The Bronx’s Little Cambodia as we know it today is an established and organized community: not just consisting of Cambodians, but also of other Southeast Asian American diasporas in the Bronx. But Little Cambodia was not always like this, nor has it always existed in the Bronx. This exhibit focuses on the complex history of Little Cambodia in the 1980s and 1990s, telling a story of intersecting histories of migration and city neglect. As an ethnic enclave built by a community reeling from the trauma of the Cambodian genocide, the initial wave of Cambodian refugees and immigrants to the Bronx faced unique social and psychological obstacles, as well as specific structural barriers to living, organizing, and building community in the Bronx.
This exhibit explores the experiences of Cambodian Americans in the Bronx in the 1980s and 1990s — primarily in Kingsbridge and Fordham — after the events of the Khmer Rouge, which caused a mass exodus of Cambodian refugees. The exhibit explores both the specific historical context of the Cambodian genocide as well as concurrent events in the Bronx and New York City, more broadly. It also delves into the complexities of Cambodian Americans' lived experiences, identities, and the struggles they initially faced upon arrival in the United States, including mental and physical health, housing insecurity, employment and job training, and language access. It concludes by examining the lack of community that was provided to or formed, for Cambodians, by Cambodians, in the Bronx.
In this exhibit, I seek to answer a few key questions: How did city-wide economic austerity and severe defunding re-enforce long-held stereotypes and stigmas about communities of color in the Bronx? Why did so many Cambodians feel the need to leave the Bronx after initially immigrating, and how did this mirror the experiences of other diasporas and communities? And how did they navigate struggles with mental health and difficulties adapting to the new environment of the United States, including language and work requirement barriers?
The experiences of Cambodians in the modern diaspora, both within the United States and beyond, are inextricably linked to the context of the Cambodian genocide.
Before achieving independence in 1953, Cambodia functioned as a monarchy under French control for several decades, formally beginning in 1863. It was considered to be a part of French Indochina: a collection of colonial protectorates consisting of modern-day Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos.¹ Though Cambodian monarchs continued to sit on the throne, their power was significantly diminished. During the years of World War II, Cambodia was occupied by the Japanese, but the French Vichy regime was allowed to continue governing. The French also helped appoint a new young monarch, Norodom Sihanouk, who would lead Cambodia over the next few decades. Under Sihanouk's leadership, Cambodia declared its independence from France in 1953. It would maintain this status until 1970, when a US-backed coup deposed Sihanouk and installed a right-wing regime led by Lon Nol.² This all occurred against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, as global eyes turned toward Southeast Asia and the political instability exacerbated by American involvement.
The Khmer Rouge emerged from this political vacuum, as communist and anti-communist factions clashed across national borders in an increasingly bloody fashion. In power from April 17th, 1975 to January 7th, 1979, the Khmer Rouge dictatorship sought to revert Cambodia back to its roots as an agrarian socialist society that purged Western influences and turned all people “equal.”³ Using the United States’ bombing of Cambodia as part of the Vietnam War as a political tool, they cultivated fear and mistrust of the West, especially in rural areas.⁴ They wished to return to the Angkorian era, when the country’s economy revolved around rice cultivation. Many of the country’s strides towards modernity fell in direct opposition to this goal, as Khmer Rouge foot soldiers conscripted city-dwellers to work the land. Every major city in Cambodia was evacuated, their residents expropriated to rural areas, and anyone who opposed their ideology or their orders was executed. The Khmer Rouge was also called the Angkar, or the all-knowing organization. Many Cambodians referred to them as the eyes of the pineapple, always watching.⁵
During the three years, eight months and twenty days that the Khmer Rouge were in power, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people died from military execution, severe malnutrition, and exhaustion from forced labor, along with many others who were wounded, traumatized, and tortured.⁶ Families were systematically dismantled, with some murdered, some imprisoned, and some separated into different labor camps. Religion of any kind was forbidden, as Khmer Rouge soldiers destroyed Buddhist temples and executed monks who refused to be defrocked. Any currency was abolished, along with the capitalist economy and global trade.
