hmong women over the years—both locally and globally. Pang was a crucial middle person, brokering the global trade (and changing functions) of Hmong needlework. Needlework remains a lifeline for some Hmong relatives in Laos, struggling to survive, unable to join their families, here. Regularly, Pang traveled to Laos and Thailand, where she commissioned and purchased work. She shared techniques, fabric and drawings of what she knew would sell. More than 200 women received cloth, patterns and drawings from Pang, returning finished goods to her specifications.

Pang was continually adapting Hmong skills to new contexts. Since 1984, Pang and other Hmong women stitched “Amish” quilts, their labor and skill needed and welcomed, but their identities were often hidden for fear of diminishing the “authenticity” (and value) of these saleable goods.

Her impact is incalculable. In a wide range of projects, from the 1980s to the present, Pang encouraged Hmong elders to share what they knew, and young people gained instruction in needlework, kwv txhiaj and other song traditions, stories, dance, customs and more. She is beloved among generations of Hmong children who remember learning how to keep the culture, arts, ethics, values and, equally, how to be a good person. Pang broke many barriers for Hmong women through her art and music; she remains an inspiring role model. Many Hmong women attribute their success to Pang’s guidance and counsel.

In Philadelphia, Pang was a motivating force behind preserving Hmong traditions and lifeways, and keeping the community together, helping organize traditional Hmong celebrations of New Year, weddings, births, and the commemoration of the Hmong people's departure from Laos. She had a sense of style and fashion, was optimistic and forward thinking. Pang’s home, a veritable museum of Hmong arts, along with a family garden, gave her great comfort and satisfaction. Nothing gave Pang greater pleasure than her family. She was a devoted wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and more. When her husband Charoon passed away in 1994, Pang married Somboun Sikoun in 1996. Once married, Pang and Somboun continued supporting the family through her artistry and his work as a baker.

In so many ways, Pang broke new ground. She was honored for her work with awards from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (multiple times, 1984-2020), National Endowment for the Arts (1985-86), Social Science Research Council (1986-87), Pew Fellowships (1996), Leeway Foundation (1997), Independence Foundation (2001), and many other grants. Pang worked collaboratively with national, regional and local nonprofits and governments including the Smithsonian Office of Folklife, Folklife Center of International House of Philadelphia, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, USIA, Wheaton Arts, Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP), etc. She co-curated PFP’s “We Try to Be Strong,” a retrospective exhibition on local Hmong arts (2007) and served on PFP’s Board of Directors and the Board of the Hmong United Association of Pennsylvania. 

She leaves behind six sons and their partners: Chakarin, Chakapope (Ka Yang), Chakaphong (Duab Cis Moua), Chakawarn (Dannelle), Chakaphat (Wang), and Chakrith (Jeannette); two stepsons: Somkhit Sikoun, Khamphou Sikoun; 31 grandchildren; 10 great-grandchildren.

Pang also leaves behind her husband: Somboun Sikoun, and six siblings: her sister Mai Yia Xiong and five brothers, Nhia Toua Xiong, Wa Doua Xiong, Ka Moua Song, Chao Song, and Pa Chai Xiong.