We are people of Oceania and we identify with the land but we also identify with the water. I think that's important that a lot of people just don't really understand. NHPI, our native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, are folks whose origins are the original peoples of Polynesia, Micronesia, and Malonecia. This includes over 20 different communities with their own unique cultures, languages, and histories. Some even identify more closely with their ethnic rather than their racial label. That being said, Dr. Appelli Hauffa, a Tongan and Fijian anthropologist, wrote about using language to empower people from the Pacific as a sea of islands rather than islands in a far sea. By this, he meant that a simple shift of perspective goes from highlighting the smallness and isolatedness of the islands in a far sea, to recognizing the community and connection in a singular open sea of islands. To Hauffa, this was one way to shed the confinements put in place by colonial powers present in the Pacific. In fact, it is precisely this relationship with colonization that has some NHPI folks identifying as indigenous. Native Hawaiians often are made invisible because people say they're Hawaiian when they're just from the state of Hawaii. There's a lot of history that goes behind that. Our conception of race has been heavily shaped by senses among other things. The U.S. Census has always had difficulty in categorizing folks as Asian ancestry since the region is so large and distinct. In 1980, the Census lumped Asian or Pacific Islander into one large racial group for the first time. However, disaggregated data made it increasingly clear that ethnic groups within the Asian or Pacific Islander category live vastly different realities. For example, NHPI have lower than average rates of bachelor's degree attainment in comparison to Taiwanese Americans. Grouping the two skews are a perception of these communities daily lives and hides the areas where NHPI might need support. As the first move towards recognizing this, the government mandated that NHPI data be collected as a separate group in 1997. But we still have many more moves to go. Thank you for watching.