Take a tour of the solar system without leaving Earth! In the past decade, there’s been an increased interest in the study of life on other worlds: the study of astrobiology. Why? Because, if we find life outside of life on Earth, it would revolutionize theories about how life originated, how it spread and how it continues to spread.
The poems in this booklet are largely inspired by my experiences during the spring and summer of 2021. During these months, I was a Water Protector in the Stop Line 3 Movement. This is an Indigenous-led movement resisting the expansion of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Anishinaabe lands and treaty territories of Northern Minnesota. All the people in this movement, both Native and non-Native, have given me deep lessons about loving Water, who is Nibi in Ojibwe and Mni/Mini in Dakota.
As I am midway through my first year as an MBA student, I pause to reflect on my individual journey as a military servicemember and as a Polynesian (of Samoan and Tongan descent) thousands of miles away from home. I struggle to find what innate virtue I possess that keeps me moving through this life constantly in flux, challenging the frame in which I picture the world.
Academia—the academy—is extractive. A couple months ago on a Zoom call with a prominent pedagogy journal, an editor told me my original piece was great, and then proceeded to list all the edits I would need to make in order for my piece to be published. I was taken aback as this white editor told me what needed to be said and claimed in a piece on Black political teaching.
We are Anishinaabikwewag, Ojibwe women. We are mothers, sisters, daughters, aunties. We are also graduate students at a land grant institution that stole so much from Native Americans—from our own and many other Native nations—through ethnic cleansing, land expropriation, resource extraction, cultural theft, grave robbery, and research.
Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing (TRUTH) The TRUTH Project is a grassroots collaboration between the 11 recognized Tribal Nations within the geographic boundaries of Minnesota, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council (MIAC), and the Office of American Indian and Tribal Nations Relations at the University of Minnesota.
Growing up in Bangladesh, private tutoring was a part of my educational experience from an early age. From my peers to seniors in school, it seemed everyone was doing it, including myself. In Bangladesh, 40% of primary students and 68% of secondary students were estimated to be engaged in tutoring in 2008, rising to over 80% of students in grade 10