Tag: haunani-kay trask

Promoting diversity is one of the key points to the University of La Verne's community. It is a promise that ULV has greatly kept this past year by including a variety of speakers on cultural and social issues.

Native American Awareness Month, partially sponsored by the Associated Students Federation (ASF) Forum, culminated Monday when Ward Churchill, an outspoken Native American activist, discussed the atrocities the United States continues to commit against the land's indigenous people.

Innocent blood was spilled on this land, the same land that is now considered "the land of the free and the home of the brave." The original inhabitants of America were stripped of their culture, traditions and land to make room for the newcomers. The past is grim, straight out disturbing and often times forgotten.

When students begin college, the word "diversity" is immediately upon them in every brochure and every college picture, showing students of different ethnicities smiling and enjoying the institution of higher learning. At the University of La Verne, a wide canvas is used to display our diversity, and it is advertised to the point at which the University becomes more like a generic Disneyland full of happiness and fun rather than reality.

Students from Hawaii or others who want to learn about the Hawaiian culture can join Kanaka Hui Ohana.

It was certainly not everybody's kind of speech, but Haunani-Kay Trask, professor of Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawaii, got her point across and left quite a few people talking and thinking about the Hawaiian sovereignty movement after Tuesday's speech at Founders Auditorium.