Don't Call Me Hawaiian-at-heart: Self-determination and Identity Theft (original) (raw)
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A Critical Reading of Aloha and Visual Sovereignty in Ke Kulana He Māhū
Native Studies and Queer Studies have begun creating linkages that interrogate the normalization of heterosexuality within Native communities and the ways that settler colonialism has been unquestioned in Queer Studies scholarship. This article adds to this body of scholarship by performing a critical re-reading of the film, Ke Kulana He Māhū , a film about the history of sexuality in Hawaiʻi and the role of māhūs in modern day Hawaiian culture. The film engages the struggles for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights in Hawaiʻi throughout the 1990s, but, curiously, it obscures the Hawaiian sovereignty movement that was happening simultaneously. Against this backdrop, I examine the rhetorical performance of aloha in the film and the dangers of harnessing Hawaiian culture to support the recognition of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rights. This article also examines how the film participates in visual sovereignty to foreground Kanaka Maoli commitments to cultural identity, community and belonging.
Going Native: South Park Satire, Settler Colonialism, and Hawaiian Indigeneity
Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies, 2017
In South Park’s “Going Native,” the white character Butters becomes inexplicably angry only to uncover that his family contends the anger is “biologically” caused by their “ancestral” belonging to Hawai‘i. He then travels to Kaua‘i to resolve this anger by connecting with his “native” home. To parody the materiality of white settlers playing and going native, Butters is represented as “native Hawaiian.” This parody functions as a satire to ridicule and criticize settler colonialism in Hawai‘i. Yet, it does so by distorting, dismembering, and erasing Hawaiian Indigeneity. By deploying an Indigenous-centered approach to critical theory, I analyze South Park’s “Going Native” as a popular culture satire to make three arguments. First, “Going Native” produces Indigeneity in racialized, gendered, and sexualized (mis)representations. The representations of “native Hawaiians” recapitulate marginalizing misrepresentations of Native Hawaiians, which inverts the parody. Second, as the parody breaks down, “native Hawaiians” reify settler colonialism. South Park’s satire fails and becomes haunted by specters of settlement that call into question its critique. When the “native Hawaiians” eventually liberate themselves from encroaching tourists and U.S. military forces, an impasse emerges. Rather than signifying Native Hawaiians with agency, only “native Hawaiians” demonstrate the possibilities of self-determination, sovereignty, and decolonization, which exempt white settlers from enacting colonization and produce a discursive impossibility for Native Hawaiians. Third, I suggest cultural studies reimagine its scholarship to exercise an alliance politics that interrupts knowledge produced by popular culture satire attempting critiques of settler colonialism that simultaneously naturalize the dispossession and elimination of Indigenous peoples.
Kuleana Lahui: Collective Responsibility for Hawaiian Nationhood in Activists’ Praxis
Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action, 2011
Previous studies of “the Hawaiian sovereignty movement” have compared different groups’ positions, elucidating complex constellations of Hawaiian sovereignty organizations yet remaining bound by the limits of state sovereignty discourse. In this article, I reflect on conversations between activists and on specific actions, so as to explore the spaces beyond or beneath the surface of state-based models of Hawaiian liberation. Rather than assuming the state to be the center of political life, I am interested in the ways people enact new relations and forms of social organization. ?Kuleana’ and ‘l?hui’ are presented as indigenous concepts for thinking about and practicing collective autonomy. This article provides a beginning for exploring how aspects of contemporary Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) social movement organizing, particularly among independence advocates, may contribute to the development of alliances around anarcha-indigenist principles.
In 1874, King David Kalākaua convened the Hawaiian Kingdom's legislature and initialized his political campaign under the slogan "Ho'oulu Lāhui: Increase the Race." Yet, ho'oulu lāhui isn't universally enunciated as "increase the race." Ho'oulu also translates from Hawaiian to English as to grow or to protect. When considering that lāhui translates to nation or people, Kalākaua's statement takes on different meanings such as grow the nation or protect the people. Reading this mo'olelo (story, history) for its kaona (hidden meaning) begs the question of how did Hawaiians ho'oulu (grow, protect) their Lāhui (nation, people)? Three days before convening the legislature in 1874, Kalākaua received a specially-designed mat that was a gift from a master weaver, a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) woman named Kala'iokamalino from Ni'ihau. The mat, which was called "moena pāwehe kūikawā" (specally-designed mat) and "moena pāwehe makana" (gifted woven mat), was given to Kalākaua as a protest. What was Kala'iokamalino protesting and how did the mat communicate its protest? What kaona is embedded in the mo'olelo that Kalākaua began his political campaign to revitalize Hawaiian people and culture only three days after receiving this particular gift? How does this Protest Mat, as its conventionally labeled, demonstrate agency and resistance to represent ho'oulu Lāhui?
Harvard International Review, 2014
dom government was recognized by all the major powers of the world. A member of the Universal Postal Union, the Hawaiian Kingdom government established over ninety legations and consulates in multiple cities around the world. Comprised of a multiethnic citizenry in which aboriginal people-Kanaka Maoli-were the majority, the Hawaiian Kingdom had its own national school system and boasted a literacy rate as high, if not higher, than all the major world powers of the time.
Settler environmentalism, Hawai‘i’s public trust, and Hawaiian decolonization
Protecting land and natural resources seems far from the genocidal violence of Native dispossession. This sense of distance can be mobilized as an aggressive belief in the virtuousness of all conservation; a presumption that a purely self-less love of nature or academic desire to learn about it guides conservation efforts, or merely in the practical view that it does not matter why someone kills invasive species or builds bulwarks against erosion so long as the work gets done. One problem with these approaches is that they make Hawaiian self-determination an adjunct to the main task of conservation. And this is not so.