The third annual Neon Pacific Summer Symposium, “Ninth Island Poetics,” brings together Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander artists, poets, cultural workers, and scholars in Las Vegas—often referred to as the “Ninth Island” in recognition of one of the largest Native Hawaiian communities outside of Hawaiʻi.

The symposium will feature a lauhala weaving workshop from UNLV student group, Papa Hana No'eau and poetry by Terisa Siagatonu. The symposium concludes with a roundtable discussion featuring Alfred Flores, Angela Robinson, and Zion David-Ravey, moderated by Benjamin Burroughs and considers how storytelling puts forth new modes for addressing U.S. settler colonialism, militarization, and decolonization in the Pacific. Through collective thinking and conversation, the symposium will help us reflect on how creative and scholarly work engages indigenous frameworks and methods as well as how we might grapple with the fraught position of Asian Americans, immigrants, and refugees within settler colonial formations.

Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Program & the Black Mountain Institute. Supported by the Mellon Foundation.