March 18, 2026
Sophia Perez, an Asian American Research Center graduate student, organized a weeklong series, "Native Seas," that brought four traditional navigators from the Pacific Islands to lead sessions and public workshops on the sophisticated science of traditional seafaring. It’s a role that bridges her Berkeley academic life with her years in Saipan, proving that wayfinding is just as much a technology as the digital tools we use today. “Instead of seeing Indigeneity as connected to the absence of technology, which is often how it’s framed by the Western world,” Sophia says, “I’m interested in how we as Pacific Islanders approach technology — ancient and modern — to serve our own purposes within our own value systems.”