AAPI Heritage Month
By Natalee Keodouangdy, Biochemistry and Mathematics
Hi, I’m Natalee Keodouangdy, I’m a second year at Doane University studying biochemistry with a minor in mathematics. I do cross country and track, and I’m a part of the honors program! I was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, and went to Lincoln North Star High School. I started a club around the end of April known as the Asian and Pacific Islander Organization, or APIO. Along the way, I met a few amazing people who also shared the same passion for heritage as I do. My vice president, Ashlee Palimoo; my secretary, Zainab Al-Zubiadi; my advisor, Judy Kawamoto; and my second advisor, Blake Tobey. They are my mighty executive team that accomplished so many great things within two months of having a club.
For the first time at Doane, we celebrated AAPI month with goodie bags filled with ramen and authentic sweets from Japan, China, and the Middle East. The same month we hosted our second annual multicultural night, where Mia Guerrero performed a traditional dance from Guam, and my sister and I did a traditional Thai/Lao dance. During the event, we had authentic food from South Africa, Peru, Spain, Canada, Columbia, Brazil, and the UK, made by our school’s head chef, Fresh Ideas. It was a fun way for students to learn more about AAPI month and cultures that were brand new to them.
What drove me to create a multicultural club was to educate my peers through fun and by bringing together a community. We have around 20 students who self-identify as Asian or Pacific Islander. Doane isn’t a big cultural pool; there aren’t many people who look like me or share the same interests as me. I also commute back and forth from Lincoln so it’s harder to say that Doane is like a home to me. Lincoln is where all my friends are and where there is more diversity, so I felt like I was missing something. Don’t get me wrong, I love everyone I’ve met at Doane, and everyone is very friendly compared to other schools; that’s just the Doane culture. But I know other students felt a bit out of place as well sometimes. This was how I felt until I met so many great people who came to club meetings. During meetings, we shared our ideas for future events, created cultural posters, and this year we created bags with notes of good luck for finals week. We did this all while eating dishes our members made from our own cultures that were new to some and reminders of home for others.
Although Doane isn’t as diverse as UNL or UNO racially, I think we are very diverse in where we come from. Many students come from out of state, or small towns of Nebraska, so many students have very different understandings of cultural differences. I want to close that gap of misunderstanding through informal education while creating a safe place students can call home.
The blog posts in Forward. Together. are intended to foster an inclusive community of empathy and curiosity at Doane University by providing a glimpse into various individual identities and worldviews. These are community members’ unique stories and should not be presumed to be the experience of all who share the same identity.
