Melanie and Eri at UHM Spring 2010 Colloquium Series

The UHM Women's Studies Program is pleased to close our Spring 2010 Colloquium Series with the two Capstone presentations by Melanie Medalle and Eri Oura, graduate students in the Advanced
Women's Studies (AdWS) Certificate Program.

Each student enrolled in the AdWS Certificate program designs, develops, and completes a research and/or community involvement project that culminate s in a publishable- quality work or comparable
product, and a Capstone presentation given in the student’s final semester of the program. Melanie Medalle's presentation is entitled: "'1898 Unfortunates' : Sex, Race, and Space in the Philippine-American War" and Eri Oura's talk, "“Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot”: Deconstructing Representations of the 2007 Waikele Case"

The event will take place at 2424 Maile Way, Saunders 624 (the Harry Friedman Room in the Political Science Department) Friday, April 30, 2010 from 12:30pm-2pm. Please spread the work.


Best,
Bianca Isaki

'1898 Unfortunates' : Sex, Race, and Space in the Philippine-American War

Melanie Medalle

Gathered in Paris on December 10, 1898, Spain and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris, in which Spain ceded and sold to the United States the territory it had occupied for over three centuries
in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. At the signing of this massive real estate transfer, all persons native to the colonies implicated in the transaction were barred entry from the meeting, as
the enfleshment of their bodies were blurred in the language of the document. Drawing on violent tableaus such as this, in this paper I resituate an alternative genealogical imaginary of the control and
production of colonial and imperial bodily membership and intimacy.

In its first overseas insular colonial projects in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans at the turn of the nineteenth century, American proponents of imperial expansion continued a longer US project of
racialized sexuality/sexualize d raciality discourse production. The subaltern experience and contestation of this moment rendered a vastly different conceptualization and contribution to the development of US imperial aspirations and imaginaries of itself. I focus here on the period surrounding the Philippine-American War, explore a selection of cultural texts and consider how aesthetic and discursive narratives serve to coalesce and dissipate the imagination of the realities that
the subject and the state both fluidly inhabit. I argue that technologies of imagination are critical in the self-making of disparate and yet intimately connected bodies in a tightening transnational geography of power and resistance.


“Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot”[1]: Deconstructing Representations of the 2007 Waikele Case

Eri Oura

In 2007, a Native Hawaiian family was involved in a physical altercation with a haole military couple as a result of a minor traffic accident. This case caught the attention of local and national media sources because of the violent nature of the physical and verbal actions that were exchanged. The description of the case in the media was disturbingly one-sided, portraying the Pa’akaulas (who
self-identify as Native Hawaiian) as racist and barbaric, while the Dussells remain to be represented as the only victims in the case. Before the hearings for the two Pa’akaula men involved in the incident, police and FBI investigated the case to determine whether the assaults were racially motivated and could be considered a hate-crime because the phrase “f-----g haole” was used during the incident.

Shortly after the investigation began, USAToday published an article entitled “Racial Tensions are Simmering in Hawaii’s Melting Pot,” which questioned Hawai’i’s tourist-based economy’s claims to
being a harmonious “melting pot” society that is the model for multiculturalism. The article also prompted national attention to the many of the losses Native Hawaiians have been facing since the
mid-1990s and the resurgence of political resistance for independence, but missed many critical points about the history of colonialism and neo-colonialism in Hawai’i. Instead, the article blamed Native
Hawaiians for the racial tensions in Hawai’i and included many statements that represent haole as the victims.

This essay deconstructs the representations of this case in local and national news media and analyzes how these articles construct the “perpetrators” and “victims” through different processes of colonialism and neo-colonialism. The results of this study questions how gendered these constructed roles are and what the role and nature of the American nationalist government in Hawai’i.

