Inspiring grad: Kekulalani J. Keauli’i

Kekulalani J. Keauli’i was a first-year student at UIC craving some food from her home state of Hawaii. She figured if she was, other Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students must be, too.  

So in the spring of 2022, Keauli’i started a program called “PIck Me Ups,” with the PI capitalized to represent the Pacific Islander community. She worked with Chicago-based Hawaiian restaurants, such as Aloha Wagon, to connect students with a taste of home during midterms and finals week.  

The program was a hit, not only for homesick students needing the kind of boost only culinary cuisine from the islands can provide, but also for the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Chicago eateries.  

“I really just wanted to have lunch with people who would appreciate it, but I also knew it would be hard to get new people on board to go eat somewhere, on the same date, at the same time,” Keauli’i said. “So I was thinking, how do we get food to Pacific Islander-identified students in a way that makes sense, and so that I could talk to them and check in?

“The restaurants have been great and are always excited for us to contact them again during midterms and finals.” 

Keauli’i’s outreach to the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community didn’t start with the success of the PIck Me Ups.  

As a first-year student, she attended a Zoom meeting led by a Native Hawaiian in UIC’s law school in hopes of connecting with more Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander-identified people. Instead, she found a broader purpose: to create events and spaces for the Pacific Islander community, supported by UIC’s Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution initiative.

Keauli’i started a newsletter for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students and amassed a list of more than 300 people who now regularly receive emails about resources, information and upcoming events. She developed a Deconstructing AAPI series with speakers who discuss how Pacific Islander experiences are distinct from Asian American experiences and too often overshadowed by the Asian American and Pacific Islander umbrella.

“What she’s been able to accomplish with building the infrastructure and building a network of allies and community partners in two years is remarkable,” said Viraj Patel, director of the Asian American Student Academic Program.

Keauli’i also coordinated an open-mic poetry night highlighting local artists like Hannah Kolopuaokalani I’i-Epstein and connected UIC’s Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander community with Lanialoha Lee, a Native Hawaiian Midwesterner who grew up in Chicago and hosted a private workshop for the UIC community at the Field Museum on the migration of Native Hawaiians to Chicago.

“I was just so impressed by her motivation to get involved and be looking for a community that we immediately wanted to meet with her,” said Karen Su, project director for the UIC AANAPISI Initiative who hired Keauli’i to be the Pacific Islander student outreach coordinator.

Most recently, Keauli’i developed the Pacific Islander Think Tank at UIC, also known as PITT. Their mission, a play on words of the acronym PITT, is to function like the pit of a fruit that shields its seeds. The seeds are the people of the Pacific Islander community who will continue to grow and flourish at UIC. PITT will continue Keauli’i’s work for Pacific Islanders after she graduates May 11 with her bachelor’s degree and double major in Global Asian Studies and English.

She said boosting Asian American and Pacific Islander resources across campuses is important for student success, yet the differences between these communities, each having a broad diversity within themselves, can’t be ignored.

“For instance, in medical research that looks at health disparities for Asian American and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders, the health outcomes for NHPI people are usually much worse and then masked because of the aggregation of Pacific Islanders with Asian Americans,” Keauli’i said. “And those health outcomes can be a direct result of a unique history of western colonization of the Pacific that includes nuclear-bomb and weapons testing and violence on sustainable Indigenous food systems.” 

After UIC, Keauli’i is considering a couple of options. She’s hoping to earn a placement as a Kūhiō Fellow, which would give her a yearlong experience in Washington, D.C., advocating for the Native Hawaiian community. Or she’d like to find a position in Chicago working in the nonprofit sector in public relations.  

At UIC career, she earned the APIKC Mamta Accapadi Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award from the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Then she and other members of PITT presented at the national Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education conference in Oakland, California, in April, where Keauli’i also co-hosted the first-ever student mixer for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander attendees.  

Keauli’i said she’s learned a lot about herself during her time as a Flame, beyond her ability to create and share resources with other students.

“I learned that I do care a lot about social justice initiatives and wanting to be in a community with like-minded folk who are interested in collective liberation and understanding the world we’re in to make it a better place.”