Khmer Rouge soldiers and Vietnamese troops began fighting over territorial borders in 1977, which devolved into the beginning of the Vietnamese-Cambodian War by 1979. After months of bloody fighting, Vietnamese troops recaptured Phnom Penh and surviving Khmer Rouge members fled to Thailand, where they continued to organize in exile.⁷ However, this regime change did not immediately bring peace and prosperity to Cambodia. The devastation of war and genocide was felt for decades after the fall of the Khmer Rouge, leaving the country with limited resources, a vastly undereducated general population, and generations of collective trauma. The worst was not over for many, and those who chose to stay experienced famine, limited resources, and a new civil war. This atmosphere of instability prompted mass waves of refugees and immigrants to leave the country.
The Khmer Rouge's reign of terror ended in January of 1979, but it soon became clear that the devastating impacts of their time in power would last for decades. By June of 1979, hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians (mostly Cambodian and Vietnamese) had fled to neighboring countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as refugees, seeking better lives and more opportunities. Initially composed of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand, ASEAN is an intergovernmental coalition of Southeast Asian nations that largely bore the humanitarian responsibility of sheltering refugees from Cambodia and Vietnam in resettlement camps in the 1970s and 1980s. One of the largest and longest-lasting camps was Khao-I-Dang in Thailand, located on the Thai-Cambodian border. Khao-I-Dang was established relatively quickly by the Thai Interior Ministry and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and shelters at the camp were ready to accommodate refugees by November 21st, 1979. A second Khao-I-Dang was being constructed at the same time. Many Cambodian-Americans would spend time in Khao-I-Dang before immigrating, including my mother.
The photo above is that of my own family in Khao-I-Dang in the year 1982. On the far left is my Om Chovvy; in the back is my grandmother; in front of my grandmother, from left to right, is my Ming Srey, my mother and my Om Rithy.
During the genocide, the Khmer Rouge put an emphasis on erasing your past self and life, and did so through forced relocation from communities and widespread policing of communities.¹ Consequently, many personal records and photos were burned, creating a huge lack of sense of self and identity with many Cambodian migrants, who would not have any proof of their existence before eventually departing their homeland. Who took the photo and how it found its way to us is a mystery, though it is the earliest photo recorded of my mother that my family knows of. Even though my own mother’s birth year and date is unknown, this photo is an important part of our family’s identity, as it is the earliest proof we have of the family after the Khmer Rouge in their homeland, before they eventually moved to Canada under a sponsorship. Many Cambodians similarly aspired for better lives and opportunities in different countries.
Decades after it was taken, I spoke with my mother, LinDa, about what this photo means to her. LinDa Saphan is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Mount Saint Vincent that has dedicated the majority of her life researching and writing about Cambodia through the lenses of anthropology and sociology. She survived the Khmer Rouge as a young child and spent time in the Khao-I-Dang refugee camp before immigrating with her family to Canada.
“…oh, LinDa's knee," because my skirt was above the knee. He's like, "It's crooked." And when I think about it, I just feel like, you know, I was undernourished, right? And the same thing, Ming Srey has a big belly. So, the children with big belly is malnutrition. It's really an unhealthy sign, not like they're overeating and all that…the picture of me, how skinny, and my mom, how skinny. Her face -- like she had no flesh. She had just skin on her bones.” — LinDa Saphan
This comment is especially profound because malnutrition was common and followed Cambodians even after the Khmer Rouge, especially for families that were larger and provided with less resources. With the vast amount of people in Khao-I-Dang in the first place, there were only so many resources to go around for everyone. Along with this, many were still recovering from their injuries, malnutrition, and trauma that came from the genocide and war. My mother was among very few children born during or around the time that the Khmer Rouge started who survived their regime, along with her siblings. Being malnourished for the majority of her early childhood had lifelong effects.² The fact that this is how she is portrayed in the earliest image we have of her, along with the rest of my family, creates a complicated relationship with the photo. It is a piece of recorded history that means so much to our family identity, but it also reminds them of a past that can be traumatic or sad to remember.
