Dublin Core
Title
Oral History Interview with Makana Kushi
Subject
Indigenous activism
Description
This is the audio file and transcript of an oral history interview conducted with Makana Kushi (Kanaka Maoli, Native Hawaiian) who studied at Yale from 2014-2018 and majored in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. While at Yale, she served as the President of the Association of Native Americans at Yale (ANAAY) and worked on actions like reviving the Yale Powwow after a ten-year dormancy, hosting the Henry Roe Cloud Alumni Conference to discuss Native issues, and challenging student groups on issues of cultural appropriation and misrepresentation. The interview touches on her personal journey to ethnic studies and Indigenous organizing, lessons she learned through ANAAY and the relationship between study and struggle.
Creator
Isabella Zou
Source
[no text]
Publisher
[no text]
Date
December 17, 2021
Contributor
[no text]
Format
[no text]
Language
[no text]
Type
[no text]
Oral History Item Type Metadata
Original Format
[no text]
Duration
22 minutes, 29 seconds
Bit Rate/Frequency
[no text]
Transcription
Makana Kushi 0:00
My name is Makana Kushi. I'm an alumni, I had been at Yale between 2014 and 2018. And my major was in ER&M, Ethnicity, Race and Migration with a concentration or focus—I'm not sure if it's still structured that way. But at the time, you had to pick something that you were to take five classes in as sort of a specialty, and I chose Indigenous Studies.
Isabella Zou 0:28
Oh, great. Yeah. No, I think we still have that. I honestly don't know what mine is going to be. So the first question that I had was just to hear a little bit about your pathway to studying ER&M, and also your pathway to being a student activist at Yale, and whether and how those two things related throughout your time there?
Makana Kushi 0:49
Sure. Yeah, definitely, it did. I came to Yale as a first year not knowing anything about what ethnic studies was. Back then, I think it wasn't as much in popular social media. I didn't know, but I thought maybe I was going to do English. And then I saw this class. What was it listed as—the title that the person teaching it wanted it to have was "United States Wars in the Pacific." But I think it got changed to something like "Asian American Cities" or something that was, you know, had to have blunted the political nature of it a little bit, like someone had asked them to change the title of it. A grad student named Juliet Nebolon… she was getting her PhD in American Studies at the time and taught this class that really focused on US military imperialism in the Pacific, the Indigenous Pacific and in Asia. And there were quite a number of readings about Hawaii, where I'm from, I'm Native Hawaiian. And I think this is where I first came across the writings of Haunani-Kay Trask, who is a Hawaiian activist, feminist, anti-imperialist, Marxist, amazing woman, passed away recently, and I was inspired by her writings about, you know, Hawaiian activism and specifically about the idea of Hawaii is like a paradise, is a vacation spot as, at the same time that it was, you know, heavily occupied by the US military. And I got interested in ER&M, just as a launching point from that class. I became interested then in Indigenous Studies in particular, and got really involved in the Native American Cultural Center about the same time I had taken that class as a sophomore, and I worked a part time job as a House House staff at the NACC. And those things really, yeah, really did flow together. I mean, since Indigenous Studies, there aren't a whole lot of people and you know, who teach that. We used to say that if you wanted to be an ER&M major with an Indigenous Studies concentration, you had to be a Ned Blackhawk all star, you had to take, like, every one of his classes.
Isabella Zou 3:26
That's still the saying, I think.
Makana Kushi 3:30
And then, you know, there were like, postdocs and graduate students who taught classes now and then, but the fact that Professor Blacklock was really involved in the NACC student community, he was always very supportive of our little events. He used to play basketball with students, I don't know if he does that anymore. So my part time job at the NACC, and then classes and ER&M kind of flowed together into being involved within the student orgs that are based out of the NACC, mostly ANAAY, the Association of Native Americans at Yale. Which has broadened its name appropriately, I think, because people like Native Hawaiians and Indigenous peoples who aren't like, recognized tribal nations, are not like Native American, per se. So, yeah. Yeah, so there were a ton of classes. There was a Pacific Islander studies class taught by a postdoc named Lani Teves, who was also Native Hawaiian. And that really influenced my thinking also about the relationship between militarism and tourism in Hawaii and the Pacific. And that was very, those kind of readings and academic information and historical context was important to my being pretty adamant that like, organizing against this cultural appropriation of Hawaiian dance by another student organization called Shaka, was like a big part of the 2015, 2016-ish time of ANAAY because a bunch of us were taking those classes and reading those readings about that harmful stereotype about Hawaii. There was also, Blackhawk teaches a federal Indian law class so that at the time informed ANAY's activism in support of water protectors at Standing Rock, because a lot of those battles were happening in the court in addition to on the ground. So we hosted a couple of teach-in kind of things for the Yale student body that had tied to them either fundraisers or donation drives. So everything kind of did flow together that way.
