This week, as part of our “On The Margins at DU” column that investigates the successes and failures of inclusive excellence at DU, The Clarion spoke with third-year Pualani Tupper. She serves as the president of the Pacific Islander Alliance (PIA). Last year, she started the affinity organization to teach students about the different Pacific Islander cultures and give Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students a home away from home.
To get involved with PIA, you can attend meetings on Thursdays from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. in Sturm 124, you can follow them on Instagram at @du.pia and you can email them with questions at piadu19@gmail.com.
Editor’s Note: Due to software malfunctions and our website’s incomplete and inequitable character lexicon, this article contains incorrect spellings of Hawai’i and lu’au. We recognize these are colonized forms of the word, and we deeply apologize for this exclusion. To see how they are correctly spelled in the native language, read this appendix.
Minor edits to the interview have been made for the sake of clarity.
Isaiah: In general, do you feel like DU is inclusive of Pacific Islander students and the community? What has been your personal experience?
Pualani: No. Very simply, no. For one, last I heard, there are only nine Pacific Islander students on campus. You cannot really lead or make a community with only nine people. The environment on campus has been difficult, too. It is not necessarily something that can be helped. We are in the Midwest, so the cultures are different.
That being said, there is not really a sense of support on campus from faculty or staff. I understand that we are adults, but the transition into college is especially difficult when coming to a campus that does not feel culturally comfortable. That is part of the reason why I created PIA—for myself too. I wanted a place for myself because currently, there is not one. It was me trying to carve out something.
Isaiah: How have DU students been inclusive or not?
Pualani: Within the DU community, it is hard to connect with people, and I often feel invisible because my culture and my origins are so different. Most people are uninformed about Hawai‘i, and/or have a very small view of Hawai‘i and Native Hawaiian culture—they only see the pretty stuff. I’ve often had to mispronounce the way I say Hawai‘i in order for others to understand what I’m saying and I hate that. I hate having to mispronounce the name of my own homeland. I can’t say that the student body has been supportive of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, but I also understand that it takes time to build awareness. For me, it has been learning how to balance that and how to not be angry about it.
Isaiah: In what ways has DU succeeded in taking this community into consideration in the past?
Pualani: I do not think it has. The Native Student Alliance has been a big help for me personally in finding and creating community on campus, but DU itself has not made any noticeable efforts. I would like to see more recruitment of students, faculty and staff that identify as Pacific Islander, but I have not seen that thus far.
Isaiah: In what ways has DU failed or continue to fail in taking this community into consideration?
Pualani: In addition to them not recruiting students, DU does not have enough faculty or staff that either are of a Pacific Islander identity or know about Pacific Islander identities. This tends to be the norm for any minority community on campus. Diversity among the faculty and staff is not present, yet it’s so important for the success of minority students. I do not think that recruiting teachers who represent diverse identities is hard because we’re smart and we’re out there.
I have definitely had a difficult time connecting with faculty because of cultural differences, and have therefore missed out on connections that could be imperative for my future career. Seeing someone successful that looks like me, acts like me or understands me is so important. If DU wants to tout diversity and inclusive excellence, then this should be one of their top priorities.
Isaiah: What do you hope to see in DU’s future of inclusive excellence with and for the Pacific Islander community?
Pualani: Awareness training for first-years regarding cultural sensitivity and how to be respectful of those who may not share your culture. The population at DU is predominantly white, as it is at most colleges, but this does not mean ignorance surrounding diverse identities should go unchecked. Every year, I hear about some frat throwing a lu’au and it frustrates me because I know that that is as deep as their understanding of Hawaiian culture goes—for them, it’s all a party. When people choose to only comment on the beauty of Hawai‘i or to only acknowledge the ‘fun’ aspects of our culture, they erase the history and struggles that Native Hawaiians have faced and still do face. That is how the mechanism of colonization works.
I would like to see more recruitment efforts of students, faculty and staff that identify as Pacific Islander. DU should also recruit in a way that makes prospective students aware of what DU lacks. That is another problem DU has had. They often advertise the school using images of people of color on campus, and it is to make the school appear more diverse than it really is. A way that DU could responsibly recruit would simply be by stating, ‘We are trying to build up this community, we want to bring diversity to this campus, so we want you to come here.’ That is something that would help all minority communities.
Isaiah: Why is it important to have organizations like PIA present on campus? What role do they serve?
Pualani: They provide a community for Pacific Islander students. It is important because it makes people feel comfortable. It makes space for different groups to feel ok with themselves. It makes space for people to be around people who grew up in the same scenarios. It makes space for people to tell jokes that we all laugh at, or share recipes, or music. It is the stuff you don’t think is important, but then when you reflect on the whole, it is. It is the things that make you feel ok. It is good to have a space where you can be who you are and not have to be a white version of yourself.
Isaiah: What activism is your affinity org. currently involved in? What changes are you trying to get implemented at DU and would like to see covered?
Pualani: For me personally, the thing that I am focusing on is getting PIA to continue after I leave. I am currently talking with the faculty and staff that work with NSA to see what connections they might have that could help to build up the Pacific Islander community here on campus. I have gotten close to NSA because we connect due to similar experiences regarding colonization.
Ultimately, we are just trying to make ourselves visible. It is beneficial for white people to ignore indigenous groups because what we stand for, what we believe and how our culture operates goes directly against the government. We cannot exist in America properly, and that is what makes us different from other minority groups. Other minority groups are able to exist in our current America and strive for the American Dream. Everyone else is trying to find their place within this society, but for Natives, it is not our society. This is not the way the world is supposed to be.
Coming to DU, I have had to realize how Native Hawaiians and other indigenous groups are discriminated against. The discrimination we face is different than the discrimination other minority groups face because, in our case, the mechanisms of racism and colonization work hand in hand. For other groups, the goal is inclusion and equality, but indigenous groups aren’t even allowed to have these conversations because inclusion and equality would mean the return of stolen lands and acknowledgment of our ways of life. The ways in which we are discriminated against is by erasing us, by making us invisible and by not acknowledging our cultures.
Isaiah: How can people get involved with PIA and help support the PIA community?
Pualani: People showing up to our meetings would be supportive. They show up to other affinity org. meetings because it is easy to see the wrongs that have been done to those communities. For allies who have a conscience or want to make themselves feel better, they might go to those meetings. However, with PIA and NSA, it is very different—our issues aren’t visible because we’re actively being erased. Therefore, it is not an issue of allyship or being there ‘in times of need,’ it is about coming and learning and being invested in the community in order to help mitigate our perceived invisibility.
Through this column, we hope to shed light on the range of identities and experiences that exist on campus, create a space where their voices can be heard and highlight their contentious relationship with DU. We hope to represent them with as much journalistic integrity as possible, but we are aware that there are stories we will fail to communicate with the same voice. We aspire to do better than student organizations and institutions, including The Clarion, have done in the past at treating these topics with the thought and consideration they deserve.
If there is feedback you would like to give or issues you would like to see covered in this column, please reach out to duclarioneditorialteam@gmail.com.
