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Showing posts from June, 2017

How Innocent Questions Can Go BOOM

For the past two years I have been trying to write about creating a space on the University of Hawai'i West Oʻahu campus - what Bhabha calls Third Space and Anzaldua calls Borderland spaces. From my 2017 article on carving out Indigenous spaces:   Consciousness-raising happens in both a metaphoric as well as a physical space. Third space theorists (Anzaldua 1999, 2000; Irving and Young 2002, 2004) suggest that the creation of "third" or "borderland" spaces can provide the opportunity for creative, novel, and respectful interpersonal relationship dynamics. Anzaldua addresses issues of power and identity in colonized areas, and conceptualizes third or borderland spaces as places or states of ambiguity, of being in-between different "realities" (2000).  What these spaces offer are ways for Indigenous me, one of the  2-7% of  Indigenous faculty members in the University of Hawaiʻi system, to create a safe space to have conversations and le