Isabella Zou 5:47
Did you find that the people that you were organizing and learning and growing with like, in ANAAY, in the NACC, did it sort of feel like a blend of, you were taking classes together, learning together? Were there any sort of mentorship structures for learning how to be a political activist or like, yeah, what was it like to be in those student groups?
Makana Kushi 6:07
Yeah, I definitely think there were, I mean, not everybody majored in ER&M. But I think everybody took a few classes. I have a close friend, Katie McCleary, who's now a law student, actually at Yale Law, who majored in history, but then took, you know, was also a Ned Blackhawk all star because he's also in history. Yeah, I guess, you know, Indigenous legal stuff. So it'd be like, we see each other in class, and then we had to be at NACC for work. And then we have our meeting afterward, and we then go get dinner together, it was a lot like that. And in terms of mentorship structures, I think so, I mean, the peer liaison program naturally makes it so that peer mentorship happens in the cultural center. And since a lot of people who work student, staff jobs in the centers also participate in the student organizations, which are at the forefront of these kinds of political events.
Isabella Zou 7:09
Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I guess like, so over the course of your time at Yale, you and ANAAY did a lot of stuff, as we saw in the materials that you sent, so I guess I'm just curious if there's any particular one of those actions, or moments during any of those that really stand out to you in terms of how you grew as a scholar organizer, or parts that were just meaningful to you, or challenging.
Makana Kushi 7:40
Yeah, I think bringing back the powwow was a big learning thing for me. Hawaiians don't do powwows, they're not part of our cultural or political or historical history, but because the year that everybody had the energy, and we felt like we had the support from the cultural center administration, and the broader university administration, like, it was just the moment to do the powwow because of who was involved, and we wanted to line that up with the alumni conference, the Henry Roe Cloud conference. And so it was sort of weird that it happened that you know, a student that was definitely not from a powwow tribe was president of ANAAY, it was a lot of learning for me about what kind of things you need, what is the head staff and then the idea of like dancers and reaching out to local Native folks who have really nothing to do with Yale was really enriching you know, and it was important for me to learn. Even though I'm an Indigenous person in the northeast, that's not, I'm not familiar with, I don't have that kind of relationship to that particular land. And so learning—and I think a lot of what was happening too, is like, between trying to defend the ER&M major program from these resource cutting kind of attacks, and these battles about cultural appropriation and like anti-Indigenous racism and like, Yale student stuff, I felt like once I became a senior and started like, working together with everybody else on the powwow stuff that like, I wish we had focused more of our time to redistributing or like trying to like siphon resources out of Yale and into the local Native communities. Because so much of our energy was trying to be against other Yale students that were disrespecting us—which that's not like, not a productive or an important thing to do. But it was so great to see everybody from young children to elders at the powwow, and I don't know, just try to be involved in things that were uplifting them. I think later on after I left, things like the “Places, Nations, Generations, Beings” art exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery happened, there was a repatriation of some art and ancestors from the museum from Yale holdings to Native nations locally. And so I think that was the biggest, learning thing for me.
Isabella Zou 10:22
Totally. That's really beautiful. Because like, I think that a lot of what we've been learning about is really just sort of focused on the Yale community, like how do we make things better within the structure of this institution. But then to see how you're able to, like, draw people together and use your resources to also bring in non-Yale people and sort of have a wider sense of collectivity and stuff like that. So that's really, really beautiful to hear about.
