Aloha aina: Native Hawai’ian Environmental Justice for Sustainability in Kiana Davenport’s Fictions

Abstract

This paper contextualizes the representation of environmental issues in Kiana Davenport's fictions. A native Hawai'ian writer, Davenport foregrounds issues such as forced land appropriation, pollution and toxic emission from the United States' military presence in this archipelago and