Life on Island Earth: A New Generation of Kānaka Maoli Perspectives

Abstract

In Life on Island Earth, I listen to Kānaka Maoli in my generation (ages 20s-30s) talk story, offering up their perspectives on what it means to be a Kānaka young person moving through the world today. I reflect on these realities through historical (or generational) and current settler colonial violences—including US occupation of the islands and the impacts of climate change—through the lived experiences of my interlocutors. I also consider Kānaka Maoli epistemologies and intimacies with local ecology, modes of resistance and revival in the face of these challenges, as well as timescales and futurity. My interlocutors grew up exposed to Western settler extractive logics as well as Kānaka epistemologies. I examine the complex realities of existing alongside settlers and colonial logics. And in the process, I reflect on my own role in settler stories as a white American. I contextualize the stories and ideas of my interlocutors with the scholarship of Kānaka intellectuals, activists, and community leaders as well as Indigenous voices at the forefront of global social and ecological justice movements around the world today. I write as an ally, seeking to amplify the voices of Indigenous Polynesians as Oceania is situated to bear the brunt of climate change in coming years.