Almost two years ago to date, April 21, 2021, I found myself writing responses to the American India Foundation’s essay prompts. Most of the prompts seemed standard and focused on my background and contributions. One of the questions, however, caused me to do a double-take and wonder, “Is this a normal thing to ask an applicant?” If you are currently applying for the fellowship or have in the past, you will know exactly what question I am referring to.
If an alien came to Earth and you were the first person to meet it, how would you determine its intentions?
As I contemplated my approach to this question, I thought about all the possible ways to encounter aliens should I become an AIF Fellow. I had extensive cross-cultural experience and understood the need to remain culturally sensitive when interacting with a population different from me. I wanted to demonstrate my ability to stay calm under pressure and sensitive in my curiosity to interact with those who are “alien” to me. You can find initial answer below (and be sure not to plagiarize my original thinking):
“First and foremost, I would challenge myself to figure out how I know this alien is in fact an alien. What does it look like? Does it speak? What makes it an alien versus any other being on this planet? Is it harming me? What characteristics does it have that I can be so sure it is an alien?
Like with most relationships, I would try to build trust with the alien by spending time with it and showing it that I have no malintent toward them. I would welcome it into my life and be a hospitable host to them. If the alien doesn’t show me that they are trying to hurt or harm me, I would begin to interact with them and also study their behaviors. For instance, does it eat? Does it sleep? What does it need to survive? I would put my best foot forward and attempt to take care of it if I had the resources to do so.
The recipe for trust is consistency / time, so I would do my best to be a consistent person and nurture the relationship with the proper amount of time spent together. This way, I can see if the alien is also a consistent being or if they are being erratic. As actions speak louder than words, I would not depend on verbal communication to determine its intentions, I would see how they interact with the world around them and take note of their behaviors. I would introduce it to trusted people and see what their impressions are of the alien as well.”
While it is both humorous to reflect on my past self and my approach at that time, my intention behind this blog post is deeper than that. In many cross-cultural contexts, we often think about our world in a simplistic subject and object sense where one party is at the center of the narrative and the population or culture remains a still “other” for us to observe, write about, or pass judgements about from our point of view. The polarity of “us” versus “them” creates a harmful discourse that focuses on one another’s differences and disconnections rather than an ongoing dialogue where both parties are alien to one another.
The words we choose when speaking about a population matter. The words immigrant, migrant, foreigner, alien, expat, or nomad all have similar meanings but carry different connotations depending on the context and tone of the conversation. In his book Almost All Aliens, Author Paul Spickard expands deeper on the word alien, “This is a formal, legal term for one who is living outside the place of his or her citizenship. I have no quarrel with that formal definition. Yet the reader must be aware of the other connotation that comes with “alien.” An alien is a foreigner, an outsider, one who does not belong. Aliens come not just from other countries but from other planets. Aliens are invaders from outer space. They are irreducibly Other. If I refer to a migrant as an “alien,” then I am creating in the reader’s mind a prejudice; I am dehumanizing that person and defining his or her presence in the United States as illegitimate. There is self-conscious irony in my choice of a title for this book. “Almost All Aliens” is intended to draw the reader’s attention to this problem with the use of the word “alien,” and to highlight the fact that nearly all Americans are guests on the North American continent. It is the thing we have most in common” (32).
Earlier in the fellowship, I had an “ah-ha” moment where I naively realized, “oh yeah, I am the alien here.” We tend to think of aliens as extraterrestrial beings who come from an unimaginable faraway land, when in reality, the United States is an unimaginable land far far away for many of the people who I have spent time with throughout my fellowship.
As an outsider, it can be alarming and uncomfortable to have all eyes on you within the communities within which we work. The photos, the stares, the questions, the pseudo “American celebrity” stardom can take its toll on any person of course. But my understanding of the question as it pertains to this experience and my future self has challenged me to think deeper about ‘If you were the first person to go to Mars and you met an alien, how would you communicate and adapt to life on Mars with this alien species?’
The Banyan Impact Fellowship is an opportunity to put on your space suit and take a trip into a world unknown. There have been countless moments where I have felt alien during my time here. I have learned to embrace my otherness and use it as a strength to lead curious interactions and as an opportunity to build relationships with natives. My journey as a fellow has demonstrated the importance of practicing empathy, and perspective shifting, and deepen my understanding of what it means to be “the other” in any scenario. By stumbling forward without the safety net of a common language or culture, I have learned many lessons about what it means to be a stranger in a strange world and how to serve as an ambassador and representative of my own planet.
References
McKinley, Megan. (2021). Banyan Impact Fellowship Application. Denver, Colorado.
Spickard, Paul. (2009). Almost All Aliens. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
