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Portrait of Hana Maruyama.

A PhD with a Purpose
"What happened during Japanese American incarceration is not coincidental at all--it's just how US settler colonialism has always and continues to function," says Hana Maruyama, whose grandmother and nearly 14,000 others of Japanese ancestry were displaced to Heart Mountain, the same place where the Apsáalooke American Indian Nation had been wrongfully relocated from years before. Maruyama is pursuing a PhD in American studies to further her research on the connections between Japanese American incarceration in the context of US settler colonialism.
Portrait of Nayelli Guerrero.

Nayelli Guerrero: Undeclared to Unstoppable
Choosing a major is hard. When you’re interested in a variety of subjects, picking just one can feel like finding a needle in a haystack. For Nayelli Guerrero, whose interests include medicine, writing, history, and law, it’s no wonder she started off her college career as an undecided major. Now a sophomore, she has become a top-notch student who actively participates in important work in the community.
Portrait of Katherine Beane.

Colonialism to Sovereignty: The Restoration of Bde Maka Ska
In 1829, Dakota leader Mahpiya Wicasta (Cloud Man) led a group of Dakota men on a hunt. The group became trapped in a blizzard for three days, buried under the snow. He later founded an agricultural community on the site, which he called Ḣeyate Otuŋwe, on the shores of a lake that Dakota people today call Bde Maka Ska. Nearly two centuries later, Cloud Man’s great-great grandchildren led the charge to reclaim the lake’s Dakota name, after having long been named after white secessionist John Caldwell Calhoun.” We don’t call it a change, we call it a restoration,” descendant Katherine Beane says when asked about the renaming of Lake Calhoun to Bde Maka Ska.
Photo of immigrants arriving at Ellis Island in 1902

A Brief History of Undocumented Immigration in America
Erika Lee explains that in its early years as a nation, America largely lacked federal immigration policies. Then, beginning with the exclusion acts of the mid-19th century, which specifically prohibited Chinese immigration, the United States increasingly denied entry to those it deemed unsuitable: Asians, paupers, illiterates and, eventually, southern and eastern Europeans.