Makana Kushi 10:53
Absolutely. Like, there's the struggles for Native students, like being away from home, those of us who do happen to live in our, you know, grew up in our homelands. And then going away, it feels like, 'Oh, I feel so out of place. I feel like I'm not in a Native space anymore, because I'm not in my homeland. But actually, it's important for us to remember, like, we are on Native land still, even if it's not the kind that we're like, I don't know, familiar with. It's still special and needs caring for, in its own way.
Isabella Zou 11:24
Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like you were able to sort of grow in the sense of like, how do you relate to Indigenous North Americans, even though you didn't have the powwows as part of your tradition? And like learning about it? And other students—was that a big part of your growth from that?
Makana Kushi 11:44
Yeah, absolutely. I think it would, it was unfortunate, that it had taken so long for me to think about it in that way. It's not like we didn't do stuff before, like the NACC would do trips to local socials and powwows, and bring guests. But like, yeah, and it's not even just like the difference between someone who's Indigenous, like, from the Pacific or Africa, or Europe, like, it's also the fact that like, within the different tribal nations, just in the northeast, right, there's even, like, huge variance among them, so like learning our politics, and relations and networks that like, distinguish these communities from one another as well was like, a lot to learn about.
Isabella Zou 12:29
Yeah, that's so cool. I guess like, in the powwow, but then also in some of the other things you were working on, within Yale structures, and countering culture appropriation, like the dance group, stuff like that, were there any main obstacles or challenges that you encountered? That were frustrating, or difficult to work through during that?
Makana Kushi 12:50
Yeah, I mean, I think it felt really ironic that sometimes I didn't do my readings for ER&M because I was busy doing the 'extracurricular' stuff. After working the, blast a ton of emails about making sure the flyer gets sent out, like that kind of stuff. So just the, I think the amount of time and energy it takes at these, you know, these Ivy League schools that are so encouraging and celebratory of student extracurricular activity, that like sometimes it gets difficult to do your work-that actually would like better inform the community and cultural and activist kind of stuff that you're doing. And I would say the toll on students' mental health was definitely something that, you know, for the Shaka stuff, and then for the YPU Party of the Right, like having a debate about like, quote, Indian savages, like, horrible, right? Dealing with all of that, and then having to like, go and do your homework was a hard thing, because we'd get so worked up about everything, which is natural, and I don't think is our fault, but it was definitely a challenge. And also because people then had to, like, go back to their dorms where they were neighbors with these people, or go past them in the dining hall and see the YDN calling us these things, that we were, you know, 'out of control,' and like, the harassment from like other students and then random people who follow different Yale Facebook pages.
Isabella Zou 14:40
Oh, no. Was that sort of concentrated in the span of like, a semester or a year or something, or was this ongoing?
Makana Kushi 14:48
Yeah, yeah, I think 2015, 2016-ish time because of the snowflake explosion situation. I think there was so much focus on the idea that, you know, progressive students of color are so angry, which we were, but like, I don't know, the media attention toward that, I think anything that popped up that was even specific to Native stuff, people were grouping us in this larger like... But yeah, I think it was mostly concentrated in that time, especially then, because our focus shifted to the powwow, to which they were like, ‘Oh, that's so positive. Oh, so multicultural,’ you know, they don't understand like the political—they don't understand the Native cultural stuff is political stuff. Like, what about a powwow constitutes activism? And we saw it as like, well, we're funneling all these resources to Native peoples like, in some ways, it's better to do this than to focus on these internal things. That yes, feel more combative or more like ruffling feathers. But yeah, may not do as much in the long run.
Isabella Zou 16:03
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Did you wish that ER&M had had a way of like, supporting the work that you were doing that is directly related to what you're studying, instead of sort of being like, you have this divide between you as a student and you as an activist? Like more of an institutional way of like, blending those?
