December 12, 2020
Most of Indy’s south side doesn’t look much different than it did 30 years ago—fast-food joints, tidy ranch homes, and strip malls. But if you drive down Madison Avenue near Southport Road and look closely, you might notice a cluster of signs written in Burmese. Asian supermarkets and restaurants dot the landscape. Burmese accountants and real-estate agents have hung their shingles. It’s an unusual pocket of diversity for the south side, which for years was overwhelmingly white.
Since 2000, waves of Burmese refugees have been fleeing ethnic and religious persecution in their home country and seeking asylum in the United States. Burmese Chin, a mostly Christian minority group, have chosen Southport as their new home. Today, almost 20,000 Chin live on the south side, making it one of the largest concentrations of Chin people outside of Myanmar (formerly Burma). Access to employment, low housing prices, and an abundance of Christian churches appealed to them, and their presence is making a remarkable impact.