I was born and raised in Hawai'i; as the eldest daughter, of an eldest daughter, of an eldest daughter. An identity that evaded me for decades, but with the passing of my grandmother, I recognized that it was a calling to move differently in this world, in my own life. Matriarchy is a call to a leadership and courage of a entirely different reality than I had occupied before.

a mixed descendant of Illocano farmers & fishermen who survived and persisted and perservered through centuries of occupation & colonization, whose arrival here is inseparable from the US imperial history that shaped the Pacific— I was born to a place that was both home and a distant echo. I was born among cousins, but never quite belonging, until I learned to rebuild my own kinship to our families history & my connection and purpose to the ecologies that surrounded me. This space is dedicated to my own inquiry to an identity that extends beyond the boundaries of my lifetime.

That history — of land and kinship relational identity in the face of displacement, diaspora, violence, perserverance, healing, and hope — is not background for me. Its an inheritence.