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2 Histories of Displacement and Dispossession
Pages 7-18

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From page 7...
... Session moderator Robert Sember, assistant professor of inter­ disciplinary arts at The New School's Eugene Lang College, first shared he was joining from Harlem in New York City, on the unceded lands of the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger peoples. He paid his respects to the members of these nations and their elders, both past and living.
From page 8...
... JAPANESE INCARCERATION THROUGH THE LENS OF SETTLER COLONIALISM The first keynote speaker, Myla Vicenti Carpio, director of graduate studies and associate professor at Arizona State University, opened with an acknowledgment of where she was presenting, as a visitor on the lands of the Akimel Au-Authm and Piipaash peoples, and she also acknowledged BOX 2-1 Highlights • It is important to examine the World War II era incarceration of Japanese Americans through the lens of settler colonialism, recognizing the larger struc ture and erasure of Native people, their history, and their connections to the lands upon which camps were located. (Carpio)
From page 9...
... Although the FBI asserted that the most potentially dangerous individuals had been detained and FBI Director J Edgar Hoover saw no reason to detain additional persons of Japanese descent for national security reasons,2 by early 1942, individuals of Japanese descent represented greater than 50 percent of the persons arrested.
From page 10...
... lands." Vicenti Carpio suggested that while "Japanese American incarceration in and of itself inspires teaching about civil rights, human rights, American democracy, and the carceral state," examining it within the context of Native American lands where camps were located provides a broader or more layered understanding of additional entanglements, in this case pertaining to colonization and settler colonialism.4 She then played a video illustrating the invasion of America by mapping every treaty and executive order from 1776 to 1887,5 during which the United States seized more than 1.5 billion acres from ­America's ­Indigenous people. She emphasized that "we must recognize and examine the lands on which this event takes place as Indigenous space … invaded by settlers" with Indigenous people removed by force or genocide, con tained on reservations, and forced to assimilate.
From page 11...
... Vicenti Carpio concluded with a quote from Native American activist, economist, and author Winona LaDuke: "If we build a society based on honoring the earth, we build a society which is sustainable, and has the capacity to support all life forms." THE ROLE OF EPISTEMOLOGY: A CASE STUDY OF HO'OPONO MAMO, A JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM AND TRANSFORMATION EFFORT IN HAWAII The second keynote speaker, Karen Umemoto, chair of the Asian American Studies Center and professor of urban planning and Asian American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, began by acknowledging the Tongva peoples from whose land she calls in from, an area called Tovaangar, encompassing Los Angeles and the Channel Islands. Umemoto shared that her parents were incarcerated during World War II and recalled her father, who was incarcerated in Manzanar, talking about how he was on the land of the Paiute people.
From page 12...
... Umemoto described epistemology as being about culture -- that is, knowledge systems, or ways of viewing, understanding, and relating to the world. To illustrate the importance of epistemology and the way health problems are addressed, Umemoto introduced her work in Hawaii on juvenile justice reform and transformation, describing an effort to ­create alternatives to incarceration.
From page 13...
... That is Ho‘opono Mamo, a diversion program through which youth arrested for first-time misdemeanors and offenses are taken to an assessment center based in a community and then referred to various programs. Umemoto explained that "the ways in which people understand these knowledge systems are quite different." As illustrated in Figure 2-2, she FIGURE 2-2  Comparing and contrasting Western and Hawaiian conceptualizations of a juvenile justice reform and transformation effort.
From page 14...
... means to make right within oneself, a process in which people understand themselves within the larger ecosystem, and Mamo is the extinct bird represented in the flowchart. She also described the broader metaphor illustrated in this image, representing a village/ watershed and surrounding ocean and mountain, and the belief system that "the higher you get to the summit, the clearer you could see from the broader horizons." Umemoto went on to note that "the metaphor nods to Hawaiian history and puts into perspective the precious life of Hawaiian youths today and the precarity that they face and that we treat each other as precious as the Mamo bird signifies the aspirational essence that many hope would imbue this transformation as an Indigenous space of healing, reconnection, and growth." She then underscored that a key part of what this metaphor signifies is that the health of an individual is connected both to the land and to the communities in which they live.
From page 15...
... them in the desert, and what do they make of it and how," Fullilove said. This then leads to Leighton's theories "about upheaval and breaking of social bonds as the fundamental crisis that undermines health of populations." She noted that the incarceration of Japanese Americans at Poston can be considered a single event during the World War II era or can be examined within the larger frame of settler colonialism given they were on Native lands, and that as generations carry this story forward, even those who are not directly connected to the land or history of incarceration are affected by it and can learn from it.
From page 16...
... She said a consortium of community-based organizations are surrounding the youth incarceration facility in Hawaii with cultural-based programs focused on a range of challenges the youth face, including sexual trafficking, homelessness, and vocational challenges. Umemoto noted they are close to closing the women's and girls' prison but that doing so requires bringing together and creating these robust alternatives that are "not a bridge to nowhere." The second question was directed at Vicenti Carpio, asking whether the dividing lines mentioned in her remarks, marking who was interned during World War II and who was not, had an economic basis.
From page 17...
... She noted that, "this always hits people of color, low income people a lot harder than the rest of the population" and that there is a balance between doing healing work and engaging in political mobilization to deal with the policies and structures that enable these issues to continue happening. Umemoto also said that one key aspect of addressing structural racism8 is the policy paradigm of how issues are viewed -- for instance, seeing people falling into arrears during a pandemic as a pandemic problem and not an individual respon 7 More information on the People's Pathway to Equity can be found here: www.pp2e.org (accessed January 20, 2022)
From page 18...
... " Vicenti Carpio said acknowledgment -- such as land acknowledgments to work toward making what has been invisible visible -- is part of those steps, as is humanity, "acknowledging each other as human and starting those relationships with each other in ways that have been severed." She also quoted song lyrics -- "from [little] things, big things grow"9 -- and suggested that some of those initial seeds that can be planted now have to do with bringing in "different epistemological views in order to shift the paradigms that create these structures." Sember then asked the speakers a final question about how younger generations are taking on challenges, mentioning uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, as well as the pandemic and the "materialization of this idea that somehow, we are all interconnected" as two examples.


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