Stephanie Phetsamay Stobbe – författare

Between 1975 and 1997 some three million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians fled atrocities in their home countries, with over 210,000 resettling in Canada. While this history is partly known to some Canadians, little has been written about it, especially from the perspectives of the refugees themselves.

Hearts of Freedom is a rich oral history based on interviews with 145 former refugees, sharing deeply moving accounts of oppression, concentration camps, genocide, and perilous escapes over land and sea. Survivors reflect on their first impressions of Canada – the unfamiliar snow and cold, the unexpected kindness of neighbours, and occasional encounters with racism. Through their experiences, we come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s refugee programs. These stories reveal how refugees’ attachment to Canada grew over the years and how multiculturalism policies facilitated that.

Ordinary Canadians played a decisive role in the first mass refugee movement through newly created private sponsorship programs – a role for which the United Nations awarded the Nansen Medal to the Canadian people in 1986. Coming at a time when we are assessing the benefits of immigration and refugee policies and programs, Hearts of Freedom documents the lives and contributions of people who have suffered the worst excesses of war to rebuild their lives in Canada.

Between 1975 and 1997 some three million Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians fled atrocities in their home countries, with over 210,000 resettling in Canada. While this history is partly known to some Canadians, little has been written about it, especially from the perspectives of the refugees themselves.

Hearts of Freedom is a rich oral history based on interviews with 145 former refugees, sharing deeply moving accounts of oppression, concentration camps, genocide, and perilous escapes over land and sea. Survivors reflect on their first impressions of Canada – the unfamiliar snow and cold, the unexpected kindness of neighbours, and occasional encounters with racism. Through their experiences, we come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Canada’s refugee programs. These stories reveal how refugees’ attachment to Canada grew over the years and how multiculturalism policies facilitated that.

Ordinary Canadians played a decisive role in the first mass refugee movement through newly created private sponsorship programs – a role for which the United Nations awarded the Nansen Medal to the Canadian people in 1986. Coming at a time when we are assessing the benefits of immigration and refugee policies and programs, Hearts of Freedom documents the lives and contributions of people who have suffered the worst excesses of war to rebuild their lives in Canada.

Using the case study of Laos, a small landlocked country in Southeast Asia that has seen some of the world’s most brutal forms of poverty and violence, this book examines the power of traditional and indigenous conflict resolution systems as a tool for social justice. It explores how the conflict resolution mechanisms build infrastructures that support social harmony, and address larger scale conflicts within communities, nations and international arenas.

The book discusses how over centuries, foreign powers have polarised and used the ethnic groups of Laos to support their own agendas, and how in spite of this, the Lao people have consistently managed to recreate the peace and harmony that support their social relationships, whether that is within groups or between many distinct groups. Through the development and use of appropriate grassroots conflict resolution structures that do not require a formal court system and exists outside the political arena, they have been successful in resolving conflicts within and across cultural groups. The book shows that the conflict resolution systems of Laos are embedded in the fabric of ordinary, everyday life, and operate independently of the hierarchical structures that dominate governing institutions.

Highlighting how peace continues to work its way into existence, through elaborate mediation systems and rituals that bring people together, this book will be of use to students and scholars of Southeast Asian Politics, Peace Studies and War and Conflict Studies.