Hmong Rituals Clash With West -- Killing Of Puppy To Aid Woman's Health Draws Anger From California Community

FRESNO, Calif. - The Hmong shaman tried all the usual offerings. He burned paper money, sacrificed a chicken and a pig, even sought the remedies of American doctors. Yet nothing could appease the angry spirit that he believed was vexing his wife's health.

So Chia Thai Moua brought out his last best offer: a 3-month-old German shepherd. On the front porch of his rundown house, as he chanted the ancient, high-pitched chants of the Laotian highlands, a club-wielding relative beat the puppy over the head until it died.

Before Moua could bury the dog and seal the deal with the spirit world, a horrified neighbor called police. So began the most recent turn in an epic cultural clash that continues to play out here 20 years after the first Hmong migrated to the San Joaquin Valley in central California.

Earlier this month, Moua pleaded no contest to felony animal cruelty, but only after promising the Hmong community that he would appeal a judge's decision that prevented him from using a First Amendment religious-freedom defense.

Only in the most stubborn cases do Hmong shamans employ a dog, believing that the animal's night vision and keen smell can track down the elusive evil spirit and barter for the afflicted person's lost soul.

As a measure of the culture clash at work here, many people believe that the shaman and his family planned to eat the dog as a final step in the ritual. The notion that Hmong eat dogs and cats is a cruel myth that has plagued the mountain tribal people since their arrival in the Central Valley in 1976.

Hmong community leaders have tried to defuse the backlash with public statements about their ancient folk practices and love for animals, especially dogs.

Authorities in Fresno, Merced and Stockton - communities where a majority of the 130,000 Hmong in America have concentrated - have begun enforcing city ordinances that prohibit the raising and slaughtering of chickens and pigs. The ordinances have been on the books for decades but the Hmong believe they are being targeted.

A few shamans have begun using stuffed animals in an effort to obey the law. Others are now killing livestock at licensed slaughterhouses and transporting the carcasses back home to perform the rituals.

But for many shamans, the killing of chickens, pigs and the occasional dog inside the home of the distressed party remains a vital tool in their repertoire.

For many Hmong, who come from isolated mountain villages in Laos, their first encounter with western ways came when the CIA recruited them in the 1960s to fight the Viet Cong. Scholars agree that the 18 clans that make up the Fresno-area Hmong are among the most ill-prepared people to ever emigrate here. Drawn by the fertile soil, their struggle to negotiate the finer points of modern life has made for some unforgettable scenes.

Some Hmong bought cans of Crisco believing that the label - a picture of golden brown fried chicken - depicted the contents. One story recalls a new driver who understood what green, red and yellow meant but was mystified one day by a flashing red light. So he lurched and stopped, and lurched and stopped, across the intersection.

But it is the tragedies, blamed in part on the Hmong reliance on herbal and spiritual remedies, that have proved most troublesome for officials here. In 1990, nine Hmong children died of measles after their parents consulted shamans and waited until the children were in cardiac arrest before bringing them to the hospital.

Last year, one Hmong family violently confronted police after their 15-year-old daughter was forcibly removed from their home to undergo court-ordered chemotherapy. The girl, who suffered from ovarian cancer, disappeared from Fresno after an initial round of treatment, and the court order was eventually dropped.

"Most of these cases are about cultural misunderstanding and the police and hospitals reacting before they understand our ways," said Pao Fang, head of the Lao Family Community of Fresno. "If we sit down and talk, I think we can find a solution."

At Valley Children's Hospital, which has four Southeast Asian translators, shamans may burn paper money and blow holy water over a child. The hospital agreed to move one Hmong child in intensive care to a room with a window while outside a shaman burned chicken feathers and fanned the smoke over the youngster.

The Hmong practice of killing animals at home for food or spiritual offerings has never reached the courts until now, although there have been complaints. Problems typically occur when Hmong venture into ethnically mixed neighborhoods, planting gardens in the empty spaces of apartment buildings and erecting pens for their chickens, goats and pigs.

Sometimes, animal control officers arrive too late to stop the killing and discover only a carcass. Most times, though, the complaints of a sacrifice in progress are false.

However, there is no disputing that a German shepherd puppy was killed on the front porch of Chia Thai Moua's house in a mixed neighborhood of northwest Fresno last year. The 46-year-old shaman does not deny that he ordered his brother-in-law to kill the puppy as a way to placate an evil spirit and retrieve his wife's lost soul.

But last week, he explained that he did this only as a last resort.

Each year, Moua said, he conducts a special ceremony to release the souls of the animals who helped him during the year, so that they can be reborn. "We are not cruel to animals," he continues. "We love them. Everything I kill will be born again."

His attorney, Richard Ciummo, tried to defend the charge of felony animal cruelty by arguing that Moua was exercising his religious beliefs and did not kill the dog with the necessary malice.

A Fresno County judge sided with prosecutors, throwing out the religious freedom defense. Moua pleaded no contest, with the stipulation that he could withdraw his plea if the appeals court ruled that he could use a religious freedom defense.

Moua was given probation, community service and a small fine. The Hmong community was disappointed but his attorney feels Moua had no other choice.