Filipino community advocate and hip hop artist Talilo Marfil greets staff and youth at recent heritage event at MacLaren.
“Everybody’s got their own culture,” says Talilo Marfil. “If you don’t have a grasp on those roots, you can get lost. You may identify with what’s around you, and that’s not always a positive thing.”
Marfil had a chance to represent his own Filipino culture with youth at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility (YCF) recently, as part of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Heritage Month, which is celebrated in May. Marfil – who was formerly incarcerated — is now a Portland-area rapper, activist, and organizer in the Filipino community, as well as an OYA volunteer.
Marfil says that representing his own culture “helps youth remember and seek out where their own history is and what got them where they’re at today.”
Connecting youth with their cultures and communities is an important part of OYA’s approach to working with youth. By exposing youth to values, customs, activities, and ceremonies of various cultures, OYA’s Office of Inclusion and Intercultural Relations (OIIR) provides opportunities for youth to learn important lessons about values, positive actions and attitudes, spiritual growth, and connection with — and responsibility to — one’s community.
OYA staffer Paulo Futi, AANHPI Coordinator for OIIR, explains. “It’s important for our youth to learn about many different cultures,” he says. “It provides a sense of acceptance and pride to identify with a specific culture [that’s different] from the negative ones they learn about … in unsafe spaces in our community.”
Futi orchestrated this year’s celebration of AANHPI Heritage Month at each of OYA’s secure facilities. So far, celebrations have been held at Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility (YCF), Tillamook (both camp and YCF), and Rogue Valley YCF, in addition to MacLaren YCF. The goal is to feature music, traditional dances, educational activities, and multicultural food, though logistics and resources mean it might look a little different at each facility.
At MacLaren, Marfil’s appearance was made possible by Keys, Beats, Bars, a culturally- and trauma-responsive project providing audiovisual and holistic music programming for justice-involved and marginalized youth in Oregon. (Keys, Beats, Bars, co-hosts ongoing weekly music and music-production groups for youth at MacLaren with OIIR staff; we’ve written about their work at OYA previously.) Marfil in turn worked with the Filipino Bayanihan Center, The Filipino American Friendship Club of Oregon, and Rose City Eskrima to supplement his rap performance and talks about his cultural background with demonstrations of tinikling, a traditional style of Filipino dance, and arnis (or eskrima), the national martial art of the Phillipines.
At Camp Tillamook and Tillamook YCF, on the other hand, Swiggle Mandela, also a Portland-area rapper, performed, and was joined by Walter Decambra, a former volunteer at Tillamook, who spoke about his own Hawaiian heritage. At Oak Creek YCF, a teacher and two youth presented about their cultures, and two OYA staff from Central Office demonstrated Polynesian dances for the youth. At Rogue Valley YCF, youth spent classroom time with OIIR staff watching and discussing cultural films, documentaries, and materials; some helped learn to prepare spam musubis, a snack and lunch food from Hawaii. They made enough for all the youth in the facility.
These educational events are one of many ways the OIIR team brings culturally relevant services, lessons, and programs to all youth in OYA custody. OIIR collaborates with youth, their families, and community members to create opportunities where youth can be physically and emotionally safe while growing emotionally and connecting with the community. This increased connection helps put supports in place to help youth identify what contributions they can make to a community and what they can learn from or develop by being a part of a community.
“Ultimately,” Futi says, “it provides youth with the opportunity to have healthy interactions with the world, all while learning who they truly are and where they come from.”