UC Berkeley

"Vāsā (Ocean)--The Space that is Sacred: Pacific Islanders in Higher Education" investigates how Pacific Islander students across three college campuses--City College of San Francisco, University of Washington, Seattle, and the University of California, Berkeley--change their schools though the use of their indigenous cultures (ocean). Creating a voice for an often invisible community in higher education, students "talk-story" about the challenges and triumphs of their journey in higher education while questioning the politics of knowledge production, identity constructions, indigenous cultural practices, community formations, and inclusion in their schools. The project illustrates how these Pacific Islander movements are critiques of diversity in post-secondary educational institutions but also explores students' engagement with contemporary colonization as a way of understanding their personal lives, their families and communities, and their worlds.