Michael Fuhrman and mentor Dean Coon speak with temple member Chris Ha on the history of the temple and prospect of conducting an oral history project with its members.
Author: Michael Fuhrman | Majors: History and Psychology
In partnership with the David & Barbara Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral & Visual History and Pho Minh Buddhist Temple, my research is conducting the first oral history project tracing the development of Vietnamese Buddhist communities in Fort Smith after their experience as refugees at Fort Chaffee in 1975. Outside of the video interviews that I have conducted with members of Pho Minh Buddhist Temple in Fort Smith, my research is analyzing the role that religion play in refugee resettlement. At their arrival in 1975, the Vietnamese refugees at Fort Chaffee were comprised of diverse religious traditions including Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism. My research is searching to see how each individual’s religious identity affected their social and economic standing in the camp at Fort Chaffee and after assimilation into the Fort Smith area. This research will hopefully not only create a new archive of story for future researchers in the state but advocate for the bridging of cultural barriers between religious groups.
The most thrilling part of my research so far has been traveling to Fort Smith to conduct these video interviews with members of the temple. After meeting with a few of the community members in the Honors College’s class Arkansas Religious Pluralism, I discovered that the stories these individuals carried were so important they had to be documented. It was while I was conducting interviews and going through research files at various public libraries across the city that I started noticing connections. While digging through an archive of the Southwest Times at the Fort Smith public library, I discovered an article where the leader of the Catholic conference at Fort Chaffee (there to serve the Roman Catholic refugee population) was outlining how many Buddhist refugees were anxious about receive support from the many Christian organizations mobilizing to support refugees through housing, meals, and employment. What this inevitably created was a system that stunted the growth of many Buddhist communities in the area because many Buddhists feared they would be forced to convert to Christianity if accepting large amounts of assistance from these organizations. While this may seem like a silly concept from a Christian perspective, there is plenty of evidence to show that these Christian organizations were also hesitant to support large amounts of Buddhist refugees because of “cultural differences.”
After noticing these trends, I decided my project should amplify the persistence that the community at Pho Minh Buddhist Temple held in order to create the beautiful temple they have today. This has mostly followed the life of Pho Minh Temple’s cultural dance team the Nobel 8 Lion Dance team. Composed of temple members ranging from 16-22 years of age, this group has performed for local schools, city-wide parades, and even nearby casinos with the hope that they can entertain and teach non-Buddhist populations about the art of lion dance. I realized that the majority of work to bridge cultural barriers between Buddhist and non-Buddhist groups was on the shoulders of groups like the Nobel 8 Lion Dance.
As I move into my final semester working on this project, I can’t wait to find out what new connections I’ll find. I’m looking forward to continuing going through archives seeking to find what perspectives I might be missing in my arguments, but am also excited to return to Fort Smith and share the video interviews we conducted with the members of the temple so they can have these stories to share with generations.