Makana Kushi 16:24
Yeah, as a graduate student, now, I'm like, Oh, this theory is important. Some of the run ins that we had of like, not using accurate and careful languages, we could have, like are things that the reading part of ER&M was enriching for, if we had had more time, but I also think there is opportunity to build into academic requirements, like some kind of community engagement aspect, or at least having like an option for if one of the faculty in ER&M were to like advise something similar to the senior thesis seminar, but for, like, internship with a community org, or a research project, like something more, you know, independent. And I think it's not that they were unsupportive. I mean, it was difficult with the cultural appropriation stuff, because the faculty are differently vulnerable in a university setting, especially at a system level. So like, the idea that they would support us in our fight against other students was just out of the question, you know, they wouldn't do that. But when I ended up reading my senior thesis about like, the appropriation of like a Pacific Islander-ish identity in Asian American communities, it was something that they let me do, it was something that they were supportive of. It's obviously really related. I mean, most of these women were Asian Americans. So it wasn't like it was unrelated. I think they do their best. I mean, there are so many demands on faculty of color to like, do more than white faculty already. And in that time, also, you know, 2014, 15, 16-ish, there was just, like, a ton, like several faculty left in those years from ER&M and from AFAM. That it was, we weren't unhappy with them for being unsupportive.
Isabella Zou 18:30
That totally makes sense. Yeah, I guess, we're kind of running out of time. But I guess I also wanted to ask if there's any other lessons that you feel like you learned, or like, ways that you grew from your time leading these organizing efforts, or just anything else that you would want to sort of reflect on about your experience.
Makana Kushi 18:59
Not that immediately comes to mind, I guess the question about like, moments that stand out and the powwow, still feels like you know, the biggest takeaway and I think, thinking beyond Yale, but also like, recognizing that like building community among other students and having like people that you can trust. And, you know, at an institution that's so difficult to navigate, is also important.
Isabella Zou 19:33
Yeah. Do you feel like you're left with the sense that the work that you were doing is still sort of like, still growing and is being iterated on and everything, in terms of the future of it?
Makana Kushi 19:46
Yeah, I do. I think, maybe not so directly, like I don't have really a relationship to any of the students that are there now since like, we're in the stage where like, the last class I would have known has just graduated. But I think there are threads that continue, like, we had tried to petition for the university to grant us credit for independent study of Native languages, because the NACC was already paying for us to do Zoom classes before everybody was doing Zoom. To do Zoom classes with language speakers from, you know, our communities. And I felt like when I started, you know, learning, or studying Hawaiian, in my sophomore year, like it was never going to happen. And then now, knowing that students do get credit for that, I think is exciting. And even if they don't, like, know how early or how exactly that kind of started, I don't mind that they don't know, right? It's like, it's good for them to feel like it's normal to get credit for studying their languages. And I know, this is weird to say, considering I'm like a historian. I'm not particularly invested in them knowing like, Oh, I did this, so and so did that. Yeah, as long as things are getting better and students are still building these relationships with each other, and people beyond Yale, I think it feels like it's still continuing.
My name is Makana Kushi. I'm an alumni, I had been at Yale between 2014 and 2018. And my major was in ER&M, Ethnicity, Race and Migration with a concentration or focus—I'm not sure if it's still structured that way. But at the time, you had to pick something that you were to take five classes in as sort of a specialty, and I chose Indigenous Studies.
Isabella Zou 0:28
Oh, great. Yeah. No, I think we still have that. I honestly don't know what mine is going to be. So the first question that I had was just to hear a little bit about your pathway to studying ER&M, and also your pathway to being a student activist at Yale, and whether and how those two things related throughout your time there?
Makana Kushi 0:49
Sure. Yeah, definitely, it did. I came to Yale as a first year not knowing anything about what ethnic studies was. Back then, I think it wasn't as much in popular social media. I didn't know, but I thought maybe I was going to do English. And then I saw this class. What was it listed as—the title that the person teaching it wanted it to have was "United States Wars in the Pacific." But I think it got changed to something like "Asian American Cities" or something that was, you know, had to have blunted the political nature of it a little bit, like someone had asked them to change the title of it. A grad student named Juliet Nebolon… she was getting her PhD in American Studies at the time and taught this class that really focused on US military imperialism in the Pacific, the Indigenous Pacific and in Asia. And there were quite a number of readings about Hawaii, where I'm from, I'm Native Hawaiian. And I think this is where I first came across the writings of Haunani-Kay Trask, who is a Hawaiian activist, feminist, anti-imperialist, Marxist, amazing woman, passed away recently, and I was inspired by her writings about, you know, Hawaiian activism and specifically about the idea of Hawaii is like a paradise, is a vacation spot as, at the same time that it was, you know, heavily occupied by the US military. And I got interested in ER&M, just as a launching point from that class. I became interested then in Indigenous Studies in particular, and got really involved in the Native American Cultural Center about the same time I had taken that class as a sophomore, and I worked a part time job as a House House staff at the NACC. And those things really, yeah, really did flow together. I mean, since Indigenous Studies, there aren't a whole lot of people and you know, who teach that. We used to say that if you wanted to be an ER&M major with an Indigenous Studies concentration, you had to be a Ned Blackhawk all star, you had to take, like, every one of his classes.
