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.
Hōkūpaʻa as a name literally means 'fixed star' in the Hawaiian language, and refers to Polaris, or the North Star. Just as that star is always visible, our organization strives to constantly perpetuate and maintain the Pasifika community on campus. Our members range from students with family roots in the Pacific to students who live(d) in the Pacific like Hawaiʻi and even just students with a connection and interest in the islands. As the only space featuring the Pasifika community on campus, it's really situated at the perfect niche: I met students that shared interests and connections with me, and we as an org provide a unique perspective to Dartmouth's own student community.
But what do we actually do? Every term, we plan events that allow for us to design and get involved with events that center our cultures, both for ourselves and for the enjoyment of the entire campus. These events range from community-building events, to workshops, to our annual lūʻau open to all of campus in the spring.
Because food is so central to our cultures, we often theme our events accordingly. One of my favorite events (and one that's featured on the picture for this post) is the termly breakfast. Many of our members hail from Hawaiʻi, so these breakfasts usually involve using ingredients that don't make appearances at the Class of 1953 Commons or Collis Cafe. We'll get pineapple juice, cook spam and rice, and just cook ourselves a home-cooked meal that reminds us of breakfast back home, wherever home may be! Other days, we'll have a group dinner catered by some of the amazing Asian restaurants in town like Tuk-Tuk, Sushiya, or Han Fusion. Usually, we time these meals to coincide with busy weeks so that it also functions as a much-needed study group — good food and great company never go wrong.
For some of our other events, we like to host workshops or lectures that center prominent issues and topics related to the Pasifika community that usually aren't talked much about in classrooms. During my first-year, Hōkūpaʻa invited a Native Hawaiian activist to campus to speak about ongoing protests on Mauna Kea against the construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope. During the fall of my junior year, we invited a hula practitioner and professor from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo to host a hula workshop where we could invite our friends to learn about the history of hula and even practice one ourselves.
At the time of my writing this post, us in Hōkūpaʻa are neck-deep in preparing for our annual lūʻau. Hosted every term, this event involves us inviting Hawaiian musicians to campus, a hula performance by our members, and tons of food catered from Hawai'i. Open to campus, it's a way for us to share Hawaiian culture with the student body. As a junior this year, this will be my very first lūʻau on campus because of our pausing the event during the global pandemic, but I'm super excited to see it come to fruition and to be able to share it with everyone!
This is just a little about our org, and if you are a student interested in joining Hōkūpaʻa, feel free to reach out! Especially if you're a prospective student, we'd love to have you and can't wait to meet all of you when you arrive on campus. Aloha a hui hou!
Through Dartmouth's Guarini Institute for International Study, I am getting to take classes and experience life at Wellesley College, an all-women's school!
