mapping abundance

Candace Fujikane leads us through Kanaka Maoli cartographies that articulates Indigenous ancestral knowledges via moʻolelo (historical stories), oli (chants), and mele (songs). Engaging in the art of kilo, observing laws of the natural order is based on longtime observation and recording in relationships with the almost half a million akua. The akua are the elemental forms, who guide the people in their daily lives and embody the lands, seas, and skies. Professor Fujikane asserts, “Abundant-mindedness is a radical refusal of capitalist economies. Abundance is expressed out of Kanaka Maoli restoration projects, as practitioners assert their capacity to determine their own decolonial futures."

Candace Fujikane is Professor of English at the University of Hawaiʻi. She received her PhD from UC Berkeley in 1996, and she teaches courses on Hawaiʻi literatures, Asian American literatures, and settler colonial and Indigenous politics. In 2000, she co-edited a special issue of Amerasia Journal entitled Whose Vision? Asian Settler Colonialism in Hawaiʻi, and that issue was expanded in 2008 into Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawaiʻi. She has stood for Mauna a Wākea since 2011, testifying to protect the sacred mountain and standing on the frontlines against law enforcement in 2019. Just this year, she has published a new book, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawaiʻi.

Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i Purchase Mapping Abundance from Duke University Press. Use the code F J K N E for a 30% discount on your purchase.

https://hawaii.academia.edu/CandaceFujikane

Editing for this episode provided by the wonderful Katie Dunn

Music for the show you heard from was from Reed Mathis

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