Huron School District

Lah Soe speaks before the start of a Miss Knaw pageant at Huron in July 2023. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

Bridge generation: Children of southeast Asian refugees carve out niche in Huron

BY: - September 15, 2023

HURON — Until age 6, Kler Hae roamed the highlands of southern Thailand after school with his friends, hunting birds with slingshots and stones. If they got lucky, they’d bring home dinner. Now he’s a real estate agent in Huron, an eastern South Dakota town of about 14,000.  At age 12, Pywe Der moved to […]

The "World's Largest Pheasant" greets visitors to Huron. (John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight)

Desperation and renewal: How Huron embraced new Americans and thrived

BY: - September 15, 2023

That Huron came to be a major hub of Karen culture in the Midwest was at least partially a side effect of desperation. What began as desperation for workers morphed into desperation for a school system struggling to manage its migrant population and the community’s response to it.  Today, about a decade after the dust settled […]