Mai Ka Piko A Ke Mole: Clearing Paths And Inspiring Journeys To Fulfill Kuleana Through ʻāina Education

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2019

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University of Hawaii at Manoa

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This dissertation is a study of ʻāina education. Through a genealogically and epistemologically grounded Indigenous research methodology, I explore how ʻŌiwi educators honor and nurture the development of kanaka-ʻāina (people-land) relationships through their curricula and pedagogies and how their practices build upon, challenge, and extend existing theories of Place-Based Education. I approach this research project through a three-year case study of an Indigenous graduate exchange program between the Indigenous Politics Program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHIP) and the Indigenous Governance Program at the University of Victoria in British Columbia (IGOV). Asserting that the time has come for the underpinnings of ʻŌiwi scholarship to be rooted in our own people, places, and practices, I push the boundaries of conventional research methodologies by turning inward to Indigenous epistemologies to create an Indigenous research methodology that is rooted in the knowledge systems of my kūpuna (elders, ancestors). Through a modified method of kupuna lensing (Freitas, 2015), I draw on images, concepts, and lessons embedded in a mele (song, chant) from my hula genealogy, “A Maunakea ʻo Kalani,” to imagine how our kūpuna might have explained and given meaning to contemporary educational practices that I observed and participated in during my case study of the UHIP-IGOV exchange. Ancestral concepts and practices woven within the lines of poetry of this mele written for Queen Emma’s 1881 trip to Maunakea help me to make sense of the themes, patterns, and relationships that emerged from my data and reveal present-day expressions of ancestral concepts that are enacted within the context of this ʻŌiwi, ʻāina education program. Informed by my positionality as a Kanaka Hawaiʻi educator, scholar, and hula practitioner, I ultimately weave these (k)new understandings into a theory and pedagogy for ʻāina education, a lei of ʻike kupuna and ʻike o kēia ao nei (ancestral knowledge and knowledge from this time) that not only challenges and pushes back on Place-Based Educational narratives but simultaneously (and perhaps more importantly) sheds new light and creates new life around the field of ʻāina education.

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Place-based education, Indigenous peoples--Education (Higher)

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Hawaii
Hawaii--Mauna Kea
British Columbia--Victoria

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