In April, while Minnesota is still thawing from a winter that seems endless, the Myanmar community celebrates Thingyan —the Buddhist New Year and water festival. In Yangon, this means massive water fights in the streets. In St. Paul, it means renting out a high school gymnasium. You won't see hoses spraying 90-degree water; instead, you see buckets of slightly-less-frigid water and a lot of shivering laughter. The Sangam here is adaptive. They teach their children that you don't need the Irrawaddy River to wash away the sins of the old year. You just need a willing community and a waterproof jacket.
St. Paul, Minnesota
They came for safety. They are staying to build a world.
Why Minnesota? The answer is the same as it is for the Somali, Hmong, and Liberian communities: affordable housing, a robust social safety net, and a school system that, while strained, is historically welcoming to refugees. Organizations like the Minnesota Department of Human Services and the International Institute of Minnesota have resettled thousands of "Burmese" refugees since 2007.
Today, estimates suggest tens of thousands of people of Myanmar origin live in the Twin Cities metro. And with them, they brought the thanaka paste, the htamin (rice), and the longing for a sangam . What does this confluence look like on the ground? It is not a single culture, because Myanmar is a federation of many ethnic nationalities. The Sangam in MN is where these groups—historically at odds under the junta's "Burmanization" policies—are learning to sit at the same table.
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