He Mākaʻikaʻi no Māeaea: Becoming Kamaʻāina o ka ʻEhu Kai

Abstract

Before the shores between Puaʻena and Kaʻena were lined with invasive ironwood trees; before the kula leading to the uplands were covered in multi-story homes and crowded neighborhoods; before roads and highways cut through vital connections between mauka and makai, the ʻehu kai churned up by the waves in Waialua traveled freely between the shores and hills. Drifting from kahakai, over the kula, and towards the kuahiwi, the ʻehu kai covered the kamaʻāina and all who passed through Waialua in a salty mist, connecting sea with land, kanaka with ʻāina. People of Waialua were ancestrally known as poʻe and kamaʻāina o ka ʻehu kai, and before settler colonial relations of power began to take-hold in Hawaiʻi, the ʻehu kai and our pilina to it was a primary way for the community of Waialua to know ourselves, our ʻāina, andone another. This dissertation uses archival and ethnographic research to ask what it means to become kamaʻāina o ka ʻehu kai today, and investigate how emergent subjectivities grounded in ʻŌiwi relationality can begin to enact new ways of belonging to place. Using moʻolelo about Waialua and the practice of mākaʻikaʻi, I analyze how pilina and kuleana to ʻāina can begin to produce new subjectivities and relations of power that are not defined and confined by settler colonial encounters with ʻāina. Mākaʻikaʻi, as a form of knowledge production and pilina-building, allows ʻŌiwi and non-ʻŌiwi to encounter ʻāina in ways that cannot be co-opted or defined by settler colonial power, and reveals that (re)turning to practices rooted in our ʻike kupuna and routed through our ancestral and contemporary moʻolelo has the potential to create new realities and practices of home-making where our abundance of pilina can thrive.