Footscray

• This clandestine loan-savings scheme was a way for low-income Vietnamese refugees to buy their first family car, start a small business or make a home deposit.
• They survive today in rural areas and overseas diaspora communities who have struggled to secure bank loans and legal credit.
• It is interesting that multiple cultures across the Moana-Pacific use the term “Hui” to describe a collective gathering or negotiation.

Vietnamese diaspora

• With this mass intake, fragmented resettlement programs and unreliable social and legal services compounded the realities of post-traumatic stress and poverty.
• The outer suburbs where our families could afford to live – Cabramatta, Footscray, Richmond, and Inala – quickly gained a reputation for gang violence, becoming infamous as the drug-riddled Vietnamese ghettos of the eastern seaboard.

Collective sharing

• Class affiliations meant people could reconnect through well-established social networks to form tightly regulated Hụi clubs wherever we resettled.
• Monthly payments could range anywhere between $200 and $5,000, depending on the risk tolerance and income bracket of each club.
• These collective savings schemes were risky, with no legal recourse if members decided to Dựt Hụi, or “do a runner”.
• Intrinsically collective and self-determined, Hụi encourages unexpected forms of cultural agency and mobilisation beyond institutional permission or containment.

Playing the Đông Sơn Drum

• The Đông Sơn Drum is an ancient ceremonial instrument woven into the mythology and identity of Vietnamese people.
• These drums are held in colonial museums and ethnographic collections the world over.
• We had the quick cash to purchase a Đông Sơn drum when it came up at a local estate auction.