2017 Student Research Prize Recipients

Kim

Kristian Kim
“#FreeYaz
Ethnic Studies 190AC

The deliberate integration of theory and action at the level of community engagement has been crucial in unlearning both delusions of imperial self-importance and the accompanying sense of despair. #FreeYaz chronicles a portion of this unlearning in relation to Kristian’s engagement over the last nine months with the campaign to free Yazmin Elias Obregon from ICE detention. Yazmin is a single mother of three who is facing deportation to Mexico after being detained by ICE for over a year. She is a survivor of decades of horrific domestic violence, and is currently fighting for asylum in this country that she has called “home” for nearly thirty years. With the permission of her friend, Kristian brought Yazmin’s case into the classroom: both to rally support for her, and to wrestle with questions about Kristians own ethical engagement in a space where they would not detract energy or attention from Yazmin and those closest to her.

Mark

Mark Johnson
“Management of Culturally Sensitive Native American Materials”
College Writing50/150AC

During an era of salvage ethnography in the early 20th century, UC Berkeley anthropologists documented the ethnographic information of many Native Californian communities for fear that their lifeways and languages were soon to become extinct in the wake of the burgeoning United States. The Bancroft Library is now steward of these ethnographic collections and while the institution is responsible to make them available to all without bias, one Native Californian community expressed that open access to their cultural information leaves them vulnerable to multiple dangers such as misrepresentation in academic articles and potential looting of the sacred sites described therein. “Management of Culturally Sensitive Native American Materials,” studies the impact the current management of these archives has on the Native Californian communities from which the ethnographic collections came. This project will inform the University Librarian at the Bancroft Library of the opportunity to set a precedent using community-based collaborative research practices to form ethical protocols for the management of Native American archives.