Michelle Kelly arrived early this past Saturday morning on Lake Owasso in Shoreview, and soon extracted multiple augers, portable shelters and fishing rods and reels from her vehicle.
"I brought bait, too," she said.
Kelly is an outreach specialist with the Department of Natural Resources who on Saturday would help introduce ice fishing to a group of about 25 members of the Twin Cities Karen community (pronounced Ka-WREN).
Natives of Burma — now widely called Myanmar — the Karen have been oppressed for centuries, with persecution intensifying after World War II, when their ally, Britain, pulled out of Burma.
Many Karen families have since fled to neighboring Thailand, where some have lived their entire lives in refugee camps. One camp, Mae La, houses some 50,000 refugees, about 90 percent of whom are Karen. In total, more than 125,000 Karen are said to be in Thailand refugee camps.
Karen refugees were admitted to the U.S. beginning in about 2000, and four years later Morrison Johnny was among them. Johnny, then 31 years old, came to Minnesota from Thailand with his wife and three (now four) children.
"Karen people live in villages in Burma," said Johnny, an employment and social services program manager for the Karen Organization of Minnesota. "We are farmers and gardeners, and we fish and hunt."
Today about 20,000 Karen people live in Minnesota. Most are in Ramsey County, with populations also in Austin, Albert Lea, Marshall, Worthington and Willmar.