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UH Ilokano Program Co-Organizes 18th NAKEM Conference

July 26–28 • Mission College, Santa Clara, California

18th NAKEM Conference

For the 18th year in a row with no let-up, the University of the Hawaiʻi 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, as well as 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 Covid-19 in 2020 and 2021, the UH Ilokano Program continued conceptualizing and convening the annual NAKEM Conferences.

NAKEM—National Alliance for Knowledge, Empowerment, and Meaning—has now grown to six autonomous groups since its beginnings as NAKEM Conferences International based in Hawaiʻi and organized by Aurelio Agcaoili in 2006, at the centennial of the first 15 Ilokanos’ arrival to Hawaiʻi.

These Ilokanos were the start of waves of Ilokanos—and later Visayans— who toiled in plantations until the last batch arrived in 1946.

This year’s conference, “Herstories and Histories of Diversity: Narrating (Im)migrant and Multiple Lives and Engaging the Community from the Margins,” is co-organized by Mission College and hosted by NAKEM Conferences California, headed by Dr. Alvin Benjamin Gaerlan.

All presidents of NAKEM Conferences are part of the conveners’ committee: Prof. Dean Domingo (NAKEM Hawaiʻi), Dr. Alegria Tan Visaya (NAKEM Philippines), Dr. Aurelio Solver Agcaoili (NAKEM Conferences International), Mr. Rey Felimon Agra (NAKEM Conferences Without Borders), and Ms. Imelda Toledo (NAKEM Canada). Josephine Villanueva of NAKEM California serves as secretary-general.

Dr. Agcaoili, instructional faculty of the UH Ilokano Program and adjunct faculty of Asian Studies, conceptualized the conference and chairs the Conveners’ Committee.

Conference Details

Theme: “Herstories and Histories of Diversity: Narrating Immigrant and Multiple Lives and Engaging the Community from the Margins”

Dates: July 26–28

Location: Mission College, Santa Clara, California