Honoring Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

Posted by Office of Diversity and Inclusion on Wednesday, May 1, 2024 at 10:17 AM PDT

As we enter May and mark the beginning of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we embrace this occasion to commemorate and honor the rich heritage of Asian American and Pacific Islander cultures. While "Asian American and Pacific Islander" serves as an official designation, we recognize its broad scope, encapsulating diverse countries, communities, and traditions. Some may alternatively term this month as Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Heritage Month (APIDA). Regardless of nomenclature, we extend our recognition and respect to each community for their distinctive and multifaceted experiences. To our students, faculty, staff, administrators, and alumni, we see you, and we value the enriching contributions you bring to our university and beyond.

As we honor and celebrate the experiences, achievements, and abundant contributions of the AAPI community, it is notable that Seattle University recently received its first minority-serving institution designation as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-serving institution (AANAPISI) based on the strong and rich make up of our student body and the various ways that we are working to foster stronger inclusion and outcomes for our AANAPI and other students. Receiving this designation as a minority serving institution is not a destination in itself, but a call to fully live into our mission of educating students from the tapestry of diasporic origins that make up the AAPI community. 

In line with our LIFTSU principles, and in support of our commitment to pursuing inclusive excellence, we recognize that fostering inclusion means amplifying voices from a variety of perspectives. We have invited two of our colleagues to share their reflections on what Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month means to them. We offer deep gratitude to Darozyl Touch, Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, College of Arts and Sciences; and Charles Tung, Ph.D., Professor of English, College of Arts and Sciences, Special Assistant to the Provost for Curriculum, for sharing their stories and perspectives, and trust that you will receive their words with openness. 

Darozyl Touch 
Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice, College of Arts and Sciences 

In the summer of 2021, I discovered a treasure trove of home videotapes and archives collecting dust in my mother’s attic for over 20 years. I was bursting with curiosity to decipher the archival material my father left behind - clues to the violence he saw in Cambodia as a soldier in the Khmer Republic Army who chose to escape without his family or risk execution when the Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. Or, to uncover the mysteries of how my mother risked her life to help her family survive and escape against the odds. I digitized the tapes and spent two years poring over the footage, reliving the memories of my first trip to Cambodia with my parents at eight years old when they traveled throughout the country to educate me about their hardships, catalyzing moments, and places that would transform them forever – returning for the first time since fleeing to escape from the Khmer Rouge regime. Little did they know, this trip would transform me, too. 

I was obsessed with piecing together each puzzle of their migration journeys to the United States – to know how the displacement of Khmer people was accelerated by the same country they sought refuge, to learn the histories of foreign intervention that were omitted from my K-12 education, and be moved by the stories of hope, resilience, and determination to survive. Watching over 100 hours of footage paired with corroborating the events my father wrote about – I uncovered new revelations for my family. I held recording sessions with my mother, documented her reactions to watching the footage for the first time, and gathered untold, harrowing stories that illuminated her bravery and heroic acts in the face of horror as a teenager.  
This project was facilitating my healing process, allowing me to grieve with my mother and remember much of which I did not consciously experience, but was imprinted in my DNA and my collective Khmer ancestral history. Together, we were remembering and releasing – to regenerate new antibodies to the antigens of a shared fate invading the cells of our bodies. We were creating our own medicine for equanimity. 
There is a catharsis that comes with sharing a story only you can tell. A story that can bridge cross-cultural, intergenerational dialogue to demonstrate our shared humanity and interconnected fates, beyond geographical boundaries. A story that has the power to unite - to inspire solidarity with the struggles of oppressed people across the world and in our local communities. You can use your voice, perspective, knowledge, history, and power to amplify that story to live on in our collective memory so it may nourish the roots of our future generations. And let it be the salve that heals the scar, so we may be renewed collectively – to vision with hope and act for a just and liberated future. 

To learn more about this story and the stories of other Khmer/Cambodian diaspora in Seattle curated by two other local Khmer American artists, you can visit the Wing Luke Museum in person, and browse the online AANHPI exhibition. 
 
Charles Tung, Ph.D. 
Professor of English, College of Arts and Sciences 
Special Assistant to the Provost for Curriculum 

That my family and I have never desired to leave Seattle since we arrived in 2003 has everything to do with our Asian American identities and our need to be in a city that embraces or at least is hospitable enough to contain the wide variety of communities and complex experiences that fall under the umbrella of Asian Pacific American heritage. My own family’s history in the US begins in California with a “houseboy” who found his way to Arizona when it was still a territory and where within a decade he was drafted into the US Army to fight in World War I.  My spouse’s family were refugees from the American War in Vietnam.  These snapshots are just two of the numerous complicated histories that we are invited to consider during this heritage month in both national and transnational frames.  I would like to add this qualification to my opening sentence:  that I have never desired to leave Seattle has everything to do with Seattle University in particular and the amazing faculty and staff colleagues we have here.  We live in increasingly worrisome times—in which historical efforts to remedy systemic inequities in our country and world are now frequently construed as obstacles to a version of equality that is purely formal, or as exclusionary gestures themselves somehow.  At Seattle University, I have never felt our community to treat the heritage month as a temporal relegation of the presence of under-represented communities to a single month, or as an impediment to the year-round and permanent shift in how we think about who belongs in the present, who has played a role in our collective past, and who has a claim to our future.  As we complete the second phase of our transformative work as a university to reimagine and revise our curricula, and as we plan to live into our status as an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution, the work we have yet to do and the promise of who can become has never been clearer and more invigorating. 

Resources and Renewal to Inclusion  
To show support throughout Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we invite you to visit the Office of Diversity and Inclusion website to find inspiring Zoom backgrounds, and a range of other educational resources.

As we commemorate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, let us honor and pay tribute to the unique contributions of this community. And let us concurrently reassert our dedication to combating persistent racism, xenophobia, and violence directed towards individuals in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, and to actively participate in fostering a welcoming and inclusive environment for all. 

Sincerely, 

Eduardo M. Peñalver, President  
Natasha Martin, Vice President for Diversity and Inclusion