Kīpuka aloha ʻāina: disrupting geopolitical power

Keywords: geopolitics, Indigenous, land
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 42

Abstract

Kipuka aloha aina are Hawaiian geopolitical phenomena that carry the potential to disrupt destructive patterns of power. Kipuka is the Hawaiian concept that describes a space that is not like the surrounding space -- calm in a high sea, deep water in a shoal, opening in a forest or in cloud formations, and especially oases within a lava bed. These kipuka contain the seeds that bring vegetation to the new land created by the lava. In contemporary Kanaka Maoli society, aloha ʻāina functions as an ideological formation, but unlike ideological formations of capitalism, aloha ʻāina emerges out of specific material environments rather than the disciplining of native and proletariat into capitalist social relationships. Indigenous ideologies emerge out of a worldview that embodies kinship relationships with land, plants, animals, clouds, rain, and the multitude of geological and meteorological existents of place. These relationships have developed across generations of being OF and ON particular places and therefore cannot be reduced to an abstract set of theoretical principles designed to contain all situations in all places at all times. Hoʻoulu ʻĀina is a kīpuka aloha ʻāina that holds in creative tension kūʻē and kūkulu: resistance/opposition and building/creating. This kīpuka aloha ʻāina operates under the auspices of Kōkua Kalihi Valley, a health care facility structured around principles of horizontal power structures and community-based care. This paper looks at the ways that aloha ʻāina organize resurgent practice that enables kīpuka aloha ʻāina to fertilize and cultivate relationships beyond the boundaries of those spaces.