Joshua Ching

Joshua Ching (he/him) is a Kanaka Maoli activist passionate about access to justice issues in Native communities. Currently a junior at Yale University, Joshua is studying Political Science and Ethnicity, Race & Migration, with a concentration in Native & Indigenous Studies. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Arthur Liman Undergraduate Fellow and an intern with the Native Hawaiian Legal Corporation, he is helping to design and develop an A.I.-based tool to streamline the expungement application process in Hawaiʻi, with accompanying research on the criminal records data market, legal rights to be forgotten and Indigenous data sovereignty.

On campus, Joshua founded the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania at Yale (the University’s first Pasifika student organization), co-leads the New Haven Pardon Program, is a research assistant for Dr. Hiʻilei Hobart and serves as Head of House Staff at the Native American Cultural Center. Back home in Hawaiʻi, he’s led several political advocacy campaigns that have successfully passed comprehensive e-cigarette regulations, county-level bans on the sale of flavored tobacco products and institution of the Honolulu Youth Commission. In 2022, Joshua was named a U.S. Senate Youth Delegate and Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids National Youth Advocate of the Year.