Ronault "Polo" Catalani provides a 'bigger voice' for immigrants

Ronault L.S. Catalani -- aka "Polo" -- is a Portland civil rights lawyer and coordinator at Portland's Office of Human Rights. Catalani specializes in advocacy for the area's immigrants and refugees, with his distinct approach of solving problems "around the kitchen table."

After an alarm went off at Roosevelt High School, Portland police arrested two Hmong teens, members of an ethnic group from Southeast Asia. The youths later were released and found innocent. The police apologized, but many of Portland's Hmong refugees from war-torn Laos remained frightened and confused.

Ronault L.S. Catalani, a Portland-area lawyer and community activist who also hails from Asia, advised an odd repayment."I explained to the policemen that, for us, saying sorry is not enough. We have a proverb: 'Respect is not in words, respect is in deeds.' You have to give something to heal the break."

So, one morning Catalani ushered the officers into a Hmong leader's home. The policemen wielded two live chickens. Hmong elders and their families crowded in.

The chickens were sacrificed in a special ceremony, their lives given in an effort to repair the relationships that had been breached. The sacrifice is part of a long-standing shamanic cultural tradition that attempts to heal with offerings to the spirits.

"Then," Catalani said, "we ate like there was no tomorrow."

Ronault L.S. Catalani visits with colleagues after his speech at an Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization staff meeting in January.

For more than three decades, lawyer-activist Catalani has mediated between the Old World of immigrants and refugees and the "new world" they encounter in Oregon, easing cultural tensions, solving conflicts and connecting newcomers to resources.

Known to friends and colleagues as "Polo," Catalani -- also a columnist for the Asian Reporter -- is a humble, quiet man. His speech is deliberate, accented, sometimes almost poetic. He will call you "Sister" ("Saya") or "Auntie," or "Elder brother." "Terima kasih," he likes to say, or, "I offer my love and thanks."

Ronault L.S. Catalani

About those initials:

L.S. stands for:

Latang

(the sound the heart makes) and

Sayang

(song); together it means "compassion."

Nickname: Polo, short for Apollo

Born: Dec. 15, 1953, in Kota Ambon, Ambon, Republic of Indonesia

Family: Wife Chompunut Xuto Catalani ("Nim"), painter, art educator and immigrant arts organizer; 29-year-old daughter Caricia C.C. Veneziale, completing doctorate in public health at University of California, Berkeley, and co-founder of nonprofit community organizing group Video Voice; 26-year-old son Aden S.O. Catalani, painter and graphic artist. Father Leopoldo Catalani and mother Vilma Eleanora Catalani, both of Kaneohe, Hawaii

Favorite books: Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and Duong Thu Huong's "Memories of a Pure Spring"

Quote: "Always leave a place better than when you arrived. This is your duty. This all our responsibility, to each other." -- Leopoldo Catalani

Online: asianreporter.com/columns.htm, coloredpencilsbooks.com

But behind this mild-spoken manner is a tenacious philosophy of how best to welcome and protect Oregon's immigrants and refugees, whose numbers have climbed during the past three decades. Foreign-born residents now make up 10 percent of the state's population, 13 percent of Portland's, 18 percent of Gresham's and more than 22 percent of Beaverton's, according to census figures.

"Polo is always fighting for us," said Mardine Mao, president of the Cambodian American Community of Oregon. "We're a small voice, but with Polo, because he's connected to many different communities, we feel like he's our bigger voice. He represents us."

As Oregon becomes increasingly diverse, it is more and more clear that one method cannot be used to work with all communities. That is why Portland hired Catalani as the immigrant and refugee program coordinator with the new Office of Human Relations. His task: to invite newcomers into city hall and to teach them how to share their cultural capital with the mainstream, in addition to mediating conflicts.

But his methods have been unconventional. Some may find his depictions and vocabulary too ethnic or stereotypical, his work counterproductive to acculturation. His approach, he writes in his book, "Counter Culture: Immigrant Stories From Portland Cafe Counters," is not bent on integration and assimilation.

"My work is not to force access into the mainstream but to defend from the mainstream," Catalani said. "With time, all immigrants will integrate. The effort now is to preserve our integrity as a community."

In problem-solving, Catalani relies on Old World tactics that immigrants are familiar with. He has urged government officials and activists to strive for a community-based reconciliatory approach rather than legalistic methods. It's a system in which individuals are part of a greater whole and take responsibility for each other.

