Hoʻoulu ʻĀina: Embodied Aloha ʻĀina Enacting Indigenous Futurities

Abstract

In this dissertation I examine the relationship between Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) values and practice and the politics of decolonization. The question that drives my work is: How do we as Kanaka ʻŌiwi step away from the toxic culture of neoliberal capitalism and the trauma of colonialism, structures that work to eliminate the kinship relationships between my people and the ʻāina (that which feeds us) that have developed over millennia? This work is situated within a broader body of scholarship on resurgent practices of Indigenous peoples. This dissertation argues that through resurgent practices Indigenous ideologies develop and become the springboard for enacting Indigenous futurities. Indigenous ideologies emerge out of practice that is anchored in place and a worldview that acknowledges our kinship relationship with ʻāina. These relationships have developed across generations of being of and on the land and are shaped and constrained by ancestral flows of knowledge that are anchored to specific places. Indigenous ideologies cannot be distilled into an abstract set of theoretical principles designed to contain all situations in all places but are instead expressions of specific values and relationships based in specific material environments. Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews and discourse analysis I present a portrait of Hoʻoulu ʻĀina, a Kanaka ʻŌiwi community that is mapping ancestral knowledge and values onto future generations through rigorous attention to and re-thinking of structures of education and health within an urban community in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. This community is a living example of the way practice steeped in Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) ideology contributes to a radical futurity. This radical futurity is building networks of affinity with non-Indigenous people working towards transformation of the global social order.