“I'm an interesting generation because you see, I grew up struggling making friends because I couldn't find people my age that are Cambodian. So they are either older, like my older sister, so they were -- when the Khmer Rouge came, they're like 10, 14 years old, so they were more robust. And then like, my younger sister who was born after the Khmer Rouge…There was barely any kids born under the Khmer Rouge, and the babies or the toddler that were-- when the Khmer Rouge took over, did not survive. There were very low survival rate, right? So for me, there's a gap, so I never found many Cambodians. Even in Cambodia and even the diaspora, there are...To this day, there's a handful of people that I know around my age.” — LinDa Saphan
Firsthand accounts of Khao-I-Dang have been an extremely powerful way for me to understand what life was like in this moment. Ana Srey is an organizer at Mekong NYC who now focuses on providing direct services in the Bronx. When I interviewed her, she shared her experiences as a child growing up during this period. Ana was born in 1977 in the middle of the Khmer Rouge regime. Like all Cambodians living in the country at the time, Ana’s childhood was distinctly affected by the brutality of the Khmer Rouge. Like many Cambodians in her generation, Ana also recalls that while she was too young to remember the events of the Khmer Rouge, she grew up surrounded by the harsh aftermath that came after it. Recalling her childhood after the fall of the regime, Ana states:
“This period permanently changed my family lifestyle and shaped the path that brought us to the United States.”
Although conditions in refugee camps were much better than what life under the Khmer Rouge could offer, they were still not sustainable for human life and wellbeing, severely lacking resources like food, medical care, and shelter. With the sheer amount of refugees arriving day after day, coupled with the limited space available in the camp, people were packed together in shelters as tightly as possible. This would prove to be especially difficult for families seeking shelter from the Khmer Rouge, like Ana’s.
Ana, who lived in Khao-I-Dang for six years before her family found a sponsor to bring them to America, recalls in her oral history that “life in a refugee camp was extremely difficult. There was no electricity, no running water, no Internet, nothing like that.” Her memories of Khao-I-Dang join the collective experiences of up to 160,000 Cambodian refugees who resettled and attempted to survive at the camp.
By June of 1979, the constituent members of ASEAN began instating new, severe restrictions upon refugees seeking asylum in camps like Khao-I-Dang. Stating that they had “reached the limit of their endurance,” members of ASEAN unanimously decided that they would not accept any new arrivals from neighboring countries, particularly Cambodia and Vietnam. Because of this, the United Nations High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) convened in Geneva in the same year, agreeing that ASEAN countries would continue providing temporary asylum for refugees so long as Western countries would contribute to resettling Southeast Asian refugees faster through state-sponsored relocation programs.
The biggest of these programs was the Orderly Departure Program (ODP), which was formed because of the immediate need for refugee resettlement.¹ Thousands of Cambodians and many other Southeast Asians came through this program to the United States, where they were then relocated to different cities across the country with the purpose of faster assimilation and evenly distributed economic impact. After settling in after their initial placements, some Cambodians moved again. Some went to more rural areas, advertised via community word of mouth, while others stayed in the bigger cities they originally were placed in. As a result, many Cambodian migrants that arrived in the 1980s and 1990s were separated from each other, deposited in many different small enclaves across the United States.
The Refugee Act of 1980 was also an important piece of legislation impacting Cambodians’ arrival to the US, as it provided for up to 50,000 annual refugee admissions to the U.S. between 1980 and 1982. Under this act, refugees were defined as:
“Any person who is: (1) outside his country of nationality… and who is unable or unwilling to return to such country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group; or (2) in special circumstances, a person who is persecuted or has a well-founded fear of of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
Under this act, refugee families were also provided with limited state support for relocated immigrant families. Recalling this legislation’s impact on her family, Ana shared:
“The Refugee Act of 1980 allowed us – a lot of Cambodian families that include my family – to immigrate to the U.S. as political refugees. When we arrived, my family had short term access to public assistance programs, Medicaid, Medicare, stuff like that, and to food stamps.”
However, the Refugee Act of 1980 was a double-edged sword: while it did help many Southeast Asian and Cambodian populations enter the country by modernizing and formalizing immigration processes for refugees, it also created massive backlogs and forced families into isolated, under-resourced areas, exacerbating significant psychological stress in the diaspora.² The idea behind the Refugee Act of 1980—to provide for “the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted”—also pushed Southeast Asians to assimilate as quickly as possible. This focus on assimilation and absorption ended up hindering communities' ability to come together. By distributing them far and wide across the country, they were forced to become self-sufficient members of American society — while barely knowing their newfound neighbors.³
The process of coming to the United States outside of these programs, such as through familial or community sponsorship, was also extremely complicated. Sponsorship was a big reason as to why many Cambodian refugees were able to come to the country, but not everyone received easy or straightforward pathways to receiving it. Ana recalled the difficulty of her own family’s pathway to U.S. citizenship through the sponsorship process:
“To come to the United States, we had to be selected by the U.S. embassy to interview, and we had to pass the interview in order for someone to sponsor us, who [would be] willing to take responsibility for our family when we arrived here.”
