Statement of purpose

STATEMENT OF PURPOSE The purpose of this Conference is not only to educate how social injustice continues but how it is ultimately justified through negligence and ignorance towards our fellow man whom we often view as backwards and less than we are due to lack of visibility and a general misunderstanding. The purpose of my visit is to draw attention to an issue that minorities of Marshallese descent continue to face and how they have effectively ensured a measure of balance in having their voices registered in academic contexts by challenging institutionalized discrimination and systemic racism.

Decolonization is not a metaphor. It is an ongoing process for people of indigenous descent and more so to Pacific Islanders whom are often marginalized in discussions despite their reality and imagery being defined by others who essentially won’t experience the sharp end of such prejudice being that they aren’t those people they are describing and defining.

Having learned in the University of San Francisco from Dr. Leung who understands the value of decolonizing methodologies in indigenous research that everyone deserves an academic space to acknowledge existence, I am merely fighting for my space to exist as a human being who happens to be of mixed Asian and Pacific Island descent. Although my Asian side is very visible given Japan and India’s popularity, my Marshallese Pacific side craves a place in this world that it once enjoyed before being told by colonizers that I was backwards in everything that constituted intellects. Mental colonization is a very real dramatic issue in the Marshall Islands and to Pacific Indigenous communities who are craving their fair share of the discourses that literally construct their very existence. As Malcolm X once stated “if you are convinced you never did anything, then you will never believe that you can do anything.” To take his argument further in relation to the human right of equal dignity, I only respond and build on his words concluding that if Marshallese are not given equal spaces because they have been led to believe that they are not intellectually capable of theorizing knowledge hence capable of thinking for themselves, then we would be doomed to suffer under the colonized mindset that Marshallese can only be smart and therefore exist for that matter only by imitating others that we are not in tune with being that we are our own unique being. As a Jesuit institution that promotes social justice and equal dignity of every persons as it is a human right, I believe USF has taught me to speak up even against itself because I too am deserving of my space to exist as a human being of Marshallese descent and I don’t believe they will ever understand why I have to go elsewhere with sympathizers that are already where I’m at in understanding a glimpse of that pain where I don’t feel equally dignified nor heard in academic discussion and contexts.