US$1.3 billion Powerball win draws attention to Laos’ ethnic group from China – the Iu Mien people

The winner of the Powerball jackpot is an immigrant from Laos, who identifies as a member of the Iu Mien, a southeast Asian ethnic group originally from China

‘I am born in Laos, but I am not Laotian,’ Cheng ‘Charlie’ Saephan said on Monday where he was revealed as one of the winners of the US$1.3 billion jackpot

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Cheng “Charlie” Saephan displays a cheque above his head after it was revealed that he was one of the winners of the $1.3 billion Powerball jackpot on Monday. Photo: AP

Published: 5:39pm, 30 Apr 2024

Cheng “Charlie” Saephan wore a broad smile and a bright blue sash emblazoned with the words “Iu-Mien USA” as he hoisted an oversized cheque for US$1.3 billion above his head.

The 46-year-old immigrant’s luck in winning an enormous Powerball jackpot in Oregon earlier this month – a lump sum payment of US$422 million after taxes, which he and his wife will split with a friend – has changed his life. It also raised awareness about Iu Mien people, a southeast Asian ethnic group with origins in China, many of whose members fled from Laos to Thailand and then settled in the US following the Vietnam war.

“I am born in Laos, but I am not Laotian,” Saephan told a news conference on Monday at Oregon Lottery headquarters, where his identity as one of the jackpot’s winners was revealed. “I am Iu Mien.”

Saephan laughs after being introduced as a winner of the US$1.3 billion Powerball lottery at the Oregon Lottery headquarters on Monday. Photo: AP

During the Vietnam war, the CIA and US military recruited Iu Mien in neighbouring Laos, many of them subsistence farmers, to engage in guerilla warfare and to provide intelligence and surveillance to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail that the North Vietnamese used to send troops and weapons through Laos and Cambodia into South Vietnam.

After the conflict as well as the Laotian civil war, when the US-backed government of Laos fell in 1975, they fled by the thousands to avoid reprisals from the new Communist government, escaping by foot through the jungle and then across the Mekong River into Thailand, according to a history posted on the website of Iu Mien Community Services in Sacramento, California. More than 70 per cent of the Iu Mien population in Laos left, and many wound up in refugee camps in Thailand.

Thousands of the refugees were allowed to come to the US, with the first waves arriving in the late 1970s and most settling along the West Coast. The culture had rich traditions of storytelling, basketry, embroidery and jewellery-making, but many initially had difficulty adjusting to Western life due to cultural and language differences as well as a lack of formal education.

I take pride in seeing our members of the community advance and flourish, and I just feel so good for him

Cayle Tern, Iu Mien Association of Oregon president

There are now tens of thousands of Iu Mien – pronounced “yoo MEE’-en” – in the US, with many attending universities or starting businesses. Many have converted to Christianity from traditional animist religions. There is a sizeable Iu Mien community in Portland and its suburbs, with a Buddhist temple and Baptist church, active social organisation, and businesses and restaurants.