Re-Storying and Remembering Place: Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) and Asian Diaspora Ancestral Knowledge as Methodologies

• In Event: “Looking Back, Looking Forward:” Envisioning Asian Diasporas as Methodologies for “Thriving Futures”

Abstract

Despite settler colonialism and white supremacy’s goal to exploit cultural differences and pit Communities of Color as competitors for scarce resources in a heteropatriarchal and capitalist society, ancestral knowledge on living ethically and respectfully with people and place is abundant among Indigenous and Diasporic Peoples. Hawai‘i’s multiethnic and multicultural landscape is a unique context in which Indigenous Kanaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) and Asian Diasporic ways of knowing and being have intersected across time and space, resulting in shared and distinct understandings about the purpose of developing and maintaining healthy relationships with one another and Hawai‘i’s lands and waters. In light of the current presidential administration’s inhumane immigration policies, practices, and the growing involuntary Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Pacific Islander Diaspora on the U.S. continent due to forced displacement by settlers and climate crises, there is a dire need for methodologies that speak back to imperial divide-and-conquer tactics by listening to the places that have nurtured diverse communities in the past, present, and future.
This paper embraces both the messiness and beauty of Indigenous-Asian Diasporic solidarity in a context where wealthy and powerful Asian immigrants are implicated as colonizers (Fujikane & Okamura, 2008). I ground my methodological analysis in Day et al.’s (2019) notion of “decolonial relations of place-based solidarity” between Indigenous and Asian Diasporic Peoples, which requires dignity, gratitude, respect, and indebtedness toward Native Peoples and their ancestral homelands (p. 4). I also draw on existing knowledge on land as pedagogy (Elliott & Fish, 2024; Meixi, 2019; Simpson, 2017), research as ceremony (Wilson, 2008), and Asian diasporas as theories (He et al., 2024, 2025).

This paper analyzes participant observer memos of public culture-based schooling events on the island of O‘ahu and editorials by Indigenous and Asian students published between 2023 to 2025. Using a strengths-based lens to explore how Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Asian Diasporic youth living in Hawai‘i develop a relationship with and responsibility to place, this paper conceptualizes ancestral knowledge as methodologies to interrogate human-ecological connections, place-based learning, and education for environmental and social justice. In particular, I highlight the use of cultural storytelling about majority-Kanaka ʻŌiwi and Filipino communities and remembering genealogical histories as methodological tools that unsettle impersonal and colonial norms in education research. In doing so, I re-story places that have nurtured Indigenous and immigrant communities, becoming sites of multigenerational resistance to overdevelopment and gentrification.

This paper advances a critical call for educational researchers to center ancestral knowledges on place as an epistemological and theoretical tool for examining Indigenous and Diasporic relationalities and reciprocity. The methodological offerings of re-storying and remembering places that shape the cultural, educational, and social lives of students with diverse backgrounds also bring forth important applications for comparative inquiries and research-to-practice partnerships across cultural communities with shared goals to preserve their lifeways amidst global concerns about environmental health and human wellbeing.

Author

• Kourtney Kawano, University of California - Berkeley