Jesi Lujan Bennett

Jesi Lujan Bennett is of Chamoru descent with familial ties to Dededo and Barrigada, Guåhan (Guam). She is currently a faculty member in Pacific and Indigenous Studies at the University of Waikato in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Bennett studied at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she earned a MA in Pacific Islands Studies in 2013 and a PhD in American Studies and Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies in 2021. Her areas of interest include Chamoru visual culture with a particular focus in the relationship between colonialism, militarization, migration, and self-representation within the Mariana Islands and the Chamoru diaspora. Bennett’s dissertation, “Migrating Beyond the Mattingan: Chamoru Diasporic Routes, Indigenous Identities, and Public Exhibitions,” examines the outmigration of Chamorus and the ways in which these diasporic communities articulate their indigeneity in new geographic and cultural contexts in light of significant political and social change in Micronesia.