Isabella Zou 3:26
That's still the saying, I think.
Makana Kushi 3:30
And then, you know, there were like, postdocs and graduate students who taught classes now and then, but the fact that Professor Blacklock was really involved in the NACC student community, he was always very supportive of our little events. He used to play basketball with students, I don't know if he does that anymore. So my part time job at the NACC, and then classes and ER&M kind of flowed together into being involved within the student orgs that are based out of the NACC, mostly ANAAY, the Association of Native Americans at Yale. Which has broadened its name appropriately, I think, because people like Native Hawaiians and Indigenous peoples who aren't like, recognized tribal nations, are not like Native American, per se. So, yeah. Yeah, so there were a ton of classes. There was a Pacific Islander studies class taught by a postdoc named Lani Teves, who was also Native Hawaiian. And that really influenced my thinking also about the relationship between militarism and tourism in Hawaii and the Pacific. And that was very, those kind of readings and academic information and historical context was important to my being pretty adamant that like, organizing against this cultural appropriation of Hawaiian dance by another student organization called Shaka, was like a big part of the 2015, 2016-ish time of ANAAY because a bunch of us were taking those classes and reading those readings about that harmful stereotype about Hawaii. There was also, Blackhawk teaches a federal Indian law class so that at the time informed ANAY's activism in support of water protectors at Standing Rock, because a lot of those battles were happening in the court in addition to on the ground. So we hosted a couple of teach-in kind of things for the Yale student body that had tied to them either fundraisers or donation drives. So everything kind of did flow together that way.
Isabella Zou 5:47
Did you find that the people that you were organizing and learning and growing with like, in ANAAY, in the NACC, did it sort of feel like a blend of, you were taking classes together, learning together? Were there any sort of mentorship structures for learning how to be a political activist or like, yeah, what was it like to be in those student groups?
Makana Kushi 6:07
Yeah, I definitely think there were, I mean, not everybody majored in ER&M. But I think everybody took a few classes. I have a close friend, Katie McCleary, who's now a law student, actually at Yale Law, who majored in history, but then took, you know, was also a Ned Blackhawk all star because he's also in history. Yeah, I guess, you know, Indigenous legal stuff. So it'd be like, we see each other in class, and then we had to be at NACC for work. And then we have our meeting afterward, and we then go get dinner together, it was a lot like that. And in terms of mentorship structures, I think so, I mean, the peer liaison program naturally makes it so that peer mentorship happens in the cultural center. And since a lot of people who work student, staff jobs in the centers also participate in the student organizations, which are at the forefront of these kinds of political events.
Isabella Zou 7:09
Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, I guess like, so over the course of your time at Yale, you and ANAAY did a lot of stuff, as we saw in the materials that you sent, so I guess I'm just curious if there's any particular one of those actions, or moments during any of those that really stand out to you in terms of how you grew as a scholar organizer, or parts that were just meaningful to you, or challenging.
