The Southeast Asia Program of the 1980 Festival of American Folklife will present the traditional culture of immigrants from three mainland Southeast Asian countries: the Khmer from Cambodia, the Lao and Hmong from Laos, and the Vietnamese.

India and China were two sources of immigration and culture for Southeast Asia, although the term "Indochina" place's disproportionate stress on their influence. Archeological findings reveal signs of sophisticated civilization in Southeast Asia paralleling or possibly predating the development of civilization in the Middle East and China. Later, great civilizations such as Funan and Khmer in present-day ...