100th Anniversary of International Women’s Day Statement and Invitation

Honoring the 100^th Anniversary of International Women’s Day, March 8, 2010

On the 100^th Anniversary of International Women’s day, the O'ahu women of 3^rd Path for Reproductive Justice commemorate and honor the collective cultural survival and wisdom of our female ancestors and she-roes.  We know our her-story is a key resource which guides us in our work to secure reproductive justice for ourselves, families, and daughters, aunties, mothers, and grandmothers of Ka Pae `Aina Hawai`i.

 

On this special day, we continue to stand and hold a vision of reproductive justice:   the complete physical, mental, spiritual, political, economic, and social well being of women and girls. And we call you to join us in working towards securing the economic, social, and political power and resources to support women and girls in making healthy decisions about their bodies,their sexuality, and their lives.

Please join us in celebration!

When:   March 8, 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm  

Where:  Ho`oulu `Aina, Kalihi Valley Nature Park, 3659 Kalihi Street, 

Honolulu, HI 96819

What:   Move the Movement with Adela Chu,  Poetry with Darlene, Melanie, Keisha and Angela, and circle time for connection and sisterhood!  Come in comfortable, warm clothes!

WHO WE ARE:

As indigenous, immigrant, and local women living in Ka Pae`Aina Hawai`i, we are united in supporting women’s ability to exercise their self determination.  In supporting this inalienable human right, we share in Kanaka Maoli’s pursuit of being able to freely determine the political status of the lahui, while simultaneously, acknowledging the ancestral places where Hawai`i residents come from, the places they now live and honoring the historical migrations that bond us all together.

When we began, we started as women working primarily in the field of domestic violence. At that time, we first organized under the Hawaii State Coalition for Domestic Violence as the Women of Color Caucus. In 2009, we recognized the need to also address the violence directed at our communities through marginalization, lack of language access, and unspoken forms of exclusion and exclusivity. We also saw the need to draw critical connections between land and the freedom of women’s bodies--something way beyond the scope that the current DV movement in Hawaii could not address.

Today we have reorganized as the 3^rd Path for Reproductive Justice to expand our coalition and fully address the web of our concerns.  We are doulas, child and family advocates, workers in the domestic violence and sexual violence field, students, lawyers, social workers, parents, caregivers to elders, demilitarization activists, marriage equity advocates, artists, mentors, and youth. We welcome you in sisterhood, while sharing and collectively organizing for the above concerns.

I Kareran I Palåbran Måmi (The Journey of Our Words)

WHAT: I Kareran I Palåbran Måmi (The Journey of Our Words)
WHO:  Poets, Angela T. Hoppe-Cruz (MSW/MA Pacific Islands Studies Candidate) & Kisha Borja-Kicho`cho` (MA Pacific Island Studies Candidate).  Both women are Chamoru and were born and raised on the island of Guåhan (Guam). 
WHERE: University of Hawai`i at Mānoa, Campus Center, Executive Dining Room
WHEN: Friday, February, 12, 2010
TIME:  5:15-8:00pm

We will be reading pieces we have collaborated on as well as our own individual poetry.  Much of our work centers on the impact U.S. militarization and colonialism have had on our home island community of Guåhan and the other Micronesian islands, much of which is manifest in social, economic, and environmental injustice. Our work also focuses on Chamoru culture and identity. Immediately following the reading, there will be a facilitated discussion.

Food will be served (sponsored by the UH Marianas Club and C.E.J.E.).

The event is free and open to the public!

Your support is greatly appreciated!

Women Vets of Color Speak Out

Colorlines, News feature, Michelle Chen, Posted: Aug 02, 2008

Women veterans of color who have returned home from the military. Three of them shared their stories with Colorlines.

WHEN KRISTINA MCCAULEY LOOKS BACK on her time in boot camp, one scene sticks out: she’s standing in the sun as blood flows down her wrist, hoping no one will notice her among the rows of trainees chanting and brandishing bayonets.

