The goals of The Creative Cohort are to:

• amplify our stories and lived experiences using visual art, storytelling, community education and engagement

• offer opportunities for connection, celebration and healing for and by our community

• remedy culture loss within diasporic indigenous and ethnic minority communities with roots in Laos resulting from systemic violence, historical displacement and assimilation by documenting our stories for current and future generations

• combat false narratives that Asianness is homogenous or that dominant Asian American culture is representative of all by emphasizing specific issues that impact our most marginalized community members through mapping the evolving culture of diasporic indigenous and/or ethnic minority peoples with ancestral roots in Laos, with a particular focus on the experiences of LGBTQIA+, gender expansive, women, femme, and/or non-binary community members

• engage the community in thinking critically about the concepts of belonging and safety through the lens/lived experiences of some of our most impacted community members

 As indigenous peoples of mostly oral storytelling traditions who have historically had literacy gatekept and weaponized against us, documenting our stories and art is community legacy work.

Laos as a country has 149 recognized ethnic groups, a significant population of whom were forced into refugee diaspora. Under current methods of US census data collection, many people with these ethnic identities are required to identify as “Laotian” which is hardly reflective of the incredibly diverse communities within this umbrella, each holding clear cultural distinctions between one another. For a majority of these communities, umbrella terms have only worked to create confusion, making us more invisible and creating harmful lasting impacts on our overall sense of safety and belonging. 

Further, even within these respective cultural communities, the stories of our LGBTQIA+ & gender expansive siblings are too often told by others, footnoted, vilified & ostracized or our existence is completely erased. Thus far no formal data exists on those of us within our communities belonging to these intersections. Current census data isn’t disaggregated enough to encompass the nuances of the specific community members this project is focused on. We hope for this project to shed more light on the state of diasporic indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia with roots in Laos at the intersections of LGBTQIA+, women, femme, and/or non-binary identities.