Meet the Fellows: Peng Nelson

UROC awarded the Dr. Josie R. Johnson Dissertation Fellowship to three University of Minnesota graduate students whose dissertation research strongly aligns with Dr. Johnson’s enduring legacy as a scholar and social justice leader. Get to know Fellowship recipient Peng.

Name: Peng Nelson

Department: Department of Curriculum & Instruction, College of Education and Human Development.

Hometown: Hejian, China

Hobbies: Calligraphy, paper cutting, painting.

Dissertation Study: Investigating how Asian Americans navigate ethical decision-making in supporting Indigenous-led environmental restoration along the Phalen Lake–Lower Phalen Creek–Wakan Tipi corridor, and examining how immigrant communities understand responsibilities on Dakota homelands transformed through industrial development and pollution.

Peng’s Definition of Community  
For me, community is not primarily defined by shared identity, but by shared ethical practice. My work began in archives, with the personal papers of urban planner Weiming Lu and the stories of Midwest Asian Americans who were systemically excluded from nature in the 1990s. But when I stepped away from the archives and started telling these stories on the ground, I discovered something crucial: communities don't fit into the categories I had researched. Instead, they form dynamically around specific places and specific ethical questions.

At Phalen Park, when I observed seasonal plants alongside a Chinese medicine practitioner Dr. Yin, and neighbors, our identities mattered less than the shared dilemma we were facing together. How do we honor Indigenous sovereignty while also recognizing the Asian American practices of foraging that were prohibited? How do we share this space with other marginalized communities? What responsibilities do we have to this land? That question itself becomes what binds us. At RiverEdge, I toured international nature-based educators and policymakers. How can nature education do ethical work? How do we tell forgotten histories while being honest about our own relationships to colonization and nation-states, while respecting the complexity of the land we're on right now? And at the Asian Fair, making mugwort sachets with complete strangers, we form a community through the shared acts of sewing and storytelling around a plant that was forbidden to harvest, and how that plant is kept alive through knowledge and craft.

My different roles as a land-based educator, an archivist, an Asian American mother, and an emerging artist aren't contradictions. They open different doorways into different conversations. So my definition of community is this: people who gather around shared ethical care across identities and boundaries, in public places. It's blurry, not because my work lacks rigor, but because real ethical practice is always complex and unpredictable.

Minneapolis skyline shown in a navy blue overlay. In the center is the logo, one white and one yellow hand forming a circle around a white diamond shape. The words "Inspired" in white and "Generosity" in yellow are below the logo, and Minneapolis, MN is in white towards the bottom center of the graphic.