Duab Toj Siab Jun 2026

Best for: A blog post or a creative writing piece.

Hmong animist tradition holds that for a soul to be at peace, it must know where it belongs. A spirit that is forgotten becomes a dab (wild spirit) or a nyi niam (vengeful ghost). When a family resettles in Wisconsin or California without performing the proper hu plig (soul calling) ceremonies or without returning to the ancestral graves, the ancestors’ souls remain hungry, cold, and lost on that mountaintop. duab toj siab