As National Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month comes to a close, I am proud to highlight an inspiring student-led initiative celebrating Pacific Islanders in Oregon and the vibrant communities they have built across the state. Designed and initiated by Portland State University’s first Pacific Island Studies professor, Dr. Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson, the Oceania in Oregon Capstone course challenged students to document and uplift the stories, organizations, businesses, leaders and cultural spaces shaping Pacific Islander life in Oregon today.
The result of this work is the upcoming Oceania Storytelling Exhibit, a community-centered showcase on June 3 highlighting the diversity, resilience, and cultural richness of Pacific Islander communities across Oregon through storytelling, photography, and community engagement. I hope you can join us in this celebration.
Portland State has worked intentionally over many years to strengthen and support its Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Asian, and Asian American communities. These efforts range from advocating for a Pacific Islander, Asian, and Asian American (PIAAA) Student Center, to developing dedicated courses and programming, to creating events and initiatives that bring together students, faculty, staff, and community members from across the region. While sustaining this work continues to require creativity, partnership, and long-term commitment, the university community remains deeply invested in ensuring these spaces and opportunities do continue.
Even amid broader institutional challenges facing higher education, students, faculty, staff, and community partners continue to work collaboratively to sustain and strengthen these initiatives for our PIAA students. (At PSU, we purposefully put Pacific Islanders first in PIAA, as opposed to the more common national shorthand of AAPI.)
Across campus, our PIAA community continues to create meaningful spaces for connection, visibility, and storytelling. These efforts are reflected in courses, student engagement, cultural programming, exhibitions, and public events that showcase the diversity and vibrancy of our communities.
This work includes the year-long Oceania Cultural Exhibit — an initiative by a PIAA class that featured more than 200 Pacific Island artifacts on PSU’s campus. This same space will now proudly host the new Oceania in Oregon exhibit. As part of these broader Pacific Island initiatives, PSU has also hosted exclusive screenings of films by Pacific filmmakers, sponsored by Pacific Island Studies and the Pacific Island Club.
In November, I was very proud to take part in the Pacific Island Students first cultural showcase as part of the Introduction to PIAA Studies class. (See the photo above!)
Our students have consistently demonstrated strong leadership and initiative, including the founding of the university’s first Micronesian student organization: the Micronesian Student Collective. This initiative emerged after students Petra Doreen Babauta Castro, Remedio “Bedu” Ana Sablan Dela Cruz, Jaden DLG Villacrusis, Jenara Seman Bai, and Jude Sablan attended the Pacific Island Student Association Conference (PISACON), where they led the conference’s first-ever Micronesian student-led and focused Tautalailelagi workshop.
One of the most recent student-led highlights was PACFEST, a highly successful celebration of Pacific Island cultures organized by the Pacific Island Club.
“What I saw at PACFEST is the affirmation of where PSU is at — the value and recognition of the diversity of cultures,” Dr. Lagipoiva says. “This thriving community is an asset within a city that is not very diverse. It’s not just about the students, but the community and the family as well.”
Dr. Lagipoiva has helped the university further strengthen ties with the regional Pacific Islander community through a $149,755 grant awarded to her by the Portland-based Meyer Memorial Trust. This grant supports the Pacific Islands Indigenous Village Project and the Pacific Climate Resilience Project, which aims to establish an organizing and learning hub grounded in Indigenous knowledge systems from Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia. Through this project, students will gain access to an elder circle for mentorship and exposure to Indigenous approaches to climate resilience.
As part of her continued engagement, Dr. Lagipoiva also served as the featured keynote speaker for the Oregon Asian Pacific American Bar Association. There, she spoke on how Asian American legal communities can support Pacific Island countries pursuing international legal recourse and climate justice advocacy through evolving frameworks in international climate law.
That profound sense of community was also explicitly evident at the APANO Voices of Change Celebration I attended earlier this month. I shared some of our funding challenges with leaders there, and I firmly believe we can all work together to ensure that PSU continues to serve as an anchor for Portland’s PIAA community.
In the coming year, we will continue to offer PIAA classes centered on Pacific Island cultures, Asian influences in the Pacific Islands, and explorations of the complexity of the broader AAPI narrative.
PSU will host the annual Asian, Pacific Islander, and Desi (APID) Graduation Celebration on Friday, June 13. The celebration honors and recognizes APID graduates as an integral part of the PSU community, bringing together students, families, faculty, staff, and supporters to celebrate the next generation of graduates.
As a university community, we continue to find alternate ways to sustain and support these initiatives, and that work remains ongoing. I remain hopeful that through continued collaboration, community partnerships, and a shared commitment, PSU will continue to be a welcoming, supportive home for our PIAA students and the broader communities connected to them.