First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies. Corvallis, OR: Oregon State University Press, 2017. xxxviii, 218 pp. (Illustrations.) US$22.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-87071-889-2.
While we typically think of cartography as the study and practice of making maps, its practice combines science, aesthetics, and technique to communicate spatial information. Such a practice may, or may not be, contained upon a sheet of paper or in a digital format. Tacking between “Nā Kahua Hawaiʻi” (Hawaiʻi foundations) (i.e., theoretical sources, knowledge perspectives, and knowledge classifications) and “Nā Hana Hawaiʻi” (Hawaiʻi practices) (navigation, composing, and dance), Renee Pualani Louis with Moana Kahele lead readers through Hawaiian cartography—as experiential, embodied, sensory connections linking people, elemental forces, plants, animals, places, space, time, and genealogy. This is, as Louis states, a journey into the basics of Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartographic philosophy and knowledge. Even so, the basics are filled with details and the astute reader will quickly perceive the layers upon layers of knowledge necessary to gain the knowledge shared within the stories or examples.
The “Nā Kahua Hawaiʻi” section is essential, because it sketches a Kanaka Hawaiʻi ontology and epistemology different from, although not contrary or dualistic to, Western ontology and epistemology. Louis positions Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartography with Kitchin, Gleeson, and Dodge (“Unfolding Mapping Practices: A New Epistemology for Cartography,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38 (2013): 480–496), advocating for cartography as representational practices and mapping practices. Such a move opens cartography to alternative perceptions of reality and maps “being held” in the mind, in the ʻāina, in the communication between navigator and ancestors, in the dance movement, in the mele. Along the way, she interweaves how moʻolelo, kaona, and kino lau are dynamic and productive factors in cartography and a kin-centric consciousness that allows Kanaka Hawaiʻi to learn from more-than-human entities as they navigate through life.
“Nā Kahua Hawaiʻi” highlights the necessity of paying attention to the Hawaiian language and the need for culturally appropriate translations as she often unpacks the multiple translations of words so necessary for Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartographic understanding. For example, akua, which is often translated as simply “god or gods,” but may be more productive as “a particular type of entity with specific types of responsibilities that we associate with natural processes necessary for life as we know it to exist. As such I consider them divine entities with whom we can interact” (19–20). These sections draw the reader closer to ʻāina, hōkū, mauna, lā and provide hints as how Kanaka Hawaiʻi acute observation, aesthetic creativity, and ecological wisdom was infused with how they related to the world around them as ʻohana.
The last two chapters of this section draw from recent Kanaka Hawaiʻi scholars and Hawaiian language newspapers to demonstrate the various space and time orientations related to body, island, and planet that then shaped how they intersected with each other, fishing, farming, harvesting, genealogies, passing of seasons, ocean voyaging, and societal roles (e.g., lāʻau lapaʻau or konohiki). The strength of these chapters rests in Louis creating a basic but intricate and detailed “map” on the body, island, and planet as known by Kanaka Hawaiʻi. It is “as if” the reader enters into another universe or participates in a pluriverse (Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).
The second section, “Nā Hana Hawaiʻi,” identifies three major Kanaka Hawaiʻi practices that are deeply enmeshed in cartographic processes: Ka Hoʻokele (Hawaiʻi navigation), Ka Haku ʻAna (Hawaiʻi composing), and Ka Hula (Hawaiʻi Dance). Interweaving personal experience, interviews, and other sources, Louis elucidates the ways ka hoʻokele, ka haku ʻana, and ka hula are continuing, modifing, and innovating practices deeply connected to Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartography.
Ka hoʻokele, of course, has the most obvious connection, as it sketches the story of voyaging from the moʻolelo of Kanaka Hawaiʻi first arrival, to Ben Finney’s desire to prove Kanaka Hawaiʻi travelled deliberately across the Pacific, to Nainoa Thompson emerging as a modern Kanaka Hawaiʻi navigator. Drawing heavily from the book of Sam Low (Hawaiki Rising: Hōkūleʻa, Nainoa Thompson, and the Hawaiian Renaissance, Honolulu: Island Heritage Publishing, 2013), her recounting of Thompson’s experience with the doldrums provides a powerful vignette of the ability of Western and Kanaka Hawaiʻi perspectives to co-exist as well as the power inherent in a deep abiding within Kanaka Hawaiʻi ontology and cartography. He enters the doldrums—fast-moving squalls generating wave patterns that are difficult to detrmine, strong winds, unable to see the sky and stars, and constantly shifting waves moving the canoe in unknown directions—physically and mentally exhausted. There was no way to access the navigation built on science and math, and he was initially uneasy about trusting his intuition. That night, he became intimate with and found a trusting relationship between navigator, canoe, and natural entities—what Kanaka Hawaiʻi call listening with the naʻau.
The next chapter focuses on the various strategies, genre, and elements of ka haku ʻana. With the rich treasury of Ka Waihona Palapala Manaleo (lit. the speakerʻs document repository), Dr. Noelani Arista’s phrase for the Western concept of archives, the depth and complexity of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi and the efforts of Kanaka Hawaiʻi to preserve knowledge and wisdom can be carefully studied as it was written in its original form. Louis provides an insightful and succinct introduction to key elements found in common literary forms infused by cartographic knowledge. In fact, it is within these common, everyday practices that we get to see how intertwined Kānaka Hawaiʻi were, and are, with their environment—a knowledge of people caring about living, familial relationships. Finally, based upon Louis’s personal experiences, she methodically introduces readers to the world of serious hula: its protocols, time commitment, precise movements, obligations to the halau, and connections to place, space, and time. To the experienced and expert observer, hula is a compilation of intimate, interactive, and integrative processes that express Kanaka Hawaiʻi spatial realities through specific perspectives, protocols, and performances—i.e., cartographic practices.
At the end of the journey, Louis has interwoven Kanaka Hawaiʻi relational ontology with Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartography in a way that is elegant and complex while sustaining an embodied and intimate relationship with all beings and forces. I found re-reading the book for the review deepened my appreciation of the organization, intricate connections among the various elements and stories, and elegance of Kanaka Hawaiʻi knowledge, wisdom, and cartography. Overall, the book is well-written, engaging, and provides an introduction with depth and breadth to Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartography.
Karen M. Fox
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada