In his 2016 PhD dissertation “Post-High School Outcomes of the Marshallese Graduates of the Kwajalein Jr-Sr High School,” Douglas S. Helper assesses the effectiveness of the Rikatak program in the American school on Kwajalein. Founded in 1987 in correspondence with the Compact of Free Association between the United States and the Marshall Islands, the program allows a small number of Marshallese students to attend the American school on Kwajalein. While on its face a symbol of new cooperation between the United States and the Marshall Islands, the Rikatak—meaning “guest”—program cements American domestication of the region. By requiring that the Marshallese students commute to Kwajalein as invited “guests,” the program reinforces American ownership of Kwajalein and portrays the Marshallese students as foreigners on their own land. The Marshallese students are even mandated to return to Ebeye by the 5:30 pm ferry each day.[1] Moreover, one Rikatak student reported to Helper that in the selection process the American school “tend[s] to pick kids [whose] parents are well-known on the island, you know, landowners.”[2] By disproportionately accepting Marshallese students from landowning or high caste families, the program reinforces the colonial structure in which landowning families benefit from and buy into American presence through rent payments.

Moreover, Helper’s dissertation exemplifies how Americans use the Rikatak program as a settler move to innocence to justify and prolong their presence on Kwajalein. Helper optimistically claims, “The results of this study will be used by both the Americans and the Marshallese in order to improve and perpetuate the Rikatak program in the American schools on Kwajalein, which would ultimately benefit the RMI as a developing nation, and enhance the relationship between the Marshall Islands and the United States.”[3] Helper positions himself as a colonizer. His claim that the Rikatak program will “benefit” the Marshallese in the long-term implies that the United States must stay to facilitate that program. By endorsing the program, Helper is thus promoting American colonialism under the auspices of lending a helping hand.

[1] Douglas S. Helper, “Post-High School Outcomes of the Marshallese Graduates of the Kwajalein Jr-Sr High School, Kwajalein, Marshall Islands,” PhD diss., University of Nebraska, 2016, 77.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., iii.