Nudged perhaps by the story from New America Media that we blogged about earlier this month, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the top news outlet in Australia) recently did a story on challenges being faced by America's growing Pacific Islander population. They zeroed in on the same area of California as New America Media, and interviewed one of the same sources.
There were several things about the story that we greatly appreciate, especially ABC's effort to raise awareness about the struggles of Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders in the U.S. In particular, we were pleased with the focus on education issues, including the underrepresentation of Pacific Islanders in American universities.
We also noted one issue in need of correction: the description of Pacific Islanders as an "immigrant group." New America Media made the same mistake.
As we've mentioned before, America's Pacific Islander community consists primarily of people who are indigenous to land that is now the United States. Native Hawaiians (indigenous to Hawaii, the 50th State), Chamorros (indigenous to Guam) and American Samoans (indigenous to American Samoa) make up the vast majority of Pacific Islander Americans. We recognize that this diverse community does also include immigrant groups, such as Fijians, Tongans, Tahitians and others, but simply labeling Pacific Islanders as an immigrant group is inaccurate.
Click here to read the story from ABC: LINK
Kawika
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment