Special Issue • MAY 8, 2023
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👋 Good morning and welcome to a special issue of The Yappie’s AAPI politics briefing — your guide to the policy news and activism affecting Asian Americans + Pacific Islanders. Please s
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— Edited by Shawna Chen, Mary Yang, and Samson Zhang
OUR CULTURAL LEGACY
Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders weave homelands and climate issues into their art
👉 Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders suffer serious climate degradation as well as cultural and land deterioration rooted in a deep history of colonialism that is felt to this day.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
For centuries, military presence and nuclear testing by the United States, Spain, Japan, and other countries introduced a variety of diseases among Pacific Islander communities and significantly altered the environment. And after white Americans overthrew the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and illegally annexed the islands in 1898, colonizers cleared out native forests for sugar plantations and exploited water resources to the point of drying out streams.💡 What’s happening now: Some NHPI artists are trying to promote awareness about climate issues and the way they’re intertwined with their identities and cultural heritage. They shared with me how they use their art to help spark conversation.
Native Hawaiian sculpture and installation artist Kaili Chun, based in Hawai‘i, engages with ideas of physical space, natural environment, history of land, and culture through her sculptures and installations.
“As a Native Hawaiian, we have experienced colonization, capitalism, democratization in the service of others rather than in the service of ourselves,” Chun said. “My art reflects that history … As our population declines, we need to maintain connection to the culture and that means connection to this land.” Chun calls it “ʻāina,” a term that includes the ocean and “all the resources around us.”
Space is a particularly important element in her work, a reflection of the way the Native Hawaiian community has diminished over the years. “With my installations, I really choose to occupy space,” she said. “Somehow in some way, whether it is literally gallery space or air space like within an atrium … But I feel it’s important to claim space, physical space, so that I can exist in it and share some of the history and genealogy of that land and culture and place."
Abigail Romanchak is another Native Hawaiian artist who centers her art on Hawai‘i and its natural environment. “I care so deeply about the land and its people,” she said in an email interview. “I am acutely aware of the rapidly changing landscape of my birthplace, Maui … My brothers and I spent most of our time outdoors exploring and observing Makena's rugged coastline. I think this childhood
and lifestyle definitely influenced my connection to a sense of place.”
In 2018, she was asked to participate in a group show in Germany with several other Kanaka Maoli artists. The theme of the exhibit was “Aloha 'Aina,” which she chose to express by highlighting “the health of our marine ecosystems and us[ing] the image of the interconnected structure of a diatom to create a series of layered woodblock prints.”
Graphic designer, graffiti artist, and mural artist Jason Pereira similarly incorporates much of his Samoan heritage and experiences into his artwork. Periera, a resident artist at the Pacific Islander Ethnic Art Museum and Constellations Fellow at The Center for Cultural Power, cites his hometown Leona in American Samoa and his family—especially his father, an architect—as influences on his work.
Murals are “public works of art” that need to connect with the community where they’re displayed, according to Pereira. “They need to be part of that story,” he explained. “The neighborhood is the one that’s going to live with this piece.”
Locals selected his piece “Tautua Mural” for an installation in Long Beach at the Rear Wall of American Oil Gas Station in 2018. The mural shows a woman with a traditional headdress and Samoan tattoo performing a Samoan cultural tradition—the ava ceremony, which is held to formally welcome guests to the village. Next to the woman are the words: “O le ala i le pule, o le tautua.” It translates to: “The path to leadership is through service.”
“This is a foundational principle of Samoan culture that I wanted to share with the community of North Long Beach through this mural,” he wrote on Instagram, referring to the neighborhood’s diversity. “With this piece, I also wanted to give a voice and a sense of honor to the Samoan community here … They've immigrated here from American Samoa & (Western) Samoa, via military service, farming, spiritual purposes, education, or just seeking a better life for their families.”
— By
Wendy Ying Lau
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SNAPSHOT
THE LITTLE-KNOWN CASE OF PURVI PATEL: Purvi Patel, an Indian American woman living in Indiana, was convicted of feticide in 2015 for allegedly inducing her own abortion against state law and allowing her baby to die. Her case is largely considered the first in which a state’s feticide law was successfully applied to punish someone for attempting an abortion.
