October Message from Dr. Maile Arvin

Dear Readers,

Genealogies are important to Pacific Islanders, so for those of you who don’t know me or Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Utah yet, allow me to introduce myself and our program.

My name is Maile Arvin. I am Native Hawaiian. I was born in Kentucky, and raised there and in Hawaiʻi. The maternal side of my family is from Waimānalo, Oʻahu. I am an associate professor in History and Gender Studies at the University of Utah. I moved to Utah to work at the university 5 years ago now. I am the author of the book Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawaiʻi and Oceania. In general, my research involves studying the history and legacies of colonialism in Hawaiʻi, as well as how Native Hawaiians have and continue to challenge colonial ideas about race, gender, and Indigenous peoples.

I am writing to you today as the director of Pacific Islands Studies at the U, a role I took over in July of this year. In 2017, I was hired through an initiative to bring more research and teaching about the Pacific Islands, from Indigenous Pacific Islander perspectives, in order to better recruit and serve the large local communities of Pacific Islander peoples in Utah. My hire, and the hire of Hōkūlani Aikau, was the result of the advocacy and organizing of three exisitng U faculty members: Adrian Bell (who is Tongan, in Anthropology), Kalani Raphael (who is Native Hawaiian, in Medicine) and Matt Basso (a white ally in History). We joined these faculty, as well as many who teach on a part-time basis, including Ulysses Tonganevai, who often teaches the introductory Pacific Islander American Experience class in Ethnic Studies, and Jake Fitisemanu (who often teaches Pacific Islander Health Dynamics. ʻInoke Hafoka has also been a long-time lecturer of Pacific Islands Studies courses at the U, though he happily recently moved on to a tenure-track faculty position at BYU-Hawaiʻi.

The following year, 2018, we hired two more Pacific Islander faculty: Kēhaulani Vaughn (Native Hawaiian, in Education, Culture and Society) and Nia Aitaoto (Samoan, in Health). That year, through the support of Dean Kathryn Bond Stockton of the College of Social and Cultural Transformation, we were also awarded a three-year $600,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, which supported various programming including our Pasifika Scholars bridge program, as well as graduate student fellowships and a postdoctoral fellowship. We were thrilled when we were able to hire that postdoctoral fellow, Angela Robinson (Chuukese), as permanent faculty in Gender Studies and Environmental Humanities, in 2020. We were also glad when we were able to start offering Samoan language courses through partnerships with the Asia Center and World Languages and Cultures.

Amidst our growth, some folks have moved on to other opportunities. Hōkūlani Aikau left us for a faculty position at the University of Victoria in 2020, and Nia Aitaoto has also moved on, and continues to do an enormous amount of community-based health-focused research. Our wonderful staff member, whose job was supported by our time-limited Mellon grant, Moana Hafoka-Uluave, also took another job.

On a happier note, as we say more about below, Kalani Raphael, who left us briefly for Portland, has just rejoined us as faculty at the U. In 2020, we also gained a new Chamoru faculty member, Frankie Laanan, in the College of Education. He is enthusiastic about working with Pacific Islander students and communities.

In the five years since the U began to invest in Pacific Islands Studies as an important site of research and teaching, we have not only added a number of new Pacific Islands Studies-focused courses to the books, but also established a Pacific Islands Studies certificate (akin to a minor) for undergraduates. We continue to organize programming to support and advance scholarship and build relationships on and off campus that support Pacific Islander communities locally, nationally, and internationally. Our faculty are engaged with initiatives locally and serve on a variety of national and international boards.

Earlier this year, we found out that we received a second Mellon Foundation grant, for $1 million over the next three years. Kēhaulani Vaughn, Angela Robinson and myself, with Kathryn Bond Stockton’s support, are leading the implementation of this grant. The vision we put forth in this iteration of our grant is centered around building a Center for Pasifika and Indigenous Knowledges at the University of Utah.

That title is admittedly a mouthful, so let me break it down a bit. We use “Pasifika,” a self-identifying term commonly used in Aotearoa/New Zealand by non-Maori Pacific Islanders living in diaspora there, as a way to acknowledge that as Pacific Islanders living in Utah, we are all living away from our homelands but often find home in and with each other. We use “Indigenous” as a term of solidarity with other Indigenous peoples around the world, meaning those peoples whose ancestors, cultures, languages, histories, and futures, are deeply rooted in a place. By this definition, we understand Pacific Islanders as Indigenous peoples regardless of our different relationships to colonialism or independence.

We understand Pacific Islanders from Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia as genealogically related, and though we all differ from each other in many ways, we find it meaningful to work towards political, cultural, and intellectual solidarity between us. Similarly, we acknowledge that Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are groups with broad cultural differences and contexts within them; but we think it is politically, intellectually, and ethically important to build solidarity with the peoples whose stolen lands we live on, namely, the Ute, the Goshute, the Paiute and the Shoshone peoples.

So in working to build a Center for Pasifika and Indigenous Knowledges, we are working to establish solidarity and good relationships among our own Pacific Islander communities as well as with the Native American communities on our campus and in the Salt Lake City area. We understand this work as a kind of slow, long-term practice, something akin to gardening. This approach is reflected in our first major event, “Planting Good Relations,” scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 19th, 1-3pm, at the Tracy Aviary Jordan River Nature Center. There, we will talk story with invited representatives from a number of local Indigenous community gardens and gardening organizations. Our hope is to seed some relationships with these folks that can result in bringing our students and other community members to do volunteer work days with these gardens and groups in the spring and summer. A well-known Hawaiian ʻōlelo noʻeau (proverb) is “Ma ka hana ka ʻike,” meaning “In the doing (or in the work) is knowledge.” Putting our hands in the dirt, learning how to grow food from seeds, distinguishing what different plants need: this is all knowledge that can only be gained through practice.

We hope to keep ourselves oriented to this spirit of practicing and experimenting, because we have so much more planned: including a collaborative scholarly project by a working group on Anti-Colonial Ecologies, led by Angela Robinson, the launch of a new podcast, Relations of Salt and Stars, hosted by myself and Angela Robinson (you can listen to our first episode here), and the creation of a Pacific Islands Studies graduate certificate. We are also in a new stage of growth: this semester, we are hiring a new tenure-track faculty member in Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies. Next semester, we will hire a new career-line faculty member. We hope each of these projects will develop into something we are proud of, something that nourishes us and our communities. But we also expect to make mistakes, learn from them, and adjust, just like gardeners do every year.

If you remain subscribed to our newsletter, you will receive monthly updates on all of our goings on. Our next newsletter will feature more about our Nov. 19th “Planting Good Relations” event. If you have news or opportunities you would like to share with our communities, please email them to me (maile.arvin@utah.edu). Whether you are an old friend, or new, we look forward to seeing you and continuing to grow here at the U.

Aloha pumehana,

Maile