Cautiously, my bare feet stepped onto the thin, well-worn woven mat. I looked up in wonder. Strings of beautiful white paper Palauan flowers hung suspended in the air around me, some swinging gently where my head had brushed past. Sitting down, I noticed a conch shell lying nearby, and after whispering a brief “May I?” to the space, I picked it up and held it to my ear. Gazing up at the flowers, which looked half like stars, half like falling snowflakes, I listened to the ocean, a majestic roar captured in a gentle hum.
Within the intimate space of the Pacific Islander Ethnic Art Museum (PIEAM), there is a sacredness that comes with spiritual intentionality. When we walked in, we were unexpectedly invited by Auntie Fran to communicate with “the ancestors”, the original creators and users of the artifacts around us, and ask them whether we could pass through. Even more surprisingly, Auntie Fran welcomed us to touch anything in the museum; she simply asked that we “ask permission” from the object first.
Over the course of my freshman year, both through academic philosophy and my own spiritual journey, I grappled a lot with our instinct to rationalize everything, to dismiss anything illogical or scientifically unprovable as unreal or untrue. Scientific rigor has allowed us to discover so much about the natural world and led us to find efficient, innovative technologies that have propelled us into modernity, and yet I often wonder whether it has also closed our minds to what was never meant to be explained through reason.
When I was little, I was fortunate to meet a Lakota Sioux medicine woman up in the Colorado Rockies who told me, “you spend so much time inside your head. What about your spirit? Is it growing along with your mind?” I confessed to her that I hadn’t given my spirit any thought frankly, so she shared with me practices that ranged from everyday meditation and yoga to rituals like Calling in the Directions and Spirit Journeys. They all asked me to empty my mind of busy thoughts and find an inner peace, a contented quiet that energized my movements and imagination but also held me still. I felt something instinctive inside me relax, align, wake up, an energy with a life of its own. It did not need scientific reasoning to be understood, but rather just a quiet, intentional listening to myself, to others, and to the nature around me. My inner cynic which told me that “trees don’t talk” quieted as I placed my palm on the rough bark of the mountain pines; I marveled at these beings decades older than me, and felt a wonder, a warmth, at the life that coursed through both of us.
Unfortunately, trying to share these experiences is often very difficult because the language around understanding by feeling or instinct (instead of intellect) is associated with the medieval past, a time when we did not have the microscopes and telescopes to know better. Now that we have deciphered the laws of the universe, why would we have any use for these outdated ideas? And yet, I have seen my generation suffer from a kind of existential isolation and disconnection, and I have seen our planet suffer from a lack of reverence, in ways that cannot be solved with social media or electric cars. Both the medicine woman and my college pastor have told me with deep sorrow, “We have forgotten that we are spiritual beings.”
Listening to Auntie Fran at PIEAM!
Thus, it was with great joy and surprise that I realized that the Pacific Islands were one of fewer and fewer places that still value and uplift spiritual, “unscientific” practices such as communicating with ancestors. I have often felt slightly uncomfortable with the AAPI label because I am so ignorant of the Pacific Islander community, but visiting PIEAM, I saw significant commonalities between my spiritual beliefs and their cultural practices. While I will never know the PI community as well as I know the Asian American one, I now have a better understanding of the roots of their culture and worldview, and I know why their art centers around the healing of both people and the environment. I can confidently say that it is a privilege and honor to advocate and make space for the Pacific Islander community through our shared AAPI label.
Kneeling in the open air hut that takes up the middle of PIEAM, breathing deeply and reflecting on what was on my heart and mind, I heard the door open and a flurry of sounds shattered the peaceful silence: laughing, talking, footsteps, rustling. And yet I remained unbothered, because I knew that if anyone wanted to come in, they would first ask the permission of the space, and I would know, even with my eyes closed, that they were coming. That was the kind of safety and peace of spirit that PIEAM gifted all of us.
