"Ka Aina No Ka Poe o Hawaii": Kokua Hawaii's Huli Newspaper, 1971–73 (original) (raw)

Making 'Aha: Independent Hawaiian Pasts, Presents & Futures

We use Hawaiian methods of knowledge production to weave together contemporary and historical instances of Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) political resistance to U.S. imperialism and settler colonialism. Our departure point is the summer of 2014, when hundreds of Kānaka came forward to assert unbroken Hawaiian sovereignty and reject a U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) proposal to create a pathway for federal recognition of a reorganized Native Hawaiian governing entity. This essay situates testimonies from these hearings within a longer genealogy of Kanaka assertions of "ea" (sovereignty, life, breath) against the prolonged U.S. military occupation of Hawaiʻi that began in 1898 and extends to the present.

"Now we know": Resurgences of Hawaiian Independence

In this essay, I provide a brief overview of the Hawaiian independence movement and discuss resurgences of independence discourse among activists, artists and other grassroots Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian people). My focus is on articulations of Hawaiian national identity in official testimonies and in contemporary Hawaiian-produced music. Testimonies at a series of hearings on federal recognition, held by the U.S. Department of Interior in Hawaiʻi in 2014, are read alongside Kanaka hip hop music expressing identification with and support for the Hawaiian sovereignty. I am interested in the ways contemporary Hawaiian independentists hold a resurgence of the common people together with the assertion of ongoing Hawaiian Kingdom sovereignty, perhaps creating space for imagining more horizontal ways to practice independent Hawaiian governance. The article opens with a brief summary of Hawaiian political history from 1810 onward, to provide context for the ways that the contemporary political actors discussed are explicitly connecting to a recent history of internationally recognized Hawaiian national independence, and an even deeper legacy of ‘Ōiwi cultural practice, as means to asserting independent futures.

Decolonizing the Light: Reading Resistance in Native Hawaiian Poetry

By reading metaphors of light and darkness through the opposing lenses of colonial racism and indigenous activism, this essay argues that poetry is key to understanding the nuances of Native Hawaiian nationalism. Haunani-Kay Trask is a Native Hawaiian poet, activist and professor whose radical politics has attracted criticism from the white American community whose economic influence she vocally opposes. Trask’s work as a poet is inextricable from her political activism and her poetry will be read alongside critical work on the intersection of colonialism, racism and gender that has contributed to the devastation of indigenous people, culture and land in Hawaiʻi. The acquisition of land for plantations in the nineteenth century and resort development in the twentieth has resulted in the dispossession of Native Hawaiian people, whilst global mass tourism has deeply affected the portrayal and consumption of Native Hawaiian culture. Trask’s poetry is a lyrical but unsparing look at the effects of globalization on the delicate ecology of her home. For those willing to brave the severity of her indictment there are valuable messages about what constitutes native belonging and indigenous activism in Hawaiʻi.

‘Ike Mōakaaka. Seeing a Path Forward: Historiography in Hawaiʻi

Hūlili: Multidisciplinary Research on Hawaiian vol. 7 (2011)

The creation of a hegemonic, master narrative for Hawaiʻi—sourced almost solely from English-language materials—has long offered a highly exclusive characterization of past events and figures in Hawaiian history. Elements within this dominant narrative not only shape understandings of specific individuals and actions but also work together to construct a general understanding of a people and their nation. This article advances analysis of a political biography, set in a crucial period of Hawaiian history, to highlight a historical process that continues to inform paradigmatic yet problematic histories. It calls for a decided and comprehensive move to a more inclusive historical process that offers a more complex, rich picture of Hawaiʻi's past.

ʻĀina in Contemporary Art of Hawaiʻi

Pacific Arts, 2021

In this article, Healoha Johnston considers how five contemporary artists describe the interconnectivity of the environment and aloha ʻāina through their work. Recent installations and exhibitions featuring artwork by Bernice Akamine, Maile Andrade, Sean Browne, Imaikalani Kalahele, and Abigail Romanchak engage issues of sustainability, articulate genealogical connections to ʻāina, and decribe the possibilities for regenerative relationships to ʻāina through materials, form, and content. This essay considers the impact of the 1970s Hawaiian Renaissance as a cultural and political movement that re-centered the relationship between Kānaka and ʻāina, and catalyzed Hawaiʻi's contemporary art scene with a political dimension that visualized Kanaka ʻŌiwi resurgence.

Burning the American Flag Before the World: Ecologies of Abolition and Demilitarisation in Hawaiʻi

Third Text, 2022

Concentrating on contemporary art, visual culture and politics in Hawaiʻi, this article articulates a specific kind of abolitionist aesthetics that has ecology at its core and through which traces of a demilitarised futurity are interwoven. The work of anonymous collectives, artists and architects ‒ including Hui Menehune, Tropic Zine, Jane Chang Mi, Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick and Sean Connelly ‒ stretches abolitionism to consider the role US militarism in Hawaiʻi plays in maintaining and enforcing global capitalism, holding captive alternative ways of organising society and the possibility of an environmentally just future. Analysing experimental residencies, video work, socially engaged proposals and other public interventions produced in relation to movements for racial justice, demilitarisation and Hawaiian sovereignty, these projects offer the provocation that the US might have to burn before the world, both spatially – in terms of being visible for all to see – and temporally, a prerequisite to mitigating the worst of climate catastrophe.

Ke Ala Loa - The Long Road: Native Hawaiian Sovereignty and the State of Hawai'i

Tulsa Law Review, 2012

'i at Manoa. The author wishes to express her deep gratitude for the guidance and support of David H. Getches and Jon M. Van Dyke, two noted scholars and advocates for the Native Hawaiian community. Diacritical marks change the meaning of words in the Hawaiian language. Thus, in this article diacritical marks are used in Hawaiian words except in case names, certain titles, and quotations where Hawaiian words appear as they did in the original texts. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the author's.