S4, E11: Indigenizing Library Spaces at Hale Laʻakea Library w/ Cindy Texeira and Sarah Gilman Sur

In this episode, we chat with Cindy Texeira, Librarian at Windward Community College, and Sarah Gilman Sur, Head Librarian at Windward Community College in Kāneʻohe, Hawaiʻi, part of the University of Hawaiʻi system.

Together, they have been working to make the library a space where Native Hawaiian students feel a true sense of belonging. This work includes collaboration with Cindy’s daughters, Kainani and ʻAulani Wagner, both students in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Library and Information Science program, to develop a plan for indigenizing the library space at Hale Laʻakea Library at Windward Community College.

Listen as they share how this work began, the wins and challenges along the way, and what the future holds for the Hale Laʻakea Library at WCC. It’s an inspiring conversation, and we hope it resonates with you as much as it did with us.

Hosts: Joan Vigil & LaRee Dominguez

Date of recording:  January 9, 2026

Mentioned in this episode:

Ice Breaker Books...

• The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate 
• Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Articles...

• Ea in the stacks: Indigenizing library spaces at Hale Laʻakea | University of Hawaiʻi System News
• E Naʻauao Pū, E Noiʻi Pū, E Noelo Pū: Research Support for Hawaiian Studies

Indigenizing Spaces via…

• Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea and Ka Malu 'Ulu o Lele Activation Exhibits
• Keiki Reading Day
• Kānaka O Ke Kai Author/Speaker Series
• Lumi ‘Ohana

Language, Dictionaries & Classifications...

• ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi
• Wehe Wiki Hawaiian Language Dictionaries
• S3, E4: Maawn Doobiigeng Classification System w/Anne Heidemann & Melissa Isaac

Clubs & Organizations...

• Ko‘olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club
• Kanaeokana
• Harold K.L. Castle Foundation

Historical Figures...

• Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani

Transcript

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LaRee Dominguez: Hello, and welcome to OVERDUE: Weeding Out Oppression in Libraries, a podcast produced by the Oregon Library Association's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Anti-Racism committee. My name is LaRee Dominguez. My pronouns are she/her, and I am a librarian in Oregon.

Joan Vigil: Hi, my name is Joan Vigil. My pronouns are she/her, and I'm a librarian in Oregon. In this episode, we have the pleasure of chatting with Cindy Texeira and Sarah Gilman Sur. Cindy Texeira is a librarian at Windward Community College Windward Community College. Cindy is originally from Kailua, Oʻahu and has been the Hawai‘i Specialist Librarian at Windward Community College for the past seven years. Before going to WCC, she spent 10 years working as a librarian in K through 12 private school. Cindy also is a mom of five daughters, including twins, who are in their second year of graduate school and following in her footsteps to become librarians. Cindy has lived in Heʻeia for the past 25 years and is very involved in the community currently serving on the board of the Ko‘olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club. 

Sarah Gilman Sur is a head librarian for Windward College. Sarah is from Kailua, Oʻahu and has been serving as a head librarian at Windward Community College since 2016. Sarah has been in the library profession since 2005, serving at various academic libraries in diverse leadership capacities. Her passion is with community colleges and serving native Hawaiian students. Sarah has a ten-year-old son and enjoys outdoor ocean activities.

LaRee Dominguez: Welcome to OVERDUE, Sarah and Cindy. We have an icebreaker question and it's going to be easy maybe. What was the favorite book of yours that you read last year? Either one of you can go first. 

Cindy Texeira: I love this question, because recently I've been reading a lot of juvenile literature and it's just really sparked that love for juvenile and young adult literature that I grew up with, because I have a ten-year-old at home and she's an avid reader. We've been reading things together, and it might surprise you, but my favorite book of the year is The One and Only Ivan, because it really sparked a lot of good conversations between my daughter and I. If you haven't read it, I definitely recommend it. Yes, it's geared toward probably ages 10 to 12, but as an adult I really enjoyed reading it.

LaRee Dominguez: That's awesome. That's one book that I gave for Christmas presents to all the 10 and 11-year-olds in my family, so I'm happy to hear that. Sarah, how about you? 

Sarah Gilman Sur: My 10-year-old son enjoys a lot of World War II books, but I'm not going to mention those as any of my favorites of reading last year. I think one of the books I'd like to mention is Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I'm almost finished with it, so I guess it's not really answering your question, but I just really like the Indigenous wisdom in their Native American tying it in with Western science and how the two can coexist and just remembering that it's a gift to be here on Earth.

LaRee Dominguez: Yeah, that's a wonderful read. Joan?

Joan Vigil: I love hearing about all the stories of favorite books and could talk about that all day. But we would love to hear about the great work you are all doing, so let's get started. Every project starts with a spark. What was the initial inspiration that planted the seed for this work and led you toward the vision you're carrying forward today?

Sarah Gilman Sur: I think both Cindy and I agree that the spark for us was a report that came out by several of our colleagues, native Hawaiian scholars and librarians. The report is called “E Naʻauao Pū, E Noiʻi Pū, E Noelo Pū: Research Support for Hawaiian Studies”. The authors were Kawena Komeiji, Keahiahi Long, Shavonn Matsuda, Annemarie Paikai and Kapena Shim. This report was addressed to our university administration, as well as our university librarians, who lead each of the 10 campus libraries within our system, and it was a callout to start the decolonization of our libraries. There were several recommendations in this report. This report came out in 2019. To date, there are a lot of these recommendations have not been checked off. A lot of them involve, I think, a lot of conversations, but I think we started here with taking a look at our own space here in our library. As Cindy has done over the past couple of two years, including signage in our library, programming to the effect of native Hawaiian knowledge and indigenous perspectives, as well as exhibits. That was the spark, and I'll let Cindy add to that.

Cindy Texeira: We found the report to be very eye-opening, and because there were recommendations for UH System librarians and libraries, we felt the need to really make it a priority in our job. Fortunately, I am supported by my head librarian, Sarah here, who also felt that way. Some of the recommendations, I'll just rattle off a couple, were things like to perpetuate and prioritize ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi across the entire system, not just in libraries, but in our whole university system. But we knew we could start with our library. Other recommendations were to recruit students of Hawaiian ancestry into the information science profession to prepare them to assume librarian archivists and leadership positions in the University of Hawai‘i system.

To be more transparent about the collections that we care for in our libraries, there are several recommendations. We've been trying to tackle them individually in our own library, and I am on a system committee with the Hawai‘i Specialist Librarians on the other campuses, and we often put these recommendations at the forefront of our committee meetings to let each other know where we are at in our libraries, encourage the other libraries who maybe aren't working on a certain recommendation at that point to let them know, "Here's what you can do, here's what we've done, here's what we've learned from it," things like that, and so it's been really great conversations.

Another recommendation I just wanted to mention was that we really are trying to prioritize Hawaiian knowledge materials for digitization in our libraries in the UH system. Here at Windward Community College, we are developing a system to do that. We're creating an inventory of our Hawaiian materials in our archival collection, as well as our Hawai‘i collection. Eventually, what we want to do is seek out and apply for funding and the resources for this digitization project. We also don't want to reinvent any wheels, so we are trying to communicate with other libraries to see what projects they're already working on. But maybe in the future, a repository or a good organization to digitize these collections can be a priority. It already is. I don't want to downplay that it's not. It is a priority, but in my little collection in my small community college, you've got one or two people doing a lot of different jobs. We all wear a lot of hats in a community college. I'm really trying to make my priority one of these digitization projects.

LaRee Dominguez: That's awesome. It reminds me of several of the programs that are happening over here on the mainland and it's a long time coming. Congratulations on being able to get that accomplished. You've incorporated ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi into signage and resources throughout the library. What has the impact of bilingual spaces been for students and community members? Were there any surprising reactions or lessons learned?

Cindy Texeira: I did learn a couple of lessons definitely. The reactions weren't surprising. They were really uplifting. I'll start with some of the lessons learned. I didn't realize that I couldn't just change signage and print it in whatever font and color or background that I wanted. I knew that it needed to be accessible for vision-impaired patrons, but I didn't realize that our college had a certain font you have to use for the college and certain college colors that we had to use that I had to get approved first through our marketing and marketing manager and things like that. That was kind of a setback, but I did learn a lot through that process, and I feel like now, with other librarians who come in want to do big projects, printing projects, I can kind of give them a little bit of guidance so that they don't go ahead and design everything, design everything, and then they can't use it.

That was definitely the biggest lesson I learned. But we are still in the process of actually making permanent signage, and when I say permanent signage, our library is fairly new. It was built in 2012. 2012 seems long time ago now, but it's still a very brand new-looking library. Our signage is, most of it is metal plaques with braille, and so we don't have permanent signage yet. What I have now is laminated signage that's replaced some of the other signage that ... I did as much as I could, let's just say that. We're still looking to somehow fund and make new metal plaque type of signage or wooden signs and things. That's also another lesson learned. These things cost money and we live on an island. There is not a lot of businesses nearby who just come in and create signs. It's just not a thing.

That's another lesson I learned, that it's more time-consuming than I thought. I thought that the time-consuming part would be figuring out what signs need translation, working with native speakers to make sure the translations are correct and appropriate, and that's what I thought would be my biggest hurdle. But that ended up maybe being the easiest part. I'm really lucky that we have native speakers on our campus who were happy to help with this project. As in most Indigenous languages, there is not a direct translation for many phrases and words. Although it wasn't a hurdle, it was something I knew would be challenging to pick the appropriate phrases or words to use for the translation that could also maybe go across the system through other libraries as well. Our public library system in Hawai‘i recently also updated their signage to include ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi, as well as English. I kind of wanted to have similar phrases, so that patrons going into a public library or a UH system library would maybe recognize things, right?

LaRee Dominguez: That's a great idea.

Cindy Texeira: Yeah. The Hawai‘i and Pacific Librarians Committee I mentioned earlier, we have an ongoing shared document, where we provide the translations that we've decided to use in our library, so that another library who wants to do this sort of project can maybe use that one or not. There is different terminology used on different islands, and so obviously, you're going to go with the ones that your patrons know and recognize most. I would say that that was probably the only thing I thought would be a challenge, but it ended up not being a challenge. The challenging part was actually working with our college to get approved for fonts and colors. A few weeks after we swapped out the signage, we posted a survey for patrons and we got really great feedback. All of it was positive. Some things that stick out in my mind, comments said it really brought the morale up in the library. Whereas, I thought we had great morale always, and I would say our patrons think so too. This was just one other thing that maybe sparked a sense of belonging in them… 

LaRee Dominguez: Oh, that's wonderful.

Cindy Texeira: ... which was really what we wanted. And so to hear that feedback, it was like, "Okay, we're doing the right thing. We're on the right track. Let's jump over these hurdles and keep going because this is what our patrons really need." I had actually, one morning I came in really early into the library. It was like 6:30 and I ran into one of our custodians. She had her custodian cart and she stopped me and she said, "Cindy, can you please help me pronounce this sign that's in the elevator?" I did, and she said, "Thank you." She had a little notebook that she pulled out of her custodian cart and she wrote something in this little notebook, and then she looked up at me and she showed me her little notebook, just a pocket-size one, and it was at least halfway filled with all the terms that she was seeing around the library in the mornings when she was cleaning. She was writing them down in her notebook and studying them and practicing them, and she ... this chokes me up.

LaRee Dominguez: Wow! Yes, I can see why.

Cindy Texeira: She said she's from the Philippines, but her grandchildren are born here. She doesn't know much Hawaiian, and she really wants to teach them some. She said she teaches them the terms that she's learning.

LaRee Dominguez: Oh, that's so wonderful. I understand. I would be choked up the minute I saw that.

Cindy Texeira: It's just really a motivation to keep going. You never know who you're touching.

Joan Vigil: Absolutely. I love that you got so much help from native speakers, that there were students that wanted to help out with the project. I think that's great. I also find it funny, because we've had similar problems here and folks who want to make their own signage and their marketing is like, "No, it has to be exactly this way." And so that kind of stalls the process and some of the things that you want to do, but you understand their reasoning. They want it to look like everything. They wanted to keep it uniform. I also love that it gave a boost in morale around the college. I think that's really awesome. The activation exhibits  like Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea and Ka Malu 'Ulu o Lele invite people to connect with culture in immersive ways. What do you hope patrons walk away feeling or understanding after experiencing these spaces? 

Sarah Gilman Sur: I'd like to first say that this activation and the exhibits, the coordination was all Cindy's work and idea. From my observations, our students are so busy. Every student is busy, especially at the community college where they're either balancing not just their coursework, but they're also parents as well, their spouses, their jobs, other commitments that they're balancing. These exhibits that were provided through Kanaeokana really brought heavy and profound issues in Hawaiian history and really packaged them into portions that could be easily digested by students, staff, including myself, and community members, without sacrificing the content of the issues. The exhibits, I guess before these exhibits came, and they should really, I just called them exhibits, but now they're called activations, because they allowed the students to provide feedback and to apply the content to their own daily lives.

Cindy Texeira: One of the activations that we had was about Princess Ruth Keʻelikōlani. She's also known as Luka or Ruta. The questions that we posed were based on, "What do you think Ruth would do?" Something special about her was that, as an active resistance, she required others who wanted to speak to her to only speak to her in her language, in Hawaiian, and she only spoke in Hawaiian. Even though she was educated in English, she was trained in Western ways, she choose to speak only Hawaiian as an act of resistance. She was a bold aliʻi. She was very steadfast in her beliefs and rising native Hawaiians around her. We asked patrons who came in, "What would Ruth do?" Which in Hawaiian is "He aha ka hana a Ruta?"

We even did a heat press event, where students could bring in a shirt or a jacket or a bag or something, and we would heat press an image of Princess Ruth and underneath it said, "He aha ka hana a Ruta?", to give them a reminder whenever they use this bag or they use this shirt or they use this jacket, what would Ruth have done in these situations? These activations, that's why we're calling them activations instead of exhibits, because they really activate you to do something. It was such a profound semester when we brought in these activations. The patrons, their responses, every activation had a different question or more than one question. Their responses told me that our students are really paying attention. Our students really want a space to explore and to learn and to just sit with the difficult yet beautiful truths that are Hawaiian history.

LaRee Dominguez: I love that idea. That's so important. Myself having a lot of experience in museums and native museums, that is such a great idea. I wish that more people would do things like that.

Cindy Texeira: It was great because I worked with two other of the University of Hawai‘i system community colleges. Because there were three activations, each one of us was able to have the activation for about three weeks, and then we would rotate them. If community patrons missed seeing maybe Lā Hoʻihoʻi Ea at Windward, they could go see it at one of the other colleges, and then it would rotate to the next one. We did this rotation, the other librarians and I kept in touch about the different questions we were proposing, the different activities we were doing, and we were able to collaborate that. We were able to collaborate well together and it garnered attention from the University of Hawai‘i at West Oʻahu and the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. One of my daughters, who we've mentioned here earlier, is working at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa's Hamilton Library, and she sent me a picture yesterday that they currently have the Princess Ruth activation up in their library. She had worked on it here at Windward, so she was really pleased to see it in the library she's currently working at.

LaRee Dominguez: How fun for her. Libraries often hold stories, but not always the stories of the communities they serve. How do you intentionally center native Hawaiian stories, voices and histories in your collections and programming and probably activations as well?

Cindy Texeira:   We're definitely becoming more intentional. And again, I want to refer to the “E Naʻauao Pū” report that our library is really trying to focus all of our events and just daily work habits on. And so with that intention, we wanted to bring in more community members starting with keiki or children. We've started an annual Keiki Reading Day. We started this summer, where we invited kūpuna, or elders, from our community to come into the library on a Saturday to share mo'olelo, which are stories and history of this area where our library is in Kāneʻohe. We invited kūpuna in. We are a three-story library, so we had a different kupuna on each story of the library, for second and third, doing a presentation to keiki and their families about the area that they grew up in here.

We did activities such as crafts. We had native Hawaiian bird crafts, which were a hit. And again, like I said, I had hoped for about 50 people. I printed out a hundred craft activities just in case. And thankfully, keiki were busy throughout the building doing all the activities that they didn't wipe us out completely, just about. But everybody still left here with a wonderful craft and we had people asking as they left the building, "Are you doing this again next week?"

