Search the Media Repository
Discover the curated images, videos, and primary sources featured throughout Foundations and Futures
History is more than just text on a page; it is the photographs, voices, and artifacts of the people who lived it. The images and recordings featured across Foundations and Futures are part of a meticulously curated media repository. Whether you are building a lesson plan or investigating an artifact, you can use this database to trace the provenance of our media: discover who created an asset, the historical context behind it, and how it can be used to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences into your classroom.
Multimedia
Chapters
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Video
Organizing Nail Salon Workers
Adhikaar, a New York based worker and community center that organizes the Nepali-speaking immigrant and refugee community, focuses on the significant number of Nepali nail salon workers, all who lack labor protections and rights.
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Nail Salon Worker Protest
Nail salon workers in New York gather to protest their dire working conditions. They helped pass the nation’s first Nail Salon Workers Bill of Rights in 2015.
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California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative Poster
A workers’ rights poster from the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative (CHNSC).
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Vietnamese-Owned Nail Salons Affected by Shutdowns
CalMatters in September 2020 reported on how COVID-19 lockdowns affected nail salons, which are often owned by Vietnamese immigrants.
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Van Hoang In Nail Salon
Van Hoang (right), a Vietnamese immigrant who owns and runs a nail salon in San Francisco, California, faces many health risks including suffering multiple miscarriages, likely due to her exposure to toxins.
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Employment of Manicurists by State
The states with the highest percentage of nail salon workers. (Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2023)
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Nail Salon Worker
Nail salon business owners and workers are often Asian immigrant and refugee women.
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Cannery Coffee Break
This candid photograph from a National Parks Service-supported project captures a break in the monotony of daily life at Diamond NN Cannery as workers drink coffee and rest on the dock.
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Murder of Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo
A news report details the 1981 murders of Filipino American labor activists Gene Viernes and Silme Domingo. It was later proved that the Marcos government in the Philippines had ordered their murders due to their union organizing and anti-Marcos advocacy.
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Filipino Cannery Workers
Filipino cannery workers in Alaska, who faced discrimination and segregation alongside other workers of color.
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David Della Interview
David Della, who worked in Alaska canneries in the 1970s and 1980s, became influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and was part of the cannery workers’ class action discrimination lawsuit against several salmon canneries.
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Salmon Cannery Machine
The machine that could replace ten to twenty cannery workers bore a racist anti-Asian slur for its name, and was adopted by larger canneries.
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Union Bay Cannery Block Print
In this 1932 blockprint by George Tsutakawa, workers process fish alongside the “Iron Chink,” a cannery machine named with a derogatory ethnic slur. Tsutakawa, who worked at Alaskan canneries, illustrates the imposing presence of the machine against Asian workers.
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Chinese Cannery Workers in Alaska
Chinese immigrants who arrived before statehood helped grow Alaska’s wild salmon industry into the international, multibillion-dollar economy it became known for.
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History in a Can
Salmon can label artwork; starting in the mid-1800’s the commercial exploitation of salmon marked a turning point in Alaska’s colonial economic development.
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Canneries of Alaska
Canneries along the southeastern coast of Alaska, which displaced indigenous fishing grounds. Alaska became a state in 1959, the same year as Hawai‘i.
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Sugar Plantation in Kōloa, Kaua‘i
American painter Peter Hurd was hired by a “Big 5” company to create works to commemorate 100 years of settler development in Hawaiʻi. This painting of a sugar plantation in Kōloa, Kauaʻi, in 1841 demonstrates the diversion of water to the plantation, a disruption from the Hawaiian ahupuaʻa land system.
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A Sakada Story
Filipino immigrant Cipriano Erice recounts his experience fighting for workers’ rights at the Waialua Sugar Plantation as a member of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU).
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Filipino Workers Arrive in Hawai‘i
Filipino workers, known as Sakadas, arrive in Hawai‘i circa 1946. Organizers from the International Longshore and Warehouse Union would board the ships upon arrival and encourage Sakadas to join the union, and thus also join their ongoing sugar strike against the “Big 5” sugar companies.
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Pidgin: The Voice of Hawaiʻi
Pidgin English (Hawaiʻi English Creole) is spoken by residents of Hawaiʻi of all ethnicities. The language reflects both the migrant and Indigenous histories of Hawaiʻi.