Makana Kushi 7:40
Yeah, I think bringing back the powwow was a big learning thing for me. Hawaiians don't do powwows, they're not part of our cultural or political or historical history, but because the year that everybody had the energy, and we felt like we had the support from the cultural center administration, and the broader university administration, like, it was just the moment to do the powwow because of who was involved, and we wanted to line that up with the alumni conference, the Henry Roe Cloud conference. And so it was sort of weird that it happened that you know, a student that was definitely not from a powwow tribe was president of ANAAY, it was a lot of learning for me about what kind of things you need, what is the head staff and then the idea of like dancers and reaching out to local Native folks who have really nothing to do with Yale was really enriching you know, and it was important for me to learn. Even though I'm an Indigenous person in the northeast, that's not, I'm not familiar with, I don't have that kind of relationship to that particular land. And so learning—and I think a lot of what was happening too, is like, between trying to defend the ER&M major program from these resource cutting kind of attacks, and these battles about cultural appropriation and like anti-Indigenous racism and like, Yale student stuff, I felt like once I became a senior and started like, working together with everybody else on the powwow stuff that like, I wish we had focused more of our time to redistributing or like trying to like siphon resources out of Yale and into the local Native communities. Because so much of our energy was trying to be against other Yale students that were disrespecting us—which that's not like, not a productive or an important thing to do. But it was so great to see everybody from young children to elders at the powwow, and I don't know, just try to be involved in things that were uplifting them. I think later on after I left, things like the “Places, Nations, Generations, Beings” art exhibit at the Yale University Art Gallery happened, there was a repatriation of some art and ancestors from the museum from Yale holdings to Native nations locally. And so I think that was the biggest, learning thing for me.
Isabella Zou 10:22
Totally. That's really beautiful. Because like, I think that a lot of what we've been learning about is really just sort of focused on the Yale community, like how do we make things better within the structure of this institution. But then to see how you're able to, like, draw people together and use your resources to also bring in non-Yale people and sort of have a wider sense of collectivity and stuff like that. So that's really, really beautiful to hear about.
Makana Kushi 10:53
Absolutely. Like, there's the struggles for Native students, like being away from home, those of us who do happen to live in our, you know, grew up in our homelands. And then going away, it feels like, 'Oh, I feel so out of place. I feel like I'm not in a Native space anymore, because I'm not in my homeland. But actually, it's important for us to remember, like, we are on Native land still, even if it's not the kind that we're like, I don't know, familiar with. It's still special and needs caring for, in its own way.
Isabella Zou 11:24
Yeah, absolutely. Do you feel like you were able to sort of grow in the sense of like, how do you relate to Indigenous North Americans, even though you didn't have the powwows as part of your tradition? And like learning about it? And other students—was that a big part of your growth from that?
Makana Kushi 11:44
Yeah, absolutely. I think it would, it was unfortunate, that it had taken so long for me to think about it in that way. It's not like we didn't do stuff before, like the NACC would do trips to local socials and powwows, and bring guests. But like, yeah, and it's not even just like the difference between someone who's Indigenous, like, from the Pacific or Africa, or Europe, like, it's also the fact that like, within the different tribal nations, just in the northeast, right, there's even, like, huge variance among them, so like learning our politics, and relations and networks that like, distinguish these communities from one another as well was like, a lot to learn about.
Isabella Zou 12:29
Yeah, that's so cool. I guess like, in the powwow, but then also in some of the other things you were working on, within Yale structures, and countering culture appropriation, like the dance group, stuff like that, were there any main obstacles or challenges that you encountered? That were frustrating, or difficult to work through during that?
Makana Kushi 12:50
Yeah, I mean, I think it felt really ironic that sometimes I didn't do my readings for ER&M because I was busy doing the 'extracurricular' stuff. After working the, blast a ton of emails about making sure the flyer gets sent out, like that kind of stuff. So just the, I think the amount of time and energy it takes at these, you know, these Ivy League schools that are so encouraging and celebratory of student extracurricular activity, that like sometimes it gets difficult to do your work-that actually would like better inform the community and cultural and activist kind of stuff that you're doing. And I would say the toll on students' mental health was definitely something that, you know, for the Shaka stuff, and then for the YPU Party of the Right, like having a debate about like, quote, Indian savages, like, horrible, right? Dealing with all of that, and then having to like, go and do your homework was a hard thing, because we'd get so worked up about everything, which is natural, and I don't think is our fault, but it was definitely a challenge. And also because people then had to, like, go back to their dorms where they were neighbors with these people, or go past them in the dining hall and see the YDN calling us these things, that we were, you know, 'out of control,' and like, the harassment from like other students and then random people who follow different Yale Facebook pages.
Isabella Zou 14:40
Oh, no. Was that sort of concentrated in the span of like, a semester or a year or something, or was this ongoing?
