Aloha to the page of a wanderlusting writer juggling college life and several other hobbies into an eternally-short 24-hour day. I hope to shed light on the Dartmouth experience as I explore the brave new world of Hanover, NH and everything going to college here has to offer. In my free time, you can find me trying to learn a new language or building the perfect Spotify playlist (alternative/indie, anyone?). I hope you enjoy!
Taught by Gordon Henry, an Anishinaabe poet and author, this class taught me to explore Indigenous storytelling within digital contexts. I took this class with only seven other classmates, allowing us to really engage with films, comic books, and television shows in Indigenous languages or produced by Indigenous artists.
Taught by Timothy Pulju, this class taught me how to identify and understand how languages evolve over time and why. I analyzed and reconstructed fictional languages of imaginary nations in order to understand the link between language and culture, and ended up having such an appreciation for the complexity and beauty of language's place in history!
Taught by Lindsay Whaley, this class let me discover a newfound love for ancient apocalyptic literature. We analyzed ancient texts and compared them to modern apocalypses, looking at the zombie apocalypse phenomenon and other apocalypses in pop culture and comparing them to the ancient tradition of writing apocalypses. Additionally, I learned the Greek alphabet and now I can even stumble through ancient Greek passages.
FallNew Orleans, LA
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught and organized by David Peterson, this class let me get into the shoes of a real linguist as we did fieldwork (virtually!!) with the Zophei language. I learned how to describe a never-before-learned language's phonology (sound system), how to characterize its grammar and words, and ultimately got to present my research to experts in the language family around the world in a workshop at the end of the term!
WinterHanover, NH
Favorite Class: Native American Literature and the Law
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class taught me how Native literature can provide lens by which to evaluate, critique, and ultimately revise Federal Indian Law. During this class, I read works by Native authors like Tommy Orange and Louise Erdrich '76 alongside the opinions of definitive case opinions in American law and explained how literature can be a catalyst for Indigenous sovereignty.
Supervised by N. Bruce Duthu, I spent this off-term performing research after being awarded a Sophomore Research Scholarship to study contemporary Hawaiian cultural and linguistic revitalization. I studied 19th-century newspapers and contemporary Hawaiian texts in order to understand how Hawaiian language revitalization both past and present has advanced and continues to enable a contemporary bodied Hawaiian politic of sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me about how languages create meaning through words. During this class, I learned how to analyze different languages' morphological processes and compare different approaches within the field as to morphological structures.
Taught by N. Bruce Duthu, this class offered me a glimpse into the lived realities of Native people in Indian Country Today. I learned about the economic, social, cultural, and historical roots for the struggles of Indigenous people today within the United States, and was able to write about the contemporary battle for Native Hawaiian visibility and Hawaiian sovereignty.
Taught by Laura McPherson, this class taught me how to engage in language documentation and how, as a linguist, we can put our skills to use to help communities seeking to document and revitalize their languages. I worked on the Satawalese language, spoken on the island of Satawal in the Federated States of Micronesia. Ultimately, my team created two dictionaries - one in English, one in Hawaiian, a website, and several materials that focused on the Satawalese tradition of wayfinding and non-instrumental ocean navigation.
Taught by Charles Eastman fellow Sunaina Kale, this class taught me about the role of sound in delineating, conceiving, and comprehending relations between people and the land in Indigenous musical traditions. Over the course of the class, we discussed Indigenous musicians, listened to music from Native peoples around the world, heard from masterful Indigenous musicians, and ultimately presented a project that creatively analyzed a song of our choice. My project focused on the song "Ask Yourself" by Foster the People, and I wrote a poem that integrated aspects of Indigenous languages and worldviews to answer questions posed by the song.
This term, I formally began the research process for my upcoming honors thesis in the Linguistics department on Hawaiian semantics! While living in Hanover, I also began working as a Senior Fellow with the Admissions department—a position I will be holding for the entirety of my last year at Dartmouth.
By the time of my writing this post, I'm heading into Week 9 of 20W (a Dartmouth abbreviation for Winter Term 2020). If you told me when I stepped off the Dartmouth coach just a bunch of weeks ago that I'd blink and watch more than two months fly away, I would've called you out and then went on my merry way to Novack for a macchiato. Now, I'm just concerned that my next terms will pass me by in similar fashion. There just isn't enough time for me to explore every corner of the world that Dartmouth manages to get into the tiny-but-just-big-enough campus here in Hanover, but as always, I'm going to do my best.
It's almost the end of my first winter here in Hanover, but that doesn't mean my friends and I didn't hop on the opportunity to go check out some ice castles an hour and a half north of us thanks to our Indigenous Student Peer Advisor (ISPA) and BFF Evan.
We love Evan!
The ISPA program is a really cool program that my friends and I were able to have access to immediately after Native Pre-Orientation (Pre-O) — a program before classes start that really helped my friends and I transition with the help and resources of a strong Indigenous student support group. The ISPA program is staffed by a handful of Indigenous upperclassmen who serve as advisors and mentors to me and my friends while also directing weekly Friday, Food, and Fun at the Native American House — a way for us to catch up with each other and eat food. It just so happens that this Friday, Food, and Fun was all about ice castles, which, lucky for us, also meant escaping off campus.
We drove up in a van for an hour and a half, mostly through Vermont but ending up in New Hampshire, where the castles were located. It was ridiculously packed by people that I assume lived in the area, but the ISPA program bought and reserved tickets for all seven of us, so altogether it cost us absolutely nothing but time. And, of course, we welcomed this opportunity to get away from writing our final papers.
I still can't believe there are people out there building this giant structures out of individual icicles and buckets of water. The level of patience, artistic skill, and sheer determination required to build with the cold in the cold is beyond me, but thanks @ you guys for giving my friends and I an off-campus experience in the White Mountains that we won't soon forget. We'll just stay simultaneously loving and running from winter, I guess.
Look at this majestic wall. You don't see these in the South, I promise.
It's also still amazing to me when I reflect on who my friends are today and how they haven't really changed from my first few days on campus. Being around people from similar backgrounds with cultures as diverse as anywhere on Earth really shaped a lot of my participation in campus events and how much I'm involved with certain areas of campus life. Today I'm in both Hōkūpaʻa, planning a massive lūʻau for the coming Spring Term, and also working to plan Ivy Native Conference, which Dartmouth gets to host in the first week of Spring Term! And, really, it's all thanks to Pre-O. I trace all of my drive today to those first few days and the people I met. Thanks, guys.
If you're an Indigenous student (or First-Gen/Low-Income (FGLI), or International), I cannot recommend attending Pre-Orientation enough. Immediately I was shown all of the different resources available on Dartmouth's campus and where all of my support systems are for academic issues, mental health, and straight-up peer support. That's made all the difference for me navigating Dartmouth and I can't even imagine a world without these guys.
I hope this shed a little more light on the Indigenous community here at Dartmouth and how influential the Pre-O programs can be to your Dartmouth experience if you're able to go. Thanks for reading, aloha for now.
In addition to blogging, I work as a Fellow for the Tucker Center, which focuses on promoting spiritual and ethical life on campus. As part of this role, I'm leading the Interfaith Alternative Spring Break Trip. Read on to learn more about my work!