The rare status of legal eligibility to even depart for another country as a legally-defined refugee, along with the intense process of applying and being able to receive a sponsorship as a refugee, made the process of leaving Cambodia extremely stressful.⁴ For many Cambodians who had already lost everything and were dealing with the mental aftermath of the Khmer Rouge, this was another traumatizing experience.
The Cambodians who first arrived in New York City through state relocation programs were primarily placed in areas where there were vacant buildings with cheap rent, as the majority of Cambodians came with nothing. These refugees settled in areas in the Bronx, such as Fordham, University Heights, Bronx Park East, and Kingsbridge. These areas used to be predominantly Irish and German, but over time, most white ethnic groups left these neighborhoods to go to more middle-class parts of the city.¹ The Cambodians who arrived in the 1980s were greeted by vacant buildings that had been abandoned years prior and were in severe disrepair.² By any reasonable standards, they were unfit for any person to live in.
Before Cambodians arrived, throughout the 1970s, almost 80% of the housing stock in the Bronx was burnt down through arson.³ Prior to the "Decade of Fire," the city and state had long neglected the Bronx – specifically the South Bronx – and the immigrant communities that made up the borough suffered from chronic underfunding and neglect. In turn, this created and perpetuated false stereotypes around communities in the Bronx, primarily Black and Hispanic working-class communities, labeling them as dangerous, dirty, and leeches of public resources. Even as the Bronx flourished with cultural production and grassroots political organizing, it was denigrated by horrible treatment from the city that should have been providing for and helping them.
The struggle for housing, community safety, and public health in the Bronx stemmed from other systemic issues at the city and state level, including an affordability and availability crisis in housing that limited working-class people to dwindling units of run-down public housing.⁴ Over-policing was also another problem for these areas in the Bronx; the city took little action to revitalize such broken-down neighborhoods outside of predatory development that excluded Black, Brown, and working-class residents. Gentrification, systemic neglect, and over-policing in the Bronx meant that many families who were already struggling also experienced immense financial and housing instability. This included Cambodians and other Southeast Asian refugees who had come to the Bronx via the United States Refugee Act of 1980 or similar programs.
It is important to acknowledge the sheer contrast from life in Cambodia, not only pre-1975 but also post-1979, to the Bronx. It was hard for Cambodians to adapt quickly and integrate into American communities, as Cambodians did not move often before the genocide. The majority of Cambodians were originally agrarian rice farmers. Besides the lifestyle change, the jobs available in the urban landscape of New York City utilized different skillsets than many Cambodian migrants possessed.⁵ Available jobs also often required literacy and proficiency in English, which was also scarce due to limited education or, conversely, limited documentation of prior education.⁶
Before the Khmer Rouge, those who were educated were mostly middle- and upper-class, many of whom could afford to migrate to France for secondary and graduate education. For those who did have employment experience and higher education degrees, but who had stayed in Cambodia during the genocide, there was often no remaining proof to show potential employers in the U.S. The Khmer Rouge burned everything during their time in power to attempt to reset Cambodia to year zero.
Most of the Cambodians that went to France prior to the Khmer Rouge taking control of the country were wealthier and had social connections that those who stayed did not. The group that went to the US was a very diverse group that contained many subgroups of Cambodian society. Many Cambodians originally settled in larger cities like New York, Lowell, or Long Beach.⁷ But over time, Cambodians in America spread out further, as many moved into more rural or suburban areas. Many of the Cambodians in Lowell and New York were originally farmers, and even those who might have been wealthy before the war were left with little to nothing to bring with them to the United States. Between 1975 and 1994, 158,000 Cambodians are estimated to have been admitted to the US. Out of that group, an estimated 149,000 of them were classified as refugees, 6,000 as immigrants, and 2,500 as humanitarian and public interest parolees.