Thinking back, she’s not sure why she grabbed her weapon the wrong way during that drill. But when she saw that the bayonet on her rifle had sliced cleanly across her hand, she knew calling for help would only invite her drill sergeants to make her life more miserable.

“I was just standing out there in the heat of the day and bleeding and trying to be quiet about it,” she recalled later in an interview. Soon, a female drill sergeant came over to berate her for her stupidity—as a lesson to the other trainees—and tossed a few bandages at her.

Today, McCauley, a half-Japanese lesbian, has a degree in international peace studies. She’s not your “typical” veteran. As a mixed-race girl with a boyish streak in a straight-laced suburb, McCauley signed up for the military hoping “to belong somewhere.” The service promised respect, power and a chance to test her physical and mental limits.

Today, McCauley, a half-Japanese lesbian, has a degree in international peace studies. She’s not your “typical” veteran. As a mixed-race girl with a boyish streak in a straight-laced suburb, McCauley signed up for the military hoping “to belong somewhere.” The service promised respect, power and a chance to test her physical and mental limits.

But putting on the greens didn’t bring the transformation she had sought. Instead, she discovered the Army’s veneer of uniformity masks deep fault lines of culture, class and sexuality. She eventually emerged from the military’s rigid hierarchy to embrace what she had tried to escape—by reconnecting with her Japanese heritage, coming out to her family and reorienting her political perspective.

“I made a conscious effort to educate myself more deeply,” she said. “I began to study race, sexuality and gender, with a hope to understand my own place in the world more clearly.”

McCauley’s quest resonates throughout the growing ranks of military women of color. Though their decision to enlist is often inspired by hopes of self-empowerment, they may quickly stumble on a landscape of familiar impediments where the rules of race and gender still dictate who fights, who wins and who suffers.

There are about 200,000 active-duty military women today, some 14 percent of the total force, according to federal data. About half of them are women of color. Women of color also now make up around a third of former service members. Of a little more than 1.7 million women veterans nationwide, about 19 percent are Black and 7 percent are Latina. Asian American, Pacific Islander, American Indian and mixed-race women each comprise up to 2 percent or less. Proportionally, people of color comprise a greater share of female veterans than of male veterans.

Women of color, like others, are drawn into the armed forces by both needs and ideals. Some are spurred by patriotism or a desire for adventure; others just want a stable job or money for college. Whatever their economic or social motives, the recruitment rhetoric pushed to youth across the country markets the military as a way out of their current circumstances and on toward where they need to go.
But the soldier’s path leads many women of color back to where they started—to the turbulence and entrenched discrimination besetting their home communities. And for some, the journey veers unexpectedly toward a new political consciousness.

Maricela Guzman, a Latina Navy veteran who now works as a counter-recruitment activist in California, urges youth of color to look past the sales pitch of economic opportunity.

“You’re going to this environment thinking you’re going to make all this money,” she warned, “but you’re going back to a system that is going to keep you down.”

For many young people, spending a 21st birthday in boot camp would be a sobering experience. But Eli PaintedCrow had grown up early; passing a birthday in the Army was one way to ensure her children would spend theirs under better circumstances.

She joined the Army to get off welfare and support her young sons. She also sought a kind of camaraderie she never had growing up in the barrios of San Jose, estranged from her ancestral community, the indigenous Yaqui Nation.

“It really did make me feel like I belonged somewhere and that I could be good at something,” she said.

As a fresh Navy recruit a few weeks into basic training, Maricela Guzman shouldn’t have been surprised to find herself facedown on the floor, frantically doing push-ups. She had not followed proper procedure for addressing a commander in his office—knocking before entering and asking permission to speak. Accordingly, he told her to “drop” as punishment.

But while the penalty was routine, the circumstances were not: she had come to tell him she had been raped.

Before she could say anything, though, she had to repeat the drill to her commander’s satisfaction. “I think it was 20 minutes later after I was able to do it right,” she said. “And I was so numb afterwards that I couldn’t even say anything.”

