This post was updated Feb. 23 at 11:08 p.m.
Wearing a purple lei headdress and gold bangles, Kiara Elizabeth Santos welcomed students to an event as Native American and Pasifika music echoed across the De Neve Plaza Room.
“When 2 Worlds Collide,” hosted by the American Indian and Pacific Islander Living Learning Community, celebrated Native and Pasifika cultures with performances, food and art Feb. 12. The night featured dancing from Native and Pasifika Bruins, an art gallery featuring cultural artifacts, tabling from student organizations and retention programs, and a photo booth.
The event’s theme was the banyan tree, which represents growth and strength in the American Indian and Pacific Islander communities, according to the community’s Instagram. The tree’s roots grow above the ground and serve as a metaphor for the colonization of Indigenous peoples, and the theme hoped to emphasize the LLC’s advocacy for the values of Indigenous cultures – including profound respect for the land, according to the Instagram post.
“A lot of people only know Pacific Islanders as The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), Jason Momoa,” said Santos – who is Chamorro, or an indigenous person from Guam. “We want to show that we’re more than that.”
The name “When 2 Worlds Collide” references the historical collaboration between the Native and Pasifika communities, added Santos, the LLC’s resident assistant.
Planning for the event began in the summer, Santos said. She added that she wanted to highlight American Indian and Pacific Islander-owned businesses such as Back Home in Lahaina – a Pacific Islander-owned Hawaiian restaurant and bakery that catered food including chicken katsu cutlets, macaroni salad and Hawaiian sweet rolls for the event.
“Because we are such low populations at UCLA, it’s so beautiful to look at all of these people in this room to highlight us and make us feel seen as an invisible minority,” said Jiorden King, president of the Pacific Islands’ Student Association.
One of the initiatives that King – a third-year psychology student – oversees is Islanders Maintaining Unity and Access, a program that invites 150 high school students to campus to learn about higher education options.
“A lot of our students – they come from lower-income (backgrounds). They have to quit high school to go to the workforce because of our financial barriers,” she said at her booth at the event.
When attendees entered, they were given a mock passport that allowed them to collect stamps from each of the tables and activities. In one activity, attendees wrote postcards to their future selves and learned about the event’s campus partners: the American Indian Student Association and the Pacific Islands’ Student Association.
“Write something to your future self to remind yourself that you are here for a reason,” said Lissett Vega, a staff member for Retention of American Indians Now! “You’re doing the best you can, and we are here as a community to help.”
Stephanie Palafox, a second-year biochemistry student who attended the event with her friends, said she enjoyed the letter-writing activity.
“It made you think about your culture and your identity,” she said. “I talked a lot about my hometown, my parents’ hometown and how I want to feel more connected to my culture.”
However, Native and Pacific Islander students continue to advocate for better visibility and equity for their communities. The UCLA Native American and Pacific Islander Bruins Rising Initiative launched in June 2022 to support the success of Native students by providing equity for American Indian and Pacific Islander staff and support for graduate and undergraduate students, according to UCLA’s Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.
Tonalli Garcia-Rodriguez, president of the American Indian Student Association, said Native students are pushing for administrative support through the funding of a new Native American and Indigenous resource center on campus.
“A lot of our current advocacy is student-initiated and student-led, and we really need institutional support from hired faculty who are here and designated to support and retain Native students,” she said.
Santos also said that AIPI students face challenges in correcting misconceptions about their identities and cultures. She added that she received a disappointing response from UCLA Residential Life staff after asking for assistance planning one of the LLC’s events.
“They’re like, ‘Why don’t you just put on a hula skirt, and … you can just dance? Teach us how to dance,’” she said. “One, I’m not a dancer. I don’t know how to dance. Two, I’m not Hawaiian. Three, are you talking about … those rinky-dink Amazon plastic hula skirts?”
In a written statement, Residential Life said it was recently made aware of the interaction.
“We were first made aware of this interaction when Daily Bruin reached out. We are looking into it and following up,” it said in the statement.
Santos said she hopes events like this one represent AIPI cultures on UCLA’s campus.
“Native American students and Pacific Islander students make up less than 1% of UCLA’s entire population,” she said. “But we’re not invisible. We’re here.”
Comments are closed.