Southeast Asians went from sparse refugee camps that barely provided for inhabitants' basic needs to burned-down, broken-down buildings in the Bronx that were equally unsustainable for a safe, dignified life. Ana mentions in her interview that many people struggled adjusting to the Bronx because of the history that followed her family, like so many others, and the trauma that came with it.
“And so [in] our early years in the U.S... like the trauma from the war, displacement and long-term instability did not disappear.”
Even if not living in these exact conditions, the generational trauma of the Khmer Rouge and time in Khao-I-Dang still left an impact on all Cambodians in diaspora. It was hard for Cambodians to erase their past — but also to acknowledge it — as it left a heavy burden on families who were consumed with providing for themselves and their loved ones. The instability in New York City and in the Bronx also created an emotional shift for Cambodian Americans, and the feeling of isolation and abandonment was clear in the early years in the Bronx. Many Cambodians left the Bronx because of this very fact; many saw other thriving Cambodian diaspora enclaves outside of the Bronx that had better living conditions and better opportunities.
Cambodians' ongoing struggles not only stemmed from the vast amount of financial problems they faced, including difficulties living in broken-down buildings and finding employment, but also from the lack of community with one another. In June of 1985, Cambodian immigrants built a temple in Bedford Park. But despite their best efforts to reconstruct community institutions, Cambodians in the Bronx still struggled with bringing community together. Eventually in the 1980s and the 1990s, people started to leave the city. The 2000 census shows that the city’s Cambodian population decreased by 31% from 1990 to 2000 in New York City, which was happening at the same time that other Cambodian populations in other cities surrounding New York began to expand.
It had been a struggle to establish the Bronx's Little Cambodia to begin with. The resources that were provided by the city and the state were simply not enough to support the lives of many Cambodians living in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city while still processing the physical and psychological effects of genocide. Grief and tragedy lingered, holding people back from forming a permanent, more stable community. Even the temple's construction was not a simple question of building a religious site for the community. After four years of the Khmer Rouge trying to suppress Cambodian religion and culture, many Cambodians struggled to practice their religious traditions as they used to, especially while still struggling to get by in the Bronx. To this day, Cambodians in the Bronx struggle with establishing this sense of permanent community.
“You know, folks seem to carry that on until today and from day to day, we have like a family gathering or, you know, like a community meeting. We always have those kinds of issues come up."
Mental health was another big reason why Cambodians struggled upon their initial arrival. The challenges in building a new community and a new life in a strange, sometimes unfriendly city, rebuilding trust and a sense of belonging after such a long period of violence, were compounded by the heavy toll that the Khmer Rouge years had taken on many new Cambodian immigrants.
“So many Cambodians who live through the war experience several traumas, including, you know, malnutrition, forced labor, imprisonment, torture and stuff like that.”
Trauma follows people overseas and still remains an almost insurmountable challenge for the Cambodian diaspora. This continues to be relevant: through evolving generational trauma that persists, as well as the community emphasis on continuing to acknowledge and support the trauma that our elders carry, many of whom continue to be haunted by their past.
“Trust me, including language barriers, as you just mentioned, transportation, access to Khmer food because we get used to it with our own food…English is my second language.”
This lack of community, or at least the scarcity of community in comparison to pre-war Cambodia, was something that exacerbated mental health and language access struggles. Being pressured to assimilate to the new social and cultural norms of the United States can be incredibly difficult for a new, extremely vulnerable community, and it can hinder community-building and organizing. Cambodian arrivals to the United States had to reconstruct identity on not just a community level, but also at an individual level. Because of this, it was often a struggle to find energy for community-building when many were struggling to merely survive.
The heart of my exhibit is primarily uplifting stories of Cambodians in the Bronx; the historical context that I chose to include are specific events that relate to Cambodians leaving the country and coming to the US. There is so much to say about Cambodian history that couldn't fit into this exhibit. It was hard to decide what was important to keep and what to not include, especially since I know that this history is rarely taught. I hope that this exhibit inspires others to continue to learn about things like Cambodian history before the Khmer Rouge, the civil war, and the golden age of Cambodia. I hope that they will dive even deeper into what truly happened while the Khmer Rouge was in power, as there is so much more than just the summary that I provided. While these topics are all very important, I wanted to make sure that the context provided on Cambodia was specific to the experiences of Cambodians in the Bronx's Little Cambodia.
