Filipinos have been in Alaska for 236 years. I grew up in Juneau, and it wasn't until I learned about our history that I understood my connection to Alaska. We are the state's largest immigrant minority, but there are few records for us to learn from.
Sometimes the institutions we work with don't understand what we're trying to do. They push back. But we choose to do things our way: We spend hours engaging with people; we eat with our interviewees and show up for their birthdays.
What makes everything worth the challenges is knowing that our stories - our history - are out there for our future generations. It's our stories that ground us to home, and it's our stories that bind us to each other.
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