This essay explores ways Native Pacific activists enact Indigenous futurities and broaden the conditions of possibility for unmaking settler colonial relations. When settler colonial relations are built on the enclosure of land as property that can then be alienated from Indigenous peoples, as well as demarcated to privilege certain racialized, classed, and gendered groups of settlers, then such unmaking requires different ways of relating to land. I highlight two instances of “blockades”—the Pacific Climate Warriors at Newcastle Harbor in Australia and the protectors on Mauna a Wākea in Hawai‘i. While colonial discourses frame such direct actions as obstructions on a march toward a narrowly imagined and singular “future,” I argue that this activism works to open space for multiple futures in which Indigenous epistemologies and practices renew intergenerational connections and in which the possessive, jurisdictional borders of private property can be reimagined as zones of compassionate engagement. This kind of futures-creation is not only in the interest of Indigenous people. Indigenous resistance against industrial projects that destroy or pollute our territories concerns the health of multiple communities of humans and nonhumans.
'Auwai are irrigation ditches developed by Känaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) to enable sustainable, prolific, wetland taro cultivation. This article traces the decline of 'auwai and lo'i kalo (wetland taro fields) alongside the loss of Kanaka Maoli control of our national school system, both driven by a shift in the dominant economic system and sealed by the shock of United States (US) occupation. Drawing on oral history interviews with teachers, and on Corntassel's notion of "sustainable self-determination" (2008), I tell the story of current efforts to rebuild 'auwai and lo'i through a partnership between a Hawaiian culturebased public charter school and the nearby state university. This rebuilding provides a metaphor for educators' efforts to restore pathways of cultural knowledge transmission against continued imperialism. I argue for simultaneous, overlapping efforts to reform education and to rehabilitate the economic and ecological systems that will again allow us to feed ourselves and our 'äina (land, particularly in food production). Indigenous education must engage in transforming the larger political economic structures that organize our relations with the natural resources.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.