Durham: Duke University Press, 2016. 204 pp. (Illustrations.) US$23.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-6234-0.
Karin Amimoto Ingersoll is a scholar and a surfer who argues that the ocean can fundamentally shape identities and influence contemporary realities. She invites the reader to explore the possibilities inherent in seascape epistemology: to consider the ocean’s potential as a means of reclaiming and revitalizing cultural identities for Oceanic peoples, with a particular emphasis on Native Hawaiian communities, Kanaka Maoli. Forms of knowledge and ideas about spirituality, identity, place, and belonging do not end at the water’s edge, but extend powerfully into the ever moving ocean. Reclaiming and re-exploring seascape epistemology is a tool for decolonizing minds and bodies which “splashes alternatives onto the Western-dominant and linear mind-set that has led the world toward realities of mass industrialization and cultural and individual assimilation” (15).
The seascape is reconceptualized as a “living classroom” (180) for learning about indigenous Hawaiian ways of knowledge and practices, both past and present. Students can learn from the ocean’s tides, currents, and swells, and from the life that it contains; but also from its constant fluidity, complexity, and adaptation. Seascape epistemology resists and provides alternatives to the simplistic and binary understandings that are a legacy of colonialism. The voices and experiences of Kanaka Maoli, whose knowledge of the ocean is both philosophical and embodied, are given significant space in this book. Amimoto Ingersoll consciously details the practices and understandings of “[n]ative Hawaiian surfers, fishers, navigators, paddlers, divers, hula dancers, musicians and artisans” (35).
This work extends Epeli Hau‘ofa’s decolonizing vision of Oceanic identities. The seascape is conceptualized as an epistemological tool that connects rather than separates Oceanic peoples. The ocean contains boundless possibilities. It is a connecting pathway through which people can (re)claim a sense of ancestral connection and kinship across colonially imposed national boundaries. “The symbol of water offers flexibility as well as mobility as new routes are sailed within an ‘ocean’ of possibility” (19). Whilst this book explicitly builds on the work of indigenous Pacific scholars, Ingersoll Amimoto also draws from Western epistemologies, to “re-inflect the Western philosophical tradition in order to frame the Hawaiian issue of an ocean based epistemology” (27).
Waves of Knowing analyzes how surfing as a cultural practice for Kanaka Maoli has been affected by the “success” of surf tourism in Hawaii. Due to Hawaii’s status as the premier brand within the global surf tourism industry, colonization has not been limited to interactions on land; the sea has also been a place of dominance and conquest. Indigenous connections to the seascape have been damaged by neo-colonialist practices such as renaming places to fit tourist imaginations, and the division of land and sea into zones that suit tourist demands, reducing the ocean to a “recreational and consumable space” (76).
Amimoto Ingersoll argues that the recognition of neocolonial aspects in the surf tourism industry is necessary and purposeful. “Recognition enables the deconstruction of dominant narratives and structures that prevail, illuminating how Kanaka Maoli can and do sit inside, outside, and between them” (75). Amimoto Ingersoll argues that there is a need to make surf instruction more connected to the ocean, to teach not just technical skills, but also to instil “an awareness of the critical relationship between the surfer-to-be and the ocean” (76).
For Kanaka Maoli, surfing is a physical and a reflective act, which involves reclaiming and reconnecting with indigenous ways of knowing and being. Surfing is an indigenous cultural practice which has survived cultural colonization in Hawaii. The continued enactment of this knowledge involves “a Kanaka epistemology, an oceanic knowledge that privileges an alternative political and ethical relationship with the surrounding physical and spiritual world” (5). Oceanic literacy emerges from an active engagement with the Ocean. Amimoto Ingersoll explains, “when surfing, I have the inherent ability to reflect on knowledge production as a hegemonic language because my oceanic literacy sits outside of dominant literacies, contrasting established structures by displacing them with my body’s gestures and defiance of gravity as it glides vertical, diagonal, fast and smooth … My literacy is a valuable way of moving through the ocean (and life) by anchoring myself within its fluctuations” (22–23).
The book explores the potential applications of seascape epistemology as a tool for formal and informal education. Amimoto Ingersoll envisions young people immersing themselves in the ocean and learning through their interactions, engaging in both “practice-based” and “place-based” education (161). She proposes creating a dedicated learning environment on the shoreline of the protected Koloko region of Oahu. It would offer space in which Kanaka Maoli could (re)connect with the ocean, including a large meeting house, and several smaller houses for gathering and teaching. Restoring historical fishponds and replanting native plants would be part of this project, as would teaching about sailing, surfing, and diving. Storytelling and using Hawaiian words and phrases as teaching tools are an important part of gaining access to the knowledge of the ocean and the environment which is embedded in language, and reveals Kanaka ways of knowing. Elders (kūpuna) from local Kanaka Maoli communities would be important mentors, teachers, and historians.
This beautifully written book makes a valuable contribution to articulating indigenous epistemologies, and offers concrete suggestions for how Kanaka Maoli ways of knowing can be translated into practices which empower indigenous and local knowledge and skills, affirm cultural identity, and care for both the land and seascapes. Through place-based education based on seascape epistemology, young people can gain a greater sense of ownership of their environment, and can become custodians of both land and sea for future generations. “[A]rticulating, documenting, and analysing Kanaka culture and literacies is not just about retrieving something of the past; it is also about teaching contemporary students how to observe and act creatively and ethically. The cultural hope of ka hālu [the ocean gathering house] is to create sensitive, well-rounded, moral, and interested individuals. The political ambition is accepting, relearning, and honouring indigenous and alternative ways of interacting with the world” (181).
Tui Nicola Clery
Independent Scholar, Ryde, United Kingdom
pp. 215-217