5 /5 Gabe Shennum: You know that you are in a good place when you are doing research for a sociolinguistic class and see your professor being cited by other experts in the field or when the same professor pulls out a map of a region where she had done extensive field work, gives us infrastructure and historical details, and asks us what we would think of the language vitality for several languages given that knowledge.
For most of my time here, I was studying at the Center for Excellence in World Arts. I greatly appreciated the discussions on ethics when doing research. The topic was not presented as “What can we get away with in our quest for knowledge?” but rather focused on the question of “Are we actually benefiting the people we are learning from?” This non-parasitic role of an anthropologist who is there to learn and record not only for other academics but for the indigenous experts who have passed these traditions for who knows how many generations was greatly inspiring to me. As an artist myself, I was thrilled to interact with people from cultural backgrounds very different from my own while having that connection of creativity.
The faculty greatly challenged my priorities and thought processes. When you study Anthropology, it will truly open your mind if you let it. You will find yourself wrong on many things, but that can actually be very exciting and rewarding. My only two regrets are not being able to continue due to life circumstances, and that I had to give up Hula when my ankle gave out. Yep, there was a class here where I got to find someone to train me in an art form, and there is a great Hālau in the area.