Catalani aims to keep families together and to prevent divorce, custody battles and foster care. Sometimes, he says, it's better to wall off social workers and police and to solve problems "around the kitchen table" instead of in the courtroom. Or counsel victims to call on community elders rather than police, and to accept repayments rather than pursue legal battles.

"The state should not monopolize problem-solving," he said.

From left: Portland Police Sgt. Ryan Lee, Portland Police Officer Cuong Nguyen, Ronault L.S. Catalani, case manager Steve S. Kue and associate director Lee P. Cha, all of the IRCO, exchange cards after a meeting to discuss Hmong-on-Hmong violence in North Portland.

His sensibility was shaped by the dislocation and chaos of his childhood in post-colonial Indonesia.

One morning, neighbors barged into Catalani's family home and carried out all of their belongings. The neighbors were Manado, full-blooded Indonesians, while the Catalanis were Indos, a mix of white Catalan and Manado. Rage and riots erupted.

The family ran. All Catalani remembers is his father throwing him and his brother onto a roaring propeller airplane. The family flew to Singapore, then boarded a ship for the Netherlands, where they would be considered stateless. Four years later, the Catalanis gained refugee status from the United States and came to live in Salem.

Catalani's mother went to work at a cannery, while his father toiled as a janitor. In school, some white students used racial slurs against Catalani, and spit on and made fun of him, he said.

He earned an athletic scholarship to the University of Oregon. Within a year, he had declared a triple major in psychology, philosophy and political science. He went on fellowships to Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya and Iran to research political revolutions and community development.

When he graduated, Catalani became a social worker with the Department of Human Services in Coos County. But he saw cruel or neglectful parents from a different angle than most other social workers at the time.

"More often than not, the woman was beating her baby because she's angry and frustrated at her man," he said. "Or the father is humiliated, has a bad job and comes home with anger, then drinks or beats his wife and child."

Removing an individual from a home or jailing him didn't seem efficient to Catalani, he said, because "if there's trouble with a person, the family is in trouble and that family should be addressing that issue together."

Catalani's father -- a hakim, or community justice/mediator in Indonesia -- taught him that the family and community should be responsible for healing.

"It's a very Asian position, this tendency to find a viable way of getting along," said Robert Textor, a retired Stanford University anthropology professor and Southeast Asia scholar. "The notion of justice and fairness is present, but it is not as emphasized as in the U.S. Extended kin is taken very seriously in Indonesia."

A year later, Catalani quit social work to study law.

At the time, Oregon schools, hospitals and courts became overwhelmed with a new wave of Southeast Asian refugees, and Catalani saw his calling. He noticed many Asian refugee children were being taken away from their homes because of alleged abuse and neglect by their parents, and placed in mainstream American families, causing cultural and linguistic disorientation.

Catalani worked with refugee organizations and state legislators to draft the Oregon Refugee Child Act. The bill, passed in 1985, provided special protection for refugee children and created the Refugee Child Advisory Committee, which individually reviews child welfare cases of refugee families. When possible, it places refugee children with extended family or another family of the same ethnic background and language.

After a rise in Southeast Asian gangs in the 1990s, Catalani drew up the contract for a Hmong American Community Policing agreement in North Portland. Day-to-day policing of the Hmong community was turned over to its community leaders, family heads and elders. Hmong leaders also trained Portland police in their community's customs.

As an attorney, Catalani represented refugees in courts, for everything from criminal matters to child welfare cases. In one case, involving Andy Cha, a young Hmong man with developmental disabilities who committed an assault with a firearm on a Portland-area couple, Catalani negotiated for the community to take responsibility for Cha, instead of sending him to jail. Hmong elders took on the task of supervising and helping Cha, who was able to stay with his wife and children.

"Polo donates his time and his equities for the community, and he doesn't ask for anything in return," said Thach Nguyen, program manager of the Juvenile Counseling and Court Services for Multnomah County. Nguyen worked with Catalani and school officials to help close the achievement gap for refugee children.

Catalani says his work has empowered community members: "It has given the confidence to our elders and clan leaders to solve problems," he said.

At Portland's Office of Human Rights, Catalani leads training in civic engagement, works on broadening access and inclusion for immigrants and mediates conflicts. He hopes his work can continue, although his position was funded by the city council for only one year, until the end of June. It's not certain whether it will be renewed.

Other Oregonians might also benefit from Catalani's methods.

"He has a worldview that says, 'We're in this together,'" Stanford's Textor said, "'so we should respect each other and we should find solutions together.'"

Read an interview with Catalani.

-- Gosia Wozniacka: 503-294-5960; gosiawozniacka@news.oregonian.com

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