Makana Kushi 14:48
Yeah, yeah, I think 2015, 2016-ish time because of the snowflake explosion situation. I think there was so much focus on the idea that, you know, progressive students of color are so angry, which we were, but like, I don't know, the media attention toward that, I think anything that popped up that was even specific to Native stuff, people were grouping us in this larger like... But yeah, I think it was mostly concentrated in that time, especially then, because our focus shifted to the powwow, to which they were like, ‘Oh, that's so positive. Oh, so multicultural,’ you know, they don't understand like the political—they don't understand the Native cultural stuff is political stuff. Like, what about a powwow constitutes activism? And we saw it as like, well, we're funneling all these resources to Native peoples like, in some ways, it's better to do this than to focus on these internal things. That yes, feel more combative or more like ruffling feathers. But yeah, may not do as much in the long run.
Isabella Zou 16:03
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Did you wish that ER&M had had a way of like, supporting the work that you were doing that is directly related to what you're studying, instead of sort of being like, you have this divide between you as a student and you as an activist? Like more of an institutional way of like, blending those?
Makana Kushi 16:24
Yeah, as a graduate student, now, I'm like, Oh, this theory is important. Some of the run ins that we had of like, not using accurate and careful languages, we could have, like are things that the reading part of ER&M was enriching for, if we had had more time, but I also think there is opportunity to build into academic requirements, like some kind of community engagement aspect, or at least having like an option for if one of the faculty in ER&M were to like advise something similar to the senior thesis seminar, but for, like, internship with a community org, or a research project, like something more, you know, independent. And I think it's not that they were unsupportive. I mean, it was difficult with the cultural appropriation stuff, because the faculty are differently vulnerable in a university setting, especially at a system level. So like, the idea that they would support us in our fight against other students was just out of the question, you know, they wouldn't do that. But when I ended up reading my senior thesis about like, the appropriation of like a Pacific Islander-ish identity in Asian American communities, it was something that they let me do, it was something that they were supportive of. It's obviously really related. I mean, most of these women were Asian Americans. So it wasn't like it was unrelated. I think they do their best. I mean, there are so many demands on faculty of color to like, do more than white faculty already. And in that time, also, you know, 2014, 15, 16-ish, there was just, like, a ton, like several faculty left in those years from ER&M and from AFAM. That it was, we weren't unhappy with them for being unsupportive.
Isabella Zou 18:30
That totally makes sense. Yeah, I guess, we're kind of running out of time. But I guess I also wanted to ask if there's any other lessons that you feel like you learned, or like, ways that you grew from your time leading these organizing efforts, or just anything else that you would want to sort of reflect on about your experience.
Makana Kushi 18:59
Not that immediately comes to mind, I guess the question about like, moments that stand out and the powwow, still feels like you know, the biggest takeaway and I think, thinking beyond Yale, but also like, recognizing that like building community among other students and having like people that you can trust. And, you know, at an institution that's so difficult to navigate, is also important.
Isabella Zou 19:33
Yeah. Do you feel like you're left with the sense that the work that you were doing is still sort of like, still growing and is being iterated on and everything, in terms of the future of it?
Makana Kushi 19:46
Yeah, I do. I think, maybe not so directly, like I don't have really a relationship to any of the students that are there now since like, we're in the stage where like, the last class I would have known has just graduated. But I think there are threads that continue, like, we had tried to petition for the university to grant us credit for independent study of Native languages, because the NACC was already paying for us to do Zoom classes before everybody was doing Zoom. To do Zoom classes with language speakers from, you know, our communities. And I felt like when I started, you know, learning, or studying Hawaiian, in my sophomore year, like it was never going to happen. And then now, knowing that students do get credit for that, I think is exciting. And even if they don't, like, know how early or how exactly that kind of started, I don't mind that they don't know, right? It's like, it's good for them to feel like it's normal to get credit for studying their languages. And I know, this is weird to say, considering I'm like a historian. I'm not particularly invested in them knowing like, Oh, I did this, so and so did that. Yeah, as long as things are getting better and students are still building these relationships with each other, and people beyond Yale, I think it feels like it's still continuing.
Interviewer
Isabella Zou
Interviewee
Makana Kushi
Location
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Time Summary
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