The Many Meanings of Ishi

By naming this institute ISHI, we have designed an acronym that describes our mission.  But we are intentionally evoking a cluster of other meanings as well.  In the book of Hosea in the Old Testament, God instructs worshippers to refer to him as their divine husband: ishi אִישִׁי. In Sanskrit and Hindi, ishi (ईशि or ईश) also evokes divine will and creative agency, a reminder of purposeful action that shapes the world. In Japanese, ishi 石, a stone, symbolizes strength and stability, while someone's ishi 意志 is their will or intention.  In the Yana language once spoken by Indigenous residents of the northern Sierra Nevada mountains, ishi, a human being, became the name Ishi (1861-1916), an individual who lived in hiding until middle age after the massacre of his people, and who ended his life ill and alone as a living exhibit at the UC Berkeley Anthropology Museum. As ISHI we lean into all these stories at once, with their diversity in time, place, and meaning. Linking histories with places, we aim to act with fortitude and purpose, to identify transcendence in resonant texts, and to recover the agency and voice of survivors of injustice. Through research, teaching, and digital storytelling, ISHI turns these meanings into practice.