Jane Yamashiro
Okinawan Community Writing Project: Decolonizing Culture through Research Justice
Policy Partner:
Yuko Yamauchi, Executive Director, Okinawa Association of America (OAA)
Okinawan Community Writing Project: Decolonizing Culture through Research Justice
With the long-term policy goal of gaining recognition as an ethnic group on the U.S. Census and collecting demographic data about this unrecognized Indigenous population, this community-led project promotes recognition of “Okinawans” as an ethnic group in the United States through the creation of publishable materials on Okinawan culture and history. Okinawans are typically subsumed as “Japanese” despite their claims of ethnic difference and a pre-contact history as an independent kingdom. Dr. Jane H. Yamashiro is working with the Okinawa Association of America (OAA), a non-profit community organization based in California, to create a decolonizing infrastructure for training community members to research and write the OAA’s community-produced book on Okinawan culture and community in Los Angeles. This project may be a model for other underrepresented and marginalized groups as they try to reclaim lost cultural knowledge and histories – and eventually gain social recognition as ethnic groups and Indigenous Peoples.
Location
110 Churchill Hall 360
Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 373–2000
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