Narrating Native Histories. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. xvi, 399 pp. (B&W photos.) US$27.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-5695-0.
The history of Hawaiian political struggle has been subject to systematic erasure and the deficit is one that the editors of this volume seek to remedy. In her introduction Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua sets out two broad aims of this important and timely volume. Her first aim is to outline the scope, histories, and diversity of approaches that have contributed to the Hawaiian sovereignty movement and in doing so address a need for Kanaka Maoli to narrate their own stories of “resistance and resurgence” (3). Second, she foregrounds the notion of ea, in partial response to the question from Kanien‘kehaka (Mohawk) scholar and activist Taiaiake Alfred, who asks indigenous people to consider political philosophies that are not based on Western models or developed in reaction to them. Ea is not a concept that can be easily translated into English and encompasses multiple, concurrent meanings. The division of the book into three parts—life, land, and sovereignty—draws on the many connotations of ea and unequivocally constructs the concept as a decolonial methodology. A Nation Rising highlights Kanaka Maoli authorship and the list of contributors brings together activists, journalists, scholars, lawyers, researchers, and filmmakers.
Integral to the structure of the book are portraits or ki‘i, which is another multivalent term that can refer to “likeness.” Ty P. Kāwika Tengan constructs a likeness of Sam Kaha‘i Ka‘ai, whose body of work is too wide to encompass with the word artist. Mehana Blaich Vaughan meanwhile transcribes conversations with Puanani Burgess discussing her motivation and activism at sites like West Beach and Kaho‘olawe, and her work with Hawaiian women prisoners at the O‘ahu Community Correctional Center. Leon No‘eau Peralto’s ki‘i is a mo‘olelo (history, story) of Mauna a Wākea, “the highest peak, and piko, in all of Oceania” (233). The summit of Mauna a Wākea is the proposed site of a planned astronomical observatory, which will add to the “Astronomy Precinct” already on the mauna and the site of many years of protest itself. Peralto’s piece is prescient and highly pertinent because the current (at the time of writing in July 2015) occupation of the site by Kanaka “protectors” (rather than protestors) and the resistance to construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) has ignited a widespread “We are Mauna Kea” solidarity movement, and provides a beacon for similar actions by indigenous land rights activists outside of Hawai‘i.
The many stories of “resistance and resurgence” in this volume respond to Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s call for “rewriting and rerighting our position in history” (Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples, Zed Books, 1999, 28). “Homelessness at home,” Hawaiian language revitalization, the Akaka Bill, Sand Island, Biocolonialism, cessation of the US military bombing of Kaho‘olawe, the anti-eviction struggles of Waiāhole-Waikāne and “the pitched battle over Hawai‘i’s fresh water resources” (199) map histories and tell stories of the many identities associated with Hawaiian sovereignty, their politicization, and their hard-won victories and ongoing resistance movements. The success of coalitions such as Ke Kalo Paa o Waiāhole in the Hawa‘i Supreme Court Waiāhole decision of 2000, in which the public nature of Hawai‘i’s water resources were affirmed, came after decades of struggle. Their achievement and perseverance offers hope for those who are engaged in similar efforts to reclaim resources and cultural heritage and who seek to achieve justice.
Self-determination and cultural sovereignty are deeply connected to the ‘aina and no more so than in the “Homeless at home”(37) stories of Marie Beltran and Annie Pau by Anne Keala Kelly that open Part One: Life. Keala Kelly describes a “brutal paradox,” one familiar to many disenfranchised indigenous peoples throughout the world in which “they have a genetic and cultural knowledge of belonging, but foreign peoples and institutions have been coveting, undermining, and criminalizing that belonging for two centuries” (38). As with each of the chapters, the struggles that these two women and their ‘ohana undergo are contextualized in political decision-making and strategies that crystallize the past within the present. Historical events such as the Great Māhele and the privatization of Hawaiian land are keenly felt in the lived reality of these two women, but Keala Kelly is unsparing in her depiction of class structure in contemporary Hawai‘i and is heavily critical of privilege and the “Hawaiian intelligentsia” (46). Keala Kelly’s interpretation of Beltran and Pau’s struggle and Kūhiō Vogeler’s “Outside Shangri La” (chapter 11), in which he makes the distinction between colonization and occupation, are two of many positions and perspectives represented in the volume.
More identities are portrayed through the chapters that follow Keala Kelly’s portrait and along with their mo‘olelo is a wider-angle depiction of Hawaiian resistance, or kū‘ē. Through the development of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and the contribution of Marion Kelly, or the self-portrait of Puhipau and his politicization after witnessing the destruction of homes on Sand Island, manifold dimensions of the history of such events unfold and more importantly are revealed now for a wide readership within and outside Hawai‘i. This volume will be of particular interest to indigenous scholars and students of Hawaiian history. The authors have highlighted and begun to address a gap in the history of Kanaka Maoli and have simultaneously provided a template for further storytelling.
Ea is rooted in Kanaka Maoli notions of creation and as a framework for the structure of the book it connects the past, present, and future with a dynamic ethic that also responds to current resistances against enterprises such as biocolonialism and the TMT. In chapter 9, “A Question of Wai,” D. Kapua‘ala Sproat asks: “Why has the kuleana (responsibility) of righting this […] been consistently left to community groups, especially Maoli?” An answer to this question can be found in ea. Ea is life, and life is the ‘aina.
Andrea Low
The University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
pp. 727-729