OCA Intern Alum: Marina Aina
Interview by Cassie Micah / Written by Cassie Micah and Kent Tong
LIVING AS A MIXED-RACE SAMOAN WOMAN, Marina Aina has always known the importance of centering her advocacy work back to her identity and community. While originally studying anthropology at Pomona College, she quickly realized this wasn’t for her after taking her first class, so she pivoted to American studies and focused her thesis on the connection between health problems in Pacific Islander communities in the U.S. and American militarization through the introduction and incorporation of processed canned foods.
Aina learned about OCA’s summer internship program through her father, who works in AANHPI advocacy, and encouraged her to apply to the program because he believed it’d be a great opportunity for her to learn whether nonprofit organizing was the right fit. But Aina was apprehensive about stepping foot in the AANHPI advocacy space due to its historic exclusion of Pacific Islanders, despite the “inclusive” acronym. “Truthfully and honestly, as a Pasifika person, I would not see myself in these spaces,” she says. “Sometimes when things say ‘AAPI,’ but you’re a token PI, it doesn’t feel like you’re in community.” But being able to see her father’s work in this space and seeing the allyship he’s gained, she decided to take a chance.
Aina became an OCA intern in the summer of 2020, the program’s first virtual cohort due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During the internship, she was placed to work at Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC), where she supported EPIC’s mission to uplift Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander communities by assisting with community organizing efforts, analyzing legislation, and creating informational graphics. She also amplified the needs of the NHPI community within her predominantly Asian American OCA cohort by initiating conversations around U.S. militarization and health in the Pacific and advocated for legislation that provided Compact of Free Association (COFA) migrants access to Medicare/Medicaid.
The painting Marina Aina’s student made for her
OCA’s internship shaped Aina’s direction and helped her realize how deeply she cares for the Pasifika community; this is exemplified by the opportunities she pursued outside of her studies at Pomona College. The summer prior to and during her sophomore year, she supported Motivating Action Leadership Opportunity (MALO), a nonprofit organization aimed at serving the Tongan community, and volunteered at Pomona’s Saturday Tongan Education Program (STEP), aiding their efforts to uplift Pasifika youth. Through these experiences, she learned that she loves working in community.
In 2023, Aina participated in EPIC’s Pacific Islander Leaders of Tomorrow (PILOT) program, a leadership development program that centers Pacific Islander culture and social justice. There, she honed her skills as a Pasifika leader and advocate. In the same year, she graduated with her bachelor's degree in American studies, an area of study she pivoted to following the OCA internship. Now, she is a student in the University of California, Los Angeles’s American Studies program, writing her thesis on militarized foodways in the Pacific, specifically Spam's prevalence in the Samoan community and its ties to nostalgia.
While she says that your love for your community can push you across the finish line, it is Aina’s love for her Pasifika community that is helping her get there, through steadfast commitment to uplifting Pasifika voices. “Make your ancestors proud,” she advises the next generation. During her time volunteering with STEP, she remembers a middle school student she was working with beaming with excitement after finding out Aina was mixed-race Samoan, Black, and white. “I’m Tongan, Black, and white,” the student said ecstatically. The student proceeded to paint a picture of Aina and gifted it to her. “We’re basically the same!” In that moment, she wanted to cry tears of joy—Aina herself is becoming an ancestor future generations will be proud of.