The criminal prosecution of Patel, who in 2015 sought care in an emergency room and told doctors that she’d had a miscarriage and left the stillborn’s fetal remains in a dumpster, had major implications that continue today as red states increasingly restrict abortion access.
🔎 How it happened: Patel had said that she disposed of the remains, which police recovered, because she hadn’t known what to do. Whether the baby was born alive remains a point of dispute.
Law enforcement later found that Patel had allegedly texted a friend about ordering abortion-inducing pills from a Hong Kong pharmacy and, after taking them, messaged the friend, “Just lost the baby.”
Patel was ultimately charged with felony child neglect and feticide, the latter of which didn’t apply to legal abortions in Indiana. Prosecutors argued, however, that it was illegal to order the pills she took online even though they are legally prescribed in the U.S.
Worth noting: Though opponents of abortion have long said their goal is not to criminalize people who get abortions but rather those who perform abortions, Patel’s prosecution—and 20-year sentence—was alarming for reproductive health advocates and Asian Americans, many of whom pointed out that it’s a slippery slope where abortions, miscarriages, and stillbirths are involved.
It also didn’t go unnoticed that Patel is a brown, Asian American woman. In fact, just a few years earlier, Indiana prosecutors had pursued a similar feticide charge against Bei Bei Shuai, a Chinese immigrant who attempted suicide while pregnant. Though the charges were eventually dropped after she pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, both cases reinforced concern that any move to restrict and criminalize abortion would disproportionately fall on women of color.
The latest: In 2016, Patel was released from prison after the Indiana Court of Appeals vacated her convictions and ruled that the feticide law was not meant to prosecute abortion seekers.
It remains a crime to harm a fetus in at least 38 states as of December, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. These types of laws were initially enacted to protect pregnant people, specifically in cases of domestic abuse.
Patel may have been the first, but legal experts say that pregnancy loss prosecutions are expected to increase in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
“Without Roe and Casey pushing back the line on fetal person, we are about to see the full re-imagination of criminal and civil codes in this country in the states that have already redefined fetuses and fertilized eggs and embryos as children or as human beings,” Dana Sussman, acting executive director of the nonprofit now known as Pregnancy Justice, told NPR in July.
— By
Shawna Chen
HISTORICAL LOOKBACK
🔥 PATSY MINK'S PATH TO CONGRESS—The legislative trailblazer
made history in 1964 when she became the first woman of color elected to Congress. She
surmounted racial and gender discrimination throughout her life to pave the way for Asian Americans in U.S. politics.
Well known today as the architect of Title IX, Mink began her political career in 1954 when she founded the Oahu Young Democrats. She climbed the political ladder for the next decade, winning a seat in Hawai'i’s House in 1956 and winning election to the Hawai'i Senate two years later.
“I didn’t start off wanting to be in politics,” Mink once told a reporter. “I wanted to be a learned professional, serving the community. But they weren’t hiring women just then. Not being able to get a job from anybody changed things.”
When she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, she gained what is considered her most historic win—the first Asian American woman to serve in Congress.
During her 24 years in office, split between two 12-year tenures, Mink fought for civil rights, affordable childcare, and more equitable education. She also co-authored Title IX, a landmark amendment of the 1972 Higher Education Act that prohibited discrimination on the basis of sex in higher education.
“We have to build things that we want to see accomplished, in life and in our country, based on our own personal experiences to make sure that others do not have to suffer the same discrimination,” Mink told the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in 1975.
Mink notched another first when she ran for president in 1974—she was the first Asian American woman to do so, entering as an anti-war candidate who ran a campaign to end the Vietnam War. “It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority,” Mink once said, former Rep. Julia Carson (D-Indiana) noted in a 2002 memorial speech. “But it is often more important to be ahead of the majority. This means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if necessary.” She capped her legacy with a return to national politics in 1990 and served another 12 years in the House until her death.
In 1994, she founded the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus alongside then-Rep. Norman Mineta (D-California). The caucus would grow to become one of the most powerful AAPI bodies in politics and form coalitions with the congressional Black and Hispanic caucuses.
In a speech at the unveiling of Mink’s portrait last June, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai‘i) lauded her as “a champion for social justice, equality, and civil rights.”
“She was a trailblazer in every sense of the word,” Hirono added.
— By
Preston Lieu
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