For the 18th year in a row with no let-up, the University of the Hawaii Ilokano Program has kept on its role in spearheading the work of language justice, cultural democracy, and liberatory education.
Aside from the annual conference, NAKEM and UH have joined hands in holding a conference on Ilokano and Amianan Studies in 2019 and two language summits and co-organizing language, culture, and history conferences such as the one held at Kalinga State College in Tabuk City in the Philippines’ Cordillera Region in November 2022.
Even during the two years of Covid-19, in 2020 and 2021, UH Ilokano Program has continued its role in conceptualizing and convening the annual NAKEM Conferences.
NAKEM, also known as the National Alliance for Knowledge, Empowerment, and Meaning, has now grown to six autonomous groups starting from its beginnings as NAKEM Conferences International based in Hawaii and organized by Aurelio Agcaoili, then program coordinator for Ilokano in 2006 at the 100th year of the coming of the first 15 Ilokanos to Hawaii.
These Ilokanos would be the beginnings of waves of Ilokanos, and then Visayans, that toiled in the plantations until the last batch that arrived in 1946.
This year’s conference on “Herstories and Histories of Diversity: Narrating (Im)migrant and Multiple Lives and Engaging the Community from the Margins” is co-organized by the Mission College, the host academic institution, is organizationally hosted by NAKEM Conferences California headed by its president, Dr. Alvin Benjamin Gaerlan.
The conference will be held at Mission College in Santa Clara, California on July 26-28.
All presidents of NAKEM Conferences are part of the conveners’ committee: Prof. Dean Domingo of NAKEM Hawaii, Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya of NAKEM Philippines, Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili of NAKEM Conferences International, Mr. Rey Felimon Agra of NAKEM Conferences Without Borders, and Ms. Imelda Toledo of NAKEM Canada.
Josephine Villanueva of NAKEM California serves as secretary-general of the conveners’ committee.
Dr. Agcaoili, an instructional faculty of the UH Ilokano Program and adjunct faculty of the university’s Asian Studies, conceptualized the conference and chairs the Conveners’ Committee.
Aurelio Solver Agcaoili, a member of the instructional faculty of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, completed his three-month United States Fulbright Scholarship at his host university, Saint Louis University in Baguio City, the Philippines.
The Fulbright Scholarship was awarded to Dr. Agcaoili in early 2020, but because of the Covid-19 pandemic, he deferred until Summer 2022.
At SLU, he was appointed Visiting Lecturer and taught a doctoral course on special topics in language education as a philosophical and practical field of inquiry.
Aside from his regular instructional duties, he also delivered ten public lectures on various issues and in various venues and audiences including several universities and colleges.
Prior to the start of his Fulbright work, he convened the NAKEM 2022 conference hosted by the PanPacific University in Urdaneta City.
He also begun his field work on mother language education among indigenous groups. In particular, he started his field research among the Ifugao people and then started learning Tuwali, the language of the people, as part of his research.
An initial result of his field experiences will be in the upcoming work, Dispatches from Dalligan, a critical meditation on ethnography as a field methodology, on indigenous life and indigeneity, and on the challenges faced by the indigenous peoples as they confront the hegemonic forces of a dominant state.
The Fulbright is a federal program that since 1946, has awarded 400,000 individuals to teach, do research, and provide various ways for mutual understanding between the United States and more than 155 participating countries.
A highly competitive program, the US Fulbright awards around 800 scholars, artists, and other professionals each year to work, research, or teach in countries outside the country.
While under the Fulbright, Agcaoili also had three public launches of four books he edited, translated, or wrote.
Kuntimpas Domino, his collection of political poetry in Ilokano was launched at St. Louis University in Baguio.
A separate launch was for another book he edited, A Life Beyond Amazing (a memoir of Fe Benita Muriel).
Two other works were also launched both at SLU, and then separately, at Mt. Cloud Bookshop: Dungdung-aw/Lamentations (in bilingual edition) and The Almighty Moves Mountains, a translation of an early 20th-century manuscript left behind by an Ilokano public servant during the late Spanish regime, Sabas Manzano Gaerlan.
The great grandson of Gaerlan, Dr. Alvin Benjamin Gaerlan, wrote the introduction of both books.
Some of his public lectures and all his book launches were covered by PTV 4, a government television in Northern Luzon.
While delivering a lecture at Kalinga State University, Radyo Gimpong had him as a guest along with other members of the instructional faculty of that university.
This site was created with the Nicepage