Have you faced challenges in your career as the Pacific Island? If so, how did you overcome them?
One of the biggest challenges she faced as the Pacific island is HAPA [mixed]Pacific Islands as well as the Caucasus. I grew up looking at the way I do with green eyes, and being lighter than my seven siblings, I was always called Hall. [foreigner] Or not Hawaii enough. Therefore, this was always a challenge. Being already on my head or transferring, but in reality I was not enough. Then when I came to the continent, I was not really white-looking-it was like, “Oh, there is a kind of sweat in you.” It was always the difficult part of the expression, or perhaps trying to find intimate friendship with people who felt purple. But you are always hoopy, never belongs to a group … you never feel part of any society. Therefore, it is a kind of full circle to be able to represent the entire nation of the nation that did not consider me at one time even one of them, but now very proud to represent me.
Buzzfeed: What you say really resonates with me. In Samoa, we say AFAKASI instead of Hapa, but perhaps you can say I am also mixed [laughs]. I am curious about the moment you allowed you to be confident in your background after that. Just like, “this is who I am.”
Perhaps it was the thing that helped me go into my culture, perhaps when I stopped going to the church [laughs]. Religion puts a lot of culture, a lot of race and POC groups. So, even watching my family, which is still very religious, has no connection alongside Hawaii because it is pagan, or that there is all these gods and gods, and this is not what is not involved in any religion that is consistent with now, and I think this is what is okay. He needed? “And I really needed to fill this space with my culture and the things that I deprived of the religion, which was really immersing from you, where did my family come from, and also all the things that I did not learn because I was told that it was not really necessary to continue our culture, which I thought was largely crazy. Because in particular in everything we are going through, it is very important to represent our culture and show people that we are not We are still here and try to prosper.
