THE MARSHALLESE IN SPRINGDALE, ARKANSAS
No longer can I stay; it's true.
No longer can I live in peace and harmony.
No longer can I rest on my sleeping mat and pillow
Because of my island and the life I once knew there.
The thought is overwhelming
Rendering me helpless and in great despair.
My spirit leaves, drifting around and far away
Where it becomes caught in a current of immense power -
And only then do I find tranquility.
-Bikinian Anthem, Lore Kessibuki (1914-1994)
In 2016, I began documenting the story of the Marshallese diaspora and its people in Springdale, Arkansas, which has become the largest community of Marshallese in the United States.
Specifically, I focused on the traumatic history of the Bikinians, a community of about 5,000+ Pacific Islanders, whose homeland in the Bikini Atoll remains radioactive and uninhabited due to years of deadly US nuclear testing.
Pre and post covid-19 pandemic, the struggles and daily lives of both the Bikinian and general Marshallese population offer a complicated look into what it means to be a part of American society.
I saw the use of printing on banana fibre paper to be a visual way connecting my own heritage with the Marshallese experience in that it is a crop endemic to both the Marshall Islands and the Philippines.
