ROUND TABLE 14 | DAY 2 | 9:30am-10:30am | BALLROOM I

| ALYSHIA ALOHALANI MACAYSA-FERACOTA (Kanaka Maoli), Executive Director, Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition &

| KEVIN LUJAN LEE (Chamoru), Killam Postdoctoral Fellow, University of British Columbia

Centuries of imperialism and settler-colonialism has meant that the US is now home to millions of Indigenous peoples who are not Native to Turtle Island, including 1+ million Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders living in the continental US. Since the influx of state public health funding to address the disproportionate impacts of COVID-19 on Pacific Islanders, Pacific Islander community organizations (PICOs) have renewed access to funding and decision-making arenas. As such, PICOs are now gathering and analyzing data at greater scales than ever before. To address data gaps, they are conducting their own research to highlight persistent community needs; to address colonial extractivism in public health research, they are increasingly working with research teams to ensure cultural competency and accountability in research protocols; and to address the statistical erasure of Indigenous peoples, they are demanding access to disaggregated government data. The Oregon Pacific Islander Coalition (OPIC), formed in 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, exemplifies much of these trends. In the pursuit of Pacific data sovereignty, however, several operational and managerial issues remain to ensure that all OPIC members––across their varying priorities and imperial relationships to the US––have a meaningful seat at the collective table. This panel will (1) present OPIC as a concrete case study for understanding some of the key issues accompanying the pursuit of Pacific data sovereignty in Turtle Island; and (2) invite audience members to join a collective, participatory dialogue on how these issues could be navigated through already-existing networks, expertise and material resources.