There comes a time in the history of every immigrant group when there are enough of you in a place and you’ve been there long enough, that government begins to take notice of you, your names, your customs, your religion, and the flag of the place from which you came.
For two years now, around the time of the Cambodian New Year, that country’s flag has been raised at Government Center, in honor of Cambodian immigrants who have added their own verse to Fall River’s immigrant song.
“This is to celebrate our Cambodian flag,” Sokvann Sam said Friday afternoon on the atrium of Government Center. Sam is a vocational rehabilitation counselor with the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission, and is involved in Cambodian cultural events throughout the region.
“We brought our culture, history, religion and foods to America,” Sam said. “Thank you for welcoming us.”
“Good health to everyone in the city,” said Ricky Tith, president of Fall River’s Cambodian American Rescue Organization, echoing a wish for the Year of the Dog. “This is our city and we all love it.”
Tith had some advice for all those who bring some new thing to America.
“If you want to show your culture, do it,” Tith said. “Do it.”
Fall River Mayor Jasiel Correia II said this is a time in American history when people are being divided.
“We don’t do that in Fall River,” he said. “We come together.”
“Some people in our country fear immigrants,” said state Rep. Paul Schmid of Westport. “Not here in Fall River.”
No Cambodian event in the city can be considered a Cambodian event without the graceful dancing, always done barefoot, that has become one of the things everyone knows about Cambodian culture.
Friday night, it was the dance troupe sponsored by the Cambodian American Rescue Organization who undertook their slow, synchronized moves to the sound of Cambodian stringed instruments. Each of the dancers held a gold-colored dish full of flower petals which they tossed in front of them as they danced. The dancers were, for as long as the dance lasted, seven Buddhist angels. Legend has it the angels come to earth only during the Buddhist New Year, when they drop blessings like the dancers dropped the flower petals.
After two performances by two groups of dancers, the crowd filed outside to watch the Cambodian flag rise up, and then flutter from, the flagpole between Government Center and the Post Office.
Email Marc Munroe Dion at mdion@heraldnews.com.