Iu-Mien Birth Registration
 Ornate baby hats, called moua, indicate whether a baby is a boy or girl. A doughnut-shaped roll on the top is for a girl and round pom poms is for a boy. In Iu-Mien tradition, each child must be formally registered into the family. The Iu-Mien ancestral list, much like a United States birth certificate, records the child’s name, date and place of birth, and the parents’ names. This list also locates the child within an extended family lineage that includes the birth sequence of the family. Typically, three or seven days after a birth, a healer and priest called a sai kung performs a ritual to add the newborn’s name to the record of family names. He asks the ancestral spirits to bless and welcome the child into the family. This ritual is called Tim Mienv Kuv. "Not everybody can do it. There are special people who [are] shamans with experience. And he comes out to worship for us and to put the house books, family records in order. We put the family member’s name, what date, what year, what town [they were] born. We give them a name and worship the family spirit. We tell it the newborn’s name and that we love it as a member of this family." –Chiem Finh Saechao
|
