Navigating the Seas of Higher Education: Creating Pasifika Pathways Through an Awareness of Our Pasts as Reminders for Our Futures

• In Event: 21st Century Teaching and Learning to Foster Tribal Nation-Building in Predominantly White Institutions

Abstract

Pacific Islanders continue to be underrepresented in all facets of higher education. In Utah there is a sizable Pacific Islander population in Utah, Pacific Islanders continue to be underrepresented in higher education institutions in the state. To address this, the Pasifika Summer Bridge, a pathway program was created. The Summer Bridge aspires to serve as one pathway between the flagship public research university and the community. The Summer Bridge uniquely focuses on participants and speakers’ cultural identities, which are central to the program. The Summer Bridge is a space that empowers participants by affirming Indigenous identity, cultural continuity, and knowledge. By affirming the continuance of culture in educational spaces, participants are empowered through their identities. Centered on Pasifika ways of knowing, being, and doing, participants engaged in culturally relevant pedagogy with the objectives that students “will enter with a desire to learn more about Pacific Islanders and leave with a better understanding of who [they] are and how [they] can serve the Pacific Islander community through higher education” (Pasifika Scholars Institute).We see the Summer Bridge as directly contributing to nation-building by affirming Indigenous identity while creating spaces within higher education that center Native knowledge and that are culturally responsive to the needs of the participants and the communities they come from.
Davidson et al. (2018) call for “a scholarship that includes not only our [Indigenous] voices, but research methodologies that more appropriately address our unique positions and responsibilities as Indigenous people and scholars” (p. 9). This research incorporates Indigenous methodologies to respond to this call, as well as that of Lipe (2018) to transform higher education through mo’olelo, “an interconnection of stories and experiences” (p. 165).
A mix of undergraduate, graduate, staff, and faculty helped to facilitate the bridge over the three summers. As we created the Bridge with the intention of having a positive impact for our participants, we did not anticipate it would affect us (the facilitators) so powerfully, too. As facilitators of the Bridge, we engaged in talanoa after the Bridge to discuss the successes, challenges, and the overall ways to improve the program. Talanoa is a Pasifika traditional practice for discussion, sharing stories, and co-creating knowledge and is traditionally used by Pasifika people and scholars to generate discussions, share stories, and gather data (Vaioleti, 2003). After we reflected, we discussed how the program assisted in the retention of ourselves as Pacific Islanders in various stages and careers in higher education. This presentation will focus on the ways that the Bridge transformed the facilitators of the Bridge as both scholars and practitioners. In particular, we discuss the Hawaiian and Tongan notions of responsibility—kuleana and fatongia, respectively—and the way these cultural understandings were strengthened through participation in the Bridge and have led to nation building.

Authors

• Kehaulani Natsuko Vaughn, University of Utah

• Kehaulani Folau, University of Utah