Sarah Soakai

Aloha and Malo e lelei (Hello, in Tongan). I originally hail from the Ko’olauloa Mountains and North Shores of Oahu, Hawai’i with ancestral ties to the South Pacific Islands of Tonga. I most recently came from the Los Angeles, Tongva (not to be confused with Kingdom of Tonga, please) lands. I mainly teach in CRP’s Indigenous Planning concentration, the very first of its kind in the United States. Although my research training spans broadly across Community Economic Development and Housing as a field and discipline in Planning, UNM’s MCRP program is unique because there is a dedicated concentration in Indigenous Planning. I appreciate the growth and learning I have received so far with colleagues and students alike.

I study Community Development and Policy as it relates to communities in and on the margins of society. The master’s project looked at homelessness in urban Honolulu, noting that the population experiencing homelessness are not single, White, and/or male, often the common media perception portrayed. Rather, those experiencing homelessness were Indigenous Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander families, speaking to ongoing legacies of land displacement and colonization. Another significant finding is that those on the ground, organizing soup kitchens, and passing out hygiene kits for people experiencing homelessness are the community-based, faith-based organizations and institutions, not the state, and planning is largely a state actor. The dissertation specifically examined Tongan Pacific Islander Latter-day Saint (LDS) wards and stakes, the Catholic equivalent of parishes and dioceses respectively, i.e., Indigenous churches, and their role in building and developing community. Like other immigrant sanctuary spaces before them, Indigenous Pacific Islander churches across the United States – from Micronesian Presbyterian congregations in Arkansas and Washington state to Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist, LDS Mormon, and Methodist congregations across states like California, Hawai’i, Utah, and Texas – have simultaneously both indigenized their faith-based space through language and culture, and changed, transformed as a result.