This project made me think a lot about the role that mental health plays in forming—or fragmenting—community. For Cambodians in the diaspora, mental health has evolved and changed in profound ways in comparison to the mental health of Cambodians who stayed. Because of the time that has passed since the Khmer Rouge, it is not accurate to say that both groups are still facing the same struggles or handling it the same way within their communities. Often with Cambodians in the diaspora, there are many other layers compounding the initial survivor's guilt and trauma. This can include mental health issues in relation to things such as imposter syndrome and confusion in identity with this new nation they live in. There are other mental health challenges, too, like those that come with moving to a completely different country and being forced to restart your life there while still dealing with traumatic after-effects of war and genocide.
Cambodians and Southeast Asians have such an important history among the US, especially with the outrage and protest movements sparked by US involvement in Vietnam and Southeast Asia. The military actions and imperial meddling of the United States directly led to the migration of many of the country's large populations of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, communities that have contributed a great deal to this country. Despite this, there is little to no representation of Southeast Asians and Southeast Asian history: not only in schools, but also in many AAPI affinity spaces. Growing up, I did not think that me or my mother were “Asian.” I was led to believe that that label only applied to East Asians for far too long. The Cambodian community in New York was once much bigger than it is now, but its history still remains important. I hope that this project achieves just a little bit of being able to spread the history of a community that means so much to me and to others.
Towards the end of writing this exhibit, I finally decided to interview my mother, something I was reluctant to do beforehand because this exhibit’s localized angle is during a time in which she was not in New York (she had originally first immigrated to Canada as a child). I realized the importance of including her voice, especially after using such an important piece of our family’s history, the photo from Khao-I-Dang, as a primary source. I didn't include everything in my exhibit chapters, but something I felt was important to share here was how she expressed her own experience growing up as an immigrant and refugee:
“That was a bit sad that as if I never had a childhood, through visual representations, as if I never existed..and then when we went to Montreal was also hard because when we grew up, we were poor, so we didn't really... You know, even back then, before the digital, printing pictures was very expensive, so we only had school pictures. We rarely have any other picture of our childhood because we couldn't afford a camera.” — LinDa Saphan
Since I was little, I always understood that my mother’s stories and struggles were usually based in Canada, as she has few memories from the Khmer Rouge. Something that seems to be misunderstood is that while the genocide of Cambodians was a time that could never be compared to the events that followed, Cambodians continued struggling. The perception that because they were in a better country, Cambodians in the international diaspora were doing extremely well for themselves was quite often the inverse of the reality of poverty and difficulties that came with being a refugee and immigrant in a different country.
For a long time, I struggled with my own Cambodian American identity. I am mixed and was always more exposed to my father’s family who is white; they lived closer, so they were easier to visit compared to my mother’s family in Canada. Because of this, it always felt as if I didn’t fit in. I would always look in the mirror and wish for blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin, something I didn’t quite understand at the time. Because my mother’s original immigration story is that of her leaving Cambodia as a child to Canada. I never felt as connected to being Cambodian American myself, especially because my mother related often much more to her Cambodian side, something that I cannot claim and that I understand that I don’t fit into. Now that I am more aware of my position in this world, I think I have come to learn that I can have my own Cambodian American identity no matter what my parents' stories are. I think this exhibit has been a long journey within myself as well in terms of identity.
Mekong NYC is the primary nonprofit focused on Cambodian Americans and Southeast Asians in New York City. I could not be more grateful to them and to Ana Srey for helping me and supporting me in this project. As a Mekong youth fellow who regularly visits and tries to help out as much as possible, they are so kind and accepting, and a community that truly means so much to me. They work to preserve Cambodian culture in the city and provide a space to make sure our history and culture are never forgotten. I hope I have made them proud through this exhibit, even though I know they would support me no matter what.
To my mother who has always pushed me to find myself and supported me wholeheartedly, my amazing community at Mekong for always showing up, and the staff at the Localized History Project who have made this journey possible.
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