Meet Our Researchers: Cherry Y.E.W. Yamane

Cherry Y.E.W. Yamane is a senior research analyst for Indigenous Children, Youth, and Families within the Population Focused Research program area at Child Trends, and an Indigenous Health PhD student at the University of North Dakota’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

Cherry, can you briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your primary research interest(s)?

My name is Cherry Y.E.W. Yamane, and I am a Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian)[i] from Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. My primary interests align heavily with the influence, wants, and needs of my community. I am merely a vessel for privileging and honoring their voices and working for the betterment of future generations beyond my lifetime. Sometimes this work entails radical mentorship and opening doors that I hope will stay open for others, allowing them to walk into spaces from which my community has too often been excluded, and increase our capacity to advocate for our sovereignty and inherent rights to self-determination. My research embraces a decolonial approach, creating space for Indigenization by centering land-based healing, Indigenous knowledge, practices, and spirituality, with a focus on healing and thriving.

I focus on areas that are both personal to me and which my community has asked me to address. Much of my work includes addressing the systemic-level impacts of the settler U.S. occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom that disrupted our Indigenous ways of being and resulted in cultural trauma, racism, and genocide of our Peoples. Some of the effects we see today as Indigenous People result from historical wrongdoings with present-day impacts, but which were relatively recent in generational terms. The overthrow and “territory” designation of our Kingdom happened during my great-great-grandparents’ lifetime, and “statehood” happened during the lifetimes of my great-grandparents, who raised me.

I hope that my research helps my People resist the impacts of land and cultural dispossession through reclamation of our Knowledges, language, and practices. I create a space for healing, thriving, and joy with my community by looking to our ancestral Knowledges and practices as the answer to the health concerns we see today. Centering and grounding my work in the perpetuation, reclamation, and preservation of our ancestral Knowledges is an act of resistance and enacting our sovereignty and self-determination.

 

---

Footnote

[i] The use of my Native Hawaiian language is valuable to me and is used throughout this profile. The Native Hawaiian language is not easily translated into English, so the English translations provided are not comprehensive and do not reflect the wholeness and deeper meaning, contexts, and beauty of the words and phrases shared. For direct translation with additional meanings, please go to Hawaiian Dictionaries (wehewehe.org).