It took a lot of planning. We said, "Maybe we'll do it again in a year next summer." And now that it's January, Sarah and I were talking the other day and I said, "I think it's time to start planning Keiki Reading Day as an annual event and we need to start now." We were lucky to have received a grant from the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation here in Hawai‘i, who provided the funds for us to do such an event. Now, we're going to have to either scale it back or apply for a grant again. But fortunately, I worked with another partner, who is also a Hawai‘i Pacific Librarian at one of the campuses, and she is on the board with me at the Ko'olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club. She helped write this wonderful grant and she helped me encourage our kūpuna in the Ko'olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club to come and share their stories in our library, and they ended up loving it so much too that they're also asking when can we come do that again. We're definitely going to make this an annual event.

LaRee Dominguez: Oh, how fun. Maybe we'll have to go over there.

Cindy Texeira: I think you do.

LaRee Dominguez: That would be fun.

Cindy Texeira: I think you do. You have to come. It's an ʻohana, which is family event, so you have to bring your ʻohana with you, and perhaps one of you want to share a story as well.

Sarah Gilman Sur: To add on to Cindy just really quickly, other ways we've intentionally centered Native Hawaiian stories and voices is just our Hawai‘i collection. I want to give credit to the former head librarian who, her name was Nancy Heu. She retired right a couple of months after the building. Our new building was opened in 2012, but she designed our 60,000-foot square library. She was adamant about having our Hawai‘i collection in this beautiful space on the third floor overlooking the campus. I think that's maybe one of the more obvious ways that we've intentionally centered are print materials that talk about anything related to Hawai‘i. And then, in other terms of programming, most recently in spring of 2025, we did have a series, it was a book author series. We called it Kānaka O Ke Kai. Kānaka is the term for Native Hawaiian or Hawaiian, and O Ke Kai is of the sea.

We tried to get females, we'd had three native Hawaiian males, all who are watermen, surfers, lifeguards, ocean rescues, sailing canoe, voyagers, and again, they all are authors themselves, so we featured them and their books. And then, we've also had a really close relationship with other kūpuna in our backyard essentially, and one of them was Herb Lee, who has done a lot of work. He's an educator, he's a community member activist, and he's worked with Waikalua Loko I'a. Loko I'a is a fish pond. I'a is fish, and Waikalua is the area. We did a Smithsonian traveling exhibit with him. This was back in 2017, but as Cindy said, we're really intentional about focusing our programming on native Hawaiians in our community and throughout the island.

Joan Vigil: I'm amazed at all of your success. I think it's just such a great way to build that community and to really get that community support at the college. The academic libraries are often described as neutral spaces, yet decolonizing work requires intentional choices. How do you navigate pushback or questions about whether this work is too political or not traditional library work?

Cindy Texeira: Well, honestly, I haven't had any pushback at all. How about you, Sarah? As head librarian, has anybody come to you with anything?

Sarah Gilman Sur: No. No one has approached me about ... I have received no pushback. If there was pushback, I would proudly and respectfully fall back to the mission of our college, which is centered around native Hawaiian student success, and that aligns directly with the imperatives of the university that also support native Hawaiian student success. Forty percent of our student population identifies as native Hawaiians, which is really almost at parity with the native Hawaiian population overall in our town of Kāneʻohe. If anybody did come with pushback, I'd be surprised, but I would just go back and focus on our mission here at the college and of the university, to support native Hawaiians and thus their stories and everything that we can do to preserve in our library.

LaRee Dominguez: That's wonderful that you have that in your mission statement, so that you can point back if you need to, and amazing. I would feel very blessed that you got no feedback and pushback from anybody. That's wonderful. You're planning a Lumi ‘Ohana, a family-friendly, culturally grounded space. What needs do you see in your community that inspired this idea? How do you hope it will change the experience of students who are parents?

Sarah Gilman Sur: Since fall 2020, 87% of female students here at the college identify as parents. Of those student parents, either male or female student parents, over half identify as native Hawaiian. We see that in feedback from these parents, students, student parents, the top three challenges identified by them include finding child care, balancing school and motherhood, and finances. Our student parents have been successful in online pass rates. When they're enrolled in online classes, their pass rates compared to non-parent students are higher. However, for face-to-face courses that these student parents take, their pass rates have been dropping since fall of 2021. It's slowly climbing back up and we kind of can maybe attribute this to finding child care for these parents, affordable child care.

But having this Lumi ʻOhana opening it up, hopefully within the next two weeks, we see the need so much among our students. Of the seven library staff here in our library, five librarians, we have five librarians, one clerical and one APT professional. But of those seven, five of us are mothers. Some of us have been single mothers at one point. We had a new baby come one year ago. One of our librarians is a new mother, her daughter is just turning one. Cindy and I both have ten-year-olds. Cindy has older daughters as well as she's mentioned. Another librarian has a nine-year-old. We know firsthand the struggles and the obstacles that can get in the way. And so, this Lumi ʻOhana room, student-parents can come in and check out the room and be in the room with their student. We're hoping to have games and books in there, so that their child or children can play in there while the parent is in there with them. We're really looking forward to opening up this room.

Just on a personal note, I was finishing up my coursework for an EDD program through USC. USC used to fly in faculty here to provide a EDD program for Hawai‘i-based students. I ended up dropping out. Had my son during that time and started my new job here in 2016. Childcare, the stress of balancing a new job and a new baby was difficult for me, and so I ended up bowing out of the program. I don't want to see that be an option for our students who are coming here to community college. Granted, my program was a doctoral program, but I don't want to see our students drop out because of those obstacles. We're hoping that this Lumi ʻOhana family room will help. We also do have a childcare center on campus, Hānaiaulu, where students can enroll their keiki or children there. They do have limited seating or limited availability, but it is one nice option that our student-parents have here on campus.

LaRee Dominguez: That's amazing and wonderful all at the same time to think about having a space for student-parents.

Joan Vigil: I agree with that. I remember I was a young single mother going to college and struggling to find some support, so it sounds so great that these students have a great supportive culture at the college. I love that.

Cindy Texeira: Absolutely. I was a single mother during my Master's program in library and information science, and I wish that there was a space I could take my kids. Even though the program offered night classes to make it easier, being a single mom, I still had to bring my twins, who were two years old at the time, with me to campus and have somebody babysit them outside the classroom while I was in a two-and-a-half-hour class just so that I could still have my kids with them. I couldn't afford to pay more than two and a half hours of babysitting. For instance, had I left them at home, it would take me an hour to get to campus and an hour back. Now, we're talking four-and-a-half-hours of babysitting pay. I couldn't afford that. Having a Lumi ʻOhana in the college we hope will help other people who may be in a similar situation, who want to be down on the floor with their kids, because right now, we are totally fine.

Bring your child in. Sometimes people bring them in a stroller. Sometimes there's just a kid running around in the back of our circulation desk. Our staff has created this little basket with some kids' books and crayons that we might bring out to help the parent do their work, because sometimes half of their attention is spent keeping their child busy, so we're like, "Hey, here's this fun little basket of some activities that your kid's never seen." Because as parents, we all know that when you come with your regular books and crayons that your kid sees every day, they're not as interested as when this new basket of books and crayons come out. We are just really hoping to provide a space that will allow children to safely roam around a room, be on the floor because it's clean. You are on the floor with them, maybe on a beanbag chair or something, rather than sitting at a table or a desk while your child is uncomfortable next to you. We're really, really, really, we have librarians on our staff who are really putting together this wonderful space that we hope to open soon.

Joan Vigil: Oh, gosh, that sounds so amazing. I think you all have to share some pictures once it's completed. For libraries that want to move forward toward decolonization and culturally grounded practices, but aren't sure where to start, what advice would you give them? What small shifts can make the biggest impact?

Cindy Texeira: Know your area. Your library staff should really focus on learning who was there first. The area that your library is standing, the ʻāina, the land that your library is on, who was there first? What is the history of this area? What is the history of this land? I think that's the small shift that makes a huge impact and can be done by anyone. It doesn't take a lot of work to learn about the area where your library sits. I think that's really important.

I also wanted to just mention that anybody can do this work. You don't have to be a native speaker or Indigenous to this land. My ancestors come from Japan and Ireland. I am not native Hawaiian, but my children are, so it's really important for me to also understand cultural practices, the language, the land where my daughter's ancestors come from. If you work in a library and you're not from that place, it is okay. It's really important to understand it because your patrons who are coming in the library are from this land. I wanted to just make it clear that this work is for everyone. If you live in a place that has Indigenous people, it is your responsibility to understand them.

Sarah Gilman Sur: To add on to what Cindy just shared, community outreach to native and Indigenous groups in your area would be one way to also help those who are wanting to move toward decolonized, culturally-grounded practices. Cindy has done a great job with this in becoming a member of the Ko'olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club and creating relationships with these individuals, seeking their elders out, their stories, but doing it in a very respectful way. Not trying to intrude, but approaching very humbly, first observing maybe if there are civic clubs spread throughout the state here, attending as a guest, observing, being very humble, and then sort of creating relationships that way. I'm thinking, coming from an academic perspective, academic library perspective, but reaching out to student groups on campus. We have a native Hawaiian student group here on campus, but if you're on the continent, other culturally diverse student group campuses, student groups to kind of reach out to, to start engaging some of those relationships.

And then, again, coming from an academic library perspective, if there's Indigenous studies or other cultural studies, disciplines on the campus, maybe reaching out that way to start, but I just want to emphasize being respectful about it and not intruding or stepping on other people's feet, but approaching it very humbly.

LaRee Dominguez: I really appreciate you both talking about that and how to approach folks, especially elders. It reminds me a little bit of thinking of native colleges and some of the larger universities that have longhouse or some kind of club for Indigenous students that aren't all from the same area. Thank you for pointing that out. Libraries are evolving and your work shows what's possible when Indigenous values shape collections, space and service. What do you imagine Indigenous-centered librarianship will look like 10 or 20 years from now?

Cindy Texeira: I am really excited to see what librarianship will look like in 10 or 20 years. I imagine Indigenous-centered librarianship to have solved the metadata problem. Maybe solved the problem is a little out there, but we're already starting now. I can only speak from my own experience here at Windward, but we are already trying to improve cataloging and metadata to just facilitate more precise searches and discovering of Hawaiian materials. Our tech services librarian here at Windward, her name is Ellie. She is really passionate and just amazing at attempting, I'm going to say attempting, because we all know that metadata is a big deal, attempting to develop and manage descriptive discovery tools within our cataloging system that represent Hawaiian worldviews better and that ultimately improve access for our patrons. We have issues with spelling. I would say, our library management system, our catalog, doesn't always recognize Hawaiian language, diacritics or spelling.

If something is misspelled, it's not very intuitive. Unless there's really descriptive metadata for our materials, which often in the Hawai‘i collection there's not, it becomes a problem. Our students come in here looking for something and thinking, we just don't have it, because if they search the catalog and they don't find it pretty quickly, they just think we don't have it. We don't have information on this topic. We do. It's just that the metadata for our materials may not be up to par or up to where we want it to be. Our tech services librarian, who does all of our cataloging, it is really a passion of hers to find incomplete records, to gather missing information and to improve descriptions and discovery tools in our catalog, so that our students can find the information that they're looking for and they don't just give up.

LaRee Dominguez: That's so important.

Cindy Texeira: Thank you. Yes. I really envision 10 to 20 years from now, at least here at Windward, that is going to be a huge improvement. It's something that we work on daily here.

LaRee Dominguez: It reminds me of, we talked and had an episode with Anne Heidemann and Melissa Isaac from the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan, and they had received a grant in 2019 to do their own cataloging and classification system, Maawn Doobiigeng. That is an amazing story. If you have not checked it out, please do. It's very much they were in the same situation and had the elders get together and decide that yes, they would go for this grant, so that they could do that. Good luck.

Sarah Gilman Sur: I'd like to add on top of what Cindy just shared in seeing what it's going to look like 10 to 20 years from now, Indigenous-centered librarianship, and let's see. I plan on retiring in 2039, so hopefully, let's see, 10 or 20. I might still be employed in 10 or 20 years just keep saving some money. We are seeing more Indigenous librarians and archivists come into the profession. I've been a librarian with the University of Hawai‘i since 2010. I am native Hawaiian, and as a head librarian, I serve on this UH library council, which is all the head librarians from all the campuses. For several years, I was the only native Hawaiian on that council. But now, there's three others on that council who are leading libraries within the UH system, and one of them is leading one of the four-year campuses out at ‘Ewa Beach, West O'ahu. Having more librarians going into leadership roles, I think, will definitely improve libraries in having that native perspective.

I want to just mention again, Cindy's two daughters who are currently in graduate school for library studies, Kainani and ʻAulani Wagner. Kainani is pairing her library degree with a Pacific Island Studies master's degree, and Alani is pairing her library degree with American Studies. These professionals that are up and coming here in Hawai‘i in our profession just gives me great hope of transforming the UH system libraries to be less decolonized and having more native perspectives and native voices to make some changes. As we all know, higher ed moves at a very slow pace, but I think with Kainani and Alani and the others coming up through library school, I think the future is very bright for libraries here in Hawai‘i.

Joan Vigil: I love hearing that. I, too, am very hopeful for this next generation of librarians, and I think many of them are already teaching us things too that we're like, "Oh man. This is so amazing. Why didn't I think of that?" I love how it continues to evolve. It goes into this next last question is, all meaningful work does evolve. Are there any moments where you wish you could go back and adjust your approach or things you'd refine if you were starting out fresh today?

Cindy Texeira: Absolutely. I would've started this work earlier. I would've started it sooner. I mentioned, prior to working here at Windward, I was a K to 12 librarian for 10 years, and I feel like there's more impact I could have made had I known the things I know now. When I started here at Windward, I prioritized taking Hawaiian language courses and Hawaiian studies courses, and in fact, earned an Associate's of Arts degree in Hawaiian studies. I wish I had done that sooner. I wish I had been able to teach my K to 12 students more because I had 10 years with them to do it. I know starting things like Hawaiian language and Hawaiian history at a young age is so important. I feel like I kind of missed out on that, so I would've just started sooner. How about you, Sarah?

Sarah Gilman Sur: I wish I would've, if I were to start all over again in this profession, pairing my library degree with Hawaiian studies as a native Hawaiian, I grew up very with a western education here in Hawai‘i, and it was only when I started working at the University of Hawai‘i, West O'ahu as a library director out there, did I really start working with native Hawaiians. I served previously, I worked in California at a private university, and then when I moved home back to Hawai‘i, I was at Hawai‘i Pacific University. At that time, we were catering more to the international students there, so going back and just ... And even when I was in California, I was there for 12 years with undergrad graduate work, and then working. I did not care at that time nor was interested in who were the native people there, the Chumash, in various areas of Los Angeles, California.

I just wish I would've been more in touch with native peoples and Indigenous cultures from back then. It's a long hard life lesson for me. I know I can take classes here and I just have to gear up and start taking some ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi classes because I think that would really make me a more well-rounded librarian I feel in serving my community here.

LaRee Dominguez: Those are great ideas for other folks. I love that, Sarah, even though you are native Hawaiian, you still want to learn more. I appreciate that. We have loved having you on the show today. The information you have given is going to spur on a lot of other folks, I hope, to be able to decolonize their libraries and pay attention to where they are and who is their community. Thank you so much.

Cindy Texeira: Thank you so much. We appreciate you having us and letting us share what we're doing at our little college library here. We hope that it inspires others to take a path like we're doing and just really putting intention into their position in their library.

Sarah Gilman Sur: Yes. Thank you for having us. I'm very grateful for Cindy and the work that she has done in pioneering all this stuff, so very grateful to have good people surrounding me here in the library.

Joan Vigil: Thank you both. I'm already inspired by your words and your work, and I appreciate you being here today.

Voiceover 1: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act administered by the State Library of Oregon. [repeated in Spanish 00:47:10].

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Voiceover 3: This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings.