Against Forgetting: The Legacy of the Vietnam War for People and Politics

The Eighteenth Annual Peace Studies Conference

Cosponsored by Asian Studies Learning Community and Saint John's University Chair in Critical Thinking

September 26, 2005 (Monday)
1:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Alumni Lounge, Quad 1st Floor, Saint John's University

1:00 - 2:10  Refugeography presented by Thien-Bao Phi
Alumni Lounge, Quad 1st Floor, SJU

“As a Vietnamese refugee and an Asian American, Bao Phi presents an alternative perspective on issues of white supremacy, racism, and other social issues through his art.  He seeks to help build the Asian American community by telling untold stories and encouraging discussion between Asians.”

Biographical Information:
Thien-bao Phi was born in Sai Gon, Viet Nam, the youngest son to two mixed blood Chinese and Vietnamese parents who raised him in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis as a Vietnamese boy in the hood. A graduate of Macalester College and retired pizza delivery boy, Bao has performed at numerous venues and schools locally and nationally, from the Nuyorican Poet's Café to the University of California, Berkeley. He has twice won the Minnesota Grand Poetry Slam, and also won two poetry slams at the Nuyorican Poets Café in New York. He remains the only Vietnamese American man to have appeared on HBO's Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, and the National Poetry Slam Individual Finalists Stage, where he placed 6th overall out of over 250 national slam poets.

2:15 - 2:35  Refreshments

2:40 - 3:50  Concurrent Workshops

Session #1: Making War, Making Peace:  One American’s Vietnam
Journey, presented by Terry Wolkerstorfer
Alumni Lounge, Quad 1st Floor, SJU

It’s been more than 20 years since Australian journalist and filmmaker John Pilger said, “We’ve got to stop thinking of Vietnam as a war and start thinking of Vietnam as a country.”  We’re not there yet.

Terry Wolkerstorfer draws on four decades of personal experience–as an idealistic young officer who volunteered to serve in Vietnam, as an antiwar activist, as a war correspondent, as an English teacher to refugees, as one of the founders of a humanitarian aid project in Vietnam, and as an advisor to Vietnam’s ambassador in Washington–to reflect on the process of reconciliation and what it’s meant to him. 

“Those who helped make the war,” he says, “have both the right and the responsibility to help make the peace.”

Biographical Information: 
Terry Wolkerstorfer’s life has been intimately bound up with Vietnam for more than four decades.  He was in Vietnam all or parts of every year from 1965 to 1972. He speaks Vietnamese and a smattering of other Southeast Asian languages.  Mr. Wolkerstorfer taught English to Vietnamese, Hmong and Cambodian refugee families in the 1970s and '80s, and returned to Vietnam for the first time in 1989.  He has traveled extensively in Vietnam in the past 15 years as a member of the advisory board of Aid to Southeast Asia.  Mr. Wolkerstorfer has taught Vietnam history at Hamline University, where he is a faculty member in international journalism. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame and a master's degree from Columbia University, where he was a Carnegie Fellow in East Asia Journalism.

Session #2:  Four Sisters for Peace
Little Theater, Quad 364, SJU

Four Sisters for Peace is a half hour documentary about peace and justice as seen through the eyes and actions of four sisters who are also Catholic nuns--Rita, Brigid, Kate and Jane McDonald. Two of the Sisters will be present to discuss how the Vietnam War shaped them as peacemakers.

The documentary was created by a class of sixth to eighth grade students at Southside Family School in Minneapolis working with their teacher Susie Oppenheim and the artist Media Mike Hazard, this film is rated "R", for rebellious. The filmmaker Mike Hazard will join in the discussion.

Biographical Information:
Mike Hazard, a.k.a. Media Mike, is artist-in-residence at The Center for International Education. He teaches people of all ages how to make lively videos and he makes video portraits of lively people. His remarkable series of videos includes Jim Northrup, Robert Bly, the McDonald Sisters, Eugene McCarthy and David Preus. He is about to finish a documentary portrait of the late Senator Paul Wellstone called THE MAGIC GREEN SCHOOL BUS. For more, zoom to Hazard’s website, www.thecie.org.

4:00 - 5:00 Women Veterans, Popular Memory, and the (En)Gendering
of Citizenship, or, "How to Tell a True War Story"
presented by Kim Heikkila
Alumni Lounge, Quad 1st Floor, SJU

More than 250,000 women joined the U.S. military during the Vietnam War era.  Between 7,500 and 11,000 of them served in Vietnam.  They served as nurses and as enlisted women and line officers in capacities such as clerk-typist, photojournalist, communications specialist, and intelligence officer.  Many of these women wanted to share the burden of wartime military service with their male counterparts, but they also wanted to achieve the economic independence and secure standing as Americans that the military promised its recruits.  In short, they sought both the material and symbolic benefits of U.S. citizenship.  Thirty years after the war’s end, however, many women Vietnam veterans are still struggling to claim these benefits.  In this talk, Kim focuses on the ways in which postwar popular memory effectively erased women Vietnam veterans from the national landscape, as well as women’s struggles to rewrite the national narrative of the war by telling their own war stories.  In a culture where wartime military service is a hallmark of first-class citizenship, telling war stories is about more than having a voice; it is also a testament about who is entitled to all the rights and benefits of full belonging in the nation.  Listening to women Vietnam veterans’ stories is a crucial part of remembering the U.S.-Vietnam War.

Biographical Information:
Kim Heikkila has a Ph.D. in American Studies, with a minor in Feminist Studies, from the University of Minnesota.  Her dissertation, “G.I. Gender: Vietnam War-Era Women Veterans and U.S. Citizenship,” was based on oral history interviews with 20 women veterans.  She is continuing her oral history work with women Vietnam veterans for a project for the Minnesota Historical Society as well as teaching courses on the U.S.-Vietnam War and women’s history at Anoka Ramsey Community College and the College of St. Catherine.

5:00 - 6:30  Remnants of War - Stories of the Vietnamese Amerasians
Presentation of "Mother Tongue, Fatherland" and
discussion by filmmaker Br. Simon Hoa, OSB
Alumni Lounge, Quad 1st Floor, SJU

This film follows the stories of Amerasians from the time of war, through their journey to America, and to the present day after having settled in the U.S. for several years.  Here is the voice of a people rejected by the Vietnamese and forgotten by Americans.

During the American presence in the Vietnam War, it is estimated that 45,000 children were born of American soldiers and young Vietnamese women.  Most of these Vietnamese Amerasians were abandoned by their fathers and left to live in poverty, shame, and prejudice.  The end of the war brought them no comfort, for they were labeled “offspring of the Western enemies” and were pushed further into a life deprived of social acceptance, education, and employment opportunities.  With the Amerasian Homecoming Act in 1987 many Amerasians were brought to the United States to live in the land of their fathers.  Freedom, opportunity for education and employment, and the chance to start their life over were given them, yet they seldom felt at home, preferring to stay on the fringe of Vietnamese and American communities. 

Biographical Information:
Br. Simon Hoa was born in Vietnam at the time when the first American troops arrived during the conflict between North and South Vietnam.  He arrived in the United States with his family at the end of the war as refugee.  Simon-Hoa began to deal with his memories of Vietnam and the war in high school first with paintings, drawings and sculptures, but eventually discovered the effectiveness of video utilizing moving images and sound.  Br. Simon Hoa is a monk of Saint John’s Abbey and assistant professor in the Art department of CSB/SJU.  He holds a Masters of Fine Arts from California Institute of the Arts.

6:30 p.m. Dinner Break

7:30 p.m. Naagadawendan gete-ogichida Anishinaabe,
(Thoughts of an old Ojibwe warrior)
KEYNOTE SPEAKER Jim Northrup
Alumni Lounge, Quad 1st Floor SJU

Jim's presentation will detail his experiences in the Vietnam War as a Marine grunt (infantryman). Through poetry and short stories he will provide a reflection of what life was like amid such death.  Jim will also share what he learned about the aftermath of war.

Biographical Information:
Jim Northrup, a writer and former Marine, lives on the Fond du Lac Reservation near Duluth, Minnesota.  Jim is perhaps best known for his barbed humor and wit, which truly reflects his Anishinaabe identity and culture.  His play “Rez Road Follies, his book of poetry and short stories “Walking the Rez Road,” and his syndicated column “Fond du Lac Follies” have defined him as a writer whose words transcend reservation boundaries, while maintaining a profound sense of what it means to be an Anishinaabe person living in today’s modern world.  Much of Jim Northrup’s life and writing has been shaped by his thirteen months in Vietnam.

Jim Northrup writes a syndicated column, Fond du Lac Follies, which is distributed in The Circle, The Native American Press, and News From Indian Country.  Fond du Lac Follies was named Best Column at the 1999 Native American Journalists Association convention. In 1990-1992, Jim worked as a roster artist for the COMPAS Writer in the Schools Program. He has been a Mentor in the Loft Inroads Program, a Judge for the Lake Superior Contemporary Writers Series and The Jerome Fellowship, and a Member of the Minnesota State Arts Board Prose Panel. Jim also has given radio commentaries on the Superior Radio Network, National Public Radio, Fresh Air Radio, and the BBC-Scotland.   Jim and his family live the traditional life of the Anishinaabe in northern Minnesota. Nonetheless, his traditional lifestyle does not deter him from participating in events like the Taos Film Festival and the Taos Poetry Circus.

Book Signing to follow presentation.

All sessions are free and open to the public.

The Peace Studies Department at Saint John's University and College of Saint Benedict is grateful to Lorraine and to the late Robert Breitenbucher for their financial support in presenting this conference and all those who assisted in the preparation and coordination of this event.  Robert Breitenbucher passed away in October 2004 -- his spirit of peacemaking lives on.

Conference Coordinator: Jeff Anderson, 320-363-3047.