In the late 1990s, Guzman, a child of Mexican immigrants, was getting back to her education at a Los Angeles community college after leaving high school to work, when a young Black man approached her and told her enthusiastically about the Navy. Guzman researched the military’s education benefits and grilled the recruiter on what the service would be like. In the end, she signed up, confident she wasn’t making her decision blindly.

But she never saw him coming.

One night at boot camp, on watch duty, she recalled, “I passed a dark corner, somebody grabbed me, and I was raped.” Though she only caught a glimpse of her attacker in the darkness, she said, “It had to be one of the drill sergeants. Just the type of uniform that he had.”

Continue reading  here.

*****

To read full article, visit: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=8e5a5122253a424bdedb43fac6acd95f

Constancy & Change: The Movement to Demilitarize Okinawa - from the 1950s to the 21st Century

Center for Okinawan Studies Lecture Series

"Constancy & Change: The Movement to Demilitarize Okinawa - from
the 1950s to the 21st Century"

Two doctoral students at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa will make presentations on sixty-five years of diverse resistance by the movement to demilitarize Okinawa.

Mami Hayashi's presentation, "Military Bases in Okinawa: A Pressure for Migration," covers the contrast between pre-war and postwar emigration and how a desire to defuse domestic dissent led the pre-Reversion U.S. military and the U.S.-controlled Ryukyu Government to encourage migration from
Okinawa.

Rinda Yamashiro's presentation, "Women's Rights Perspective: A New Direction in the Anti-U.S. Base Movement in Okinawa," draws on empirical research to articulate how the contemporary Okinawan women have engaged in resistance against U.S. military bases.

Presenters:
Mami Hayashi (Ph.D. Student, American Studies)
Rinda Yamashiro (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Discussant:
Vincent Pollard (Lecturer, Asian Studies)
Vincent Pollard teaches in the Asian Studies Program and conducts research on anti-bases movements.

Date:
January 21, 2010 (Thursday)

Time:
3:00-4:30 pm

Location:
Center for Korean Studies Auditorium

Event is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact Center for Okinawan Studies, tel. 956-0902 /
956-5754
For disability access, please contact the Center for Okinawan Studies.
University of Hawai'i at M?noa
An Equal Opportunity/ Affirmative Action Institution
website: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~pollard/conference.html

Guam says "No Deal!"

From email message by K Kajihiro on listserve ~

The U.S. military currently is conducting public hearings on its draft environmental impact statement for its military buildup in Guam and the Northern Marianas islands.   At the first hearing, residents overwhelmingly opposed the plan.   Here is a powerful testimony by prophet-poet Melvin Won Pat-Borja, a former mentor with YouthSpeaks Hawai’i who now teaches in Guam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzmXU6u5CTE
Description from the YouTube page:

Melvin Won Pat-Borja, representing the community organization “We Are Guahan” presents his official testimony against the U.S. Military’s plans to transfer thousands of marines from Okinawa to Guam. The Department of Defense has published a draft of the Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) detailing their plans. The DEIS is about 11,000 pages long, and the public only has until February 17, 2010 to submit comments on the document.
“We Are Guahan” is a group of community members dedicated to reading and disseminating information in the DEIS to the public, including details of the devastating effects of the military buildup on the island’s culture, water sources, coral reefs and marine habitats, family lands, historical and archeological sites, and social environment. Furthermore, despite common belief that the buildup will benefit Guam’s economy, the DEIS reveals that majority of new jobs and contracts will be given to off-island workers and companies.
Most importantly, the U.S. military’s decision is a blatant violation of human rights for Guam’s residents, who have not been allowed to participate in any aspect of the buildup plans. “We Are Guahan” encourages everyone, in and outside of Guam, to stay informed about the military buildup! Read the EIS and make your voice heard! You can submit comments online, by mail, or in person at public hearings.
For more information, please visit www.WeAreGuahan.com.