Walking in my Gradfather's Footsteps

By Alex Keone Kapuni Oldroyd, 2nd year MDP student

There’s an oft-told story in my family history about how one day my grandfather was convinced by a friend to take the entrance exam to Kamehameha Schools, whose main campus was on a neighboring island. I imagine that like most young boys, the idea of spending free time taking a test was not attractive, except this test came with free lunch. For a boy who often went hungry, a full belly was worth the trouble. To my grandfather’s surprise, he passed the exam. I imagine it was a difficult decision for him to leave home and enroll at the faraway school, but decades later we’re still talking about the impact of this small moment on his life and ours.

When I consider my grandfather’s life and legacy, I’m often struck by all the interesting twists and turns. Today he’s buried in a tiny Mormon town in the middle of the Kaibab Paiute Reservation in Northern Arizona of all places. When he left for school as a boy, could he have imagined all the places he’d see and people he’d meet?  Could he have imagined that one day he would become a principal for that school? Was he always confident that the decisions he made would lead to good things, or like the rest of us did he struggle with fear of the unknown?

A little over two years ago my wife and I struggled with our own decision to attend a school far from home. We had to decide between UCLA, where I could study with one of the top Indigenous economists in the world and my wife could fulfill her dream of working in the animation industry in California, and the University of Winnipeg where I could learn directly from Indigenous elders and community organizers and where the education was much more grassroots. We chose Canada. I have no regrets about that decision, but especially during this pandemic we’ve wondered if we should have made the what some would consider the “safer” choice.

I’m not sure if there will be any moments from my life that my descendants point to and say, “that’s when things really changed for us.” But there are certainly moments where I feel like I’ve been guided by my Creator and my ancestors. My field placement this summer with Kamehameha Schools has been one of those moments. When I started in the MDP program, I hadn’t intended to follow so closely in my grandfather’s footsteps, but here I am.

This summer I’ve researched the state of the COVID-19 vaccination effort in the US and statewide and how it should inform KS policy, economic measures of wellbeing, and best practices in early childhood education funding. I’ve conducted and published online environmental scans in the areas of education, health, economics, and community and politics. I’ve been an integral part of the planning team that will help transition KS’s Strategy and Transformation Department into a permanent hybrid work arrangement post-pandemic. This is just some of the work I’m fortunate to accomplished during my time at KS, which will have both immediate and long-term impact.

This work hasn’t always been easy. With the pandemic, school obligations, family obligations, and the uncertainty that comes at the end of grad school, there have been many times I’ve felt discouraged. In those moments, I’ve tried to remember that the path I walk today is the path my grandfather walked and our ancestors before him. Hearkening to the past in that way has given me courage to face the future, and the optimism to know that as I prepare to graduate there are many more paths my ancestors, my relations, my Creator, and my grandfather have prepared for me.