KAREN EARNSHAW
Feeling slightly apprehensive of how the next few days would go, a family arrived at the graceful campus of Saint John’s University near Minneapolis, Minnesota, with their adopted 10-year-old Marshallese daughter. “They parked and were hardly even out of the car when the Dad turned around to see his daughter running off with two new friends,” said the co-founder of Camp Iakwe Kate Gjerstad Howd. “He turned to another parent and said: ‘I guess we’re okay!’”
Camp Iakwe was a long-held dream for Kate and her husband Matt, who have two Marshallese daughters: Esmé, who they adopted in 2009 and is now 14 and Lucia, who they adopted in 2013, and is now aged 10.
“When we were in Majuro to adopt Esmé we already knew there were culture camps in our state, such as a Vietnamese culture camp and a South Korean camp,” Kate said. “As we were planning to adopt, we were already recognizing that these types of camps would be good for us.”
But the couple discovered there was no such camp for Marshallese communities, so they started a plan.
That plan blossomed into an annual weekend camp which sees families with adopted Marshallese children from all around the US gather at Saint John’s. According to the program’s website, the camp “provides a culturally rich experience through Marshallese-focused education, activities, and entertainment.”
Its core values are to “Learn, Celebrate, and Connect” and to do this they use Marshallese leaders to teach and help lead the weekend.
“Of course we knew of social groups made up of people who have Marshallese children, but we were interested in learning and keeping the cultural side going in our children’s lives,” Kate said. “By the time we had been to Majuro the second time and adopted Lucia we had a plan and met quite a few other people with Marshallese children.
“By 2013, we had four couples who joined us to work on the plan. First we decided we needed a good space with the criteria being it needed to be near us and within an hour and a half of the airport. Obviously a campus college would work because it would have classroom space and accommodation.”
The couples looked at many sites but eventually chose Saint John’s University.
“The first year we had between 25 and 30 families and they came from everywhere around the US, from the west coast to the east coast,” Kate said of 2015 when the milestone program was launched, bringing together families and their adopted Marshallese children.
Jump to July, 2023 and the current organizers – Kate, Claire Warren, and Kari Brych — welcomed the 150 guests and educators who flew in from 17 states. Two of the Marshallese leadership team came from Majuro: Cultural ambassadors Nika Wase and Alson Kelen. They were joined by Marshall Islanders Carol and Justin Simmons from Enid, Oklahoma; Camille Alik from Hawaii; Jasmine Alik from Portland, Oregon; Eldon and Anita Alik from Portland and Irene and Raymond Kemem from Salt Lake City, Utah, who brought 13 Marshallese teens and young adults who performed and acted as counsellors.
“As camp organizers, we arrive at Saint John’s on Tuesday to set everything up with it all being ready by noon on Friday,” Kate said. “Then all the families start arriving, some returning, some new. Of course some people are nervous, but within what seems like seconds everyone is connected.”
Each year has a different theme, with this year being Jitdram Kapeel … The sharing of wisdom of what it was in the past and how we can use that going forward. “So, for example, family is one of the topics. So they learned about the importance of the eldest child. This helps the children to understand the family dynamics in the Marshallese communities. Nika did a cool course on the history of apparel and fashion. She talked about which were the appropriate clothes for different occasions.”
The adults and the children are separated for these talks. “The adults do classroom style with about 25 people in each class. The kids are broken into kindergarten to third grade, fourth to sixth grade, and then the teens are all together,” Kate said, adding that each class takes about an hour. “The same teacher gives the class to the adults and the children, but of course in a style appropriate to their age.”
From Friday registration through to the closing ceremony on Sunday, friendships are created or solidified. Before leaving, each Marshallese child writes a message to a child Majuro. “The messages are put in already-prepared backpacks that are filled with pens, books, and the like. These will be sent to schools in Majuro, which is part of our commitment to have a philanthropic part of the camp.”
Kate said that their daughters Esmé and Lucia, as well as the other organizers’ children are “very, very filled with pride over the camp. All of our children understand that this is part of our families and is super important to us all.”