Comment on CONIFA, Gender Equity and National Team Giving Karen Athletes a Chance by Karen FA continues the battle for equity and representation in 2022 - Sota Soccer

A new football team takes root in the too often frozen ground of Minnesota. While the land of a thousand lakes is home to major franchises in the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL, the beautiful game is one of its growing industries. Minnesotans of all colors and creeds can be found in the spring, summer and fall, turning to indoor play when the snowy and constantly below freezing winter arrives. Far from the MLS spotlight that encircles Minnesota United, Minnesota State is also home to a wide variety of varsity, amateur and recreational teams that use the game to change lives and create memories.

Perhaps one of the most unique of these teams is not a singular club at all, but a national team association rooted in the capital city of Saint Paul itself. This is the Karen Football Association, a national team that seeks to represent one of Minnesota's newest communities. Despite resistance and obstacles at every turn, this team looks poised to make history far beyond the borders of any state or country.

As the name suggests, the Karen Football Association is a group of coaches and organizers who seek to create avenues for Karen footballers. The largest operations of the association are its women's and men's national teams.

These national teams, made up of Karen athletes, seek to represent the native Southeast Asian ethnicity as members of the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, or CONIFA. While Myanmar and Thailand, the two nations with the most Karen residents in the world, have national teams recognized by FIFA, the Twin Cities-based association seeks to provide a fair team for the Karen people. Although said team ends up being based in the largely rural state of Minnesota, known for its forests and farms as much as its cities, its hope is to provide a home for a global population.

The Karen people are already far more complicated than a group of people, full of diversity, individuality and variation, and their history is born of conflicts and still unresolved obstacles.

The Karen populated parts of what is now Myanmar long before the region was settled by the British or before the country even existed. Centuries of complex relations between the Karen communities and other ethnicities that inhabited the region came to a head during World War II when the British-aligned Karen found themselves a target for the Japanese-aligned parts of Burma. The resulting conflict would set off a long chain of events leaving the Karen people the target of violence from many levels of Burmese society. This violence, which continues to this day, has led large numbers of Karen to move to other parts of Southeast Asia and, on some occasions, to the United States and Canada. This migration is in addition to a significant presence of refugee camps in neighboring countries such as Thailand, where the Karen find both refuge and new obstacles.

According to the Karen Organization of Minnesota, more than 17,000 Karens have resettled to Saint Paul, Minnesota's capital, since the early 2000s. This same report details that the city, among other Minnesota cities , "home to one of the largest Karen communities in America".

The Karen Organization of Minnesota further explains that the goals of these communities vary, with some families and individuals hoping to live out their lives in the United States and become citizens, while others have high hopes of returning to South Asia. South East. It should be noted that American Karens can be found across the United States, from California to Florida.