(Mis)translations: Reshaping Epigenetics and Decolonizing Methodologies with Native Hawaiian Knowledge and Communities

• In Event: Indigenous Knowledges and Technologies - I

Abstract

In response to stark indigenous health disparities, the University of Hawai’i John A. Burns School of Medicine (JABSOM) Department of Native Hawaiian Health (DNHH) has not only sought solutions via traditional biomedical research methods but has further prioritized integrating Native Hawaiian knowledge of health and medicine in community-based participatory research (CBPR). Despite these efforts, given Hawaii’s settler-colonial history and generations of extractive “helicopter research” by scientists, visions of collaboration remain speculative. Through participant observation of JABSOM DNHH CBPR projects, analysis of journal articles, and interviews of community members and academic researchers, this presentation will identify how actors negotiate asymmetrical power relations and demarcate their respective knowledge traditions in this new space of encounter between Western biomedicine and Native Hawaiian knowledge. In particular, I will discuss current articulations of compatibility between “epigenetics” and Native Hawaiian concepts of “mauli ola” as possible sites of reshaping supposedly “global” categories of biomedicine. Critical insight from postcolonial and decolonial approaches to STS challenge simple narratives that suppose the complete dominance of Western biomedicine over the hyperspecificity and locality of indigenous knowledges. Thus far, surveying primary sources suggests that JABSOM’s emphasis on decolonizing health research methodologies may also redefine the ethical implications and priorities of public health research agendas today.

Author

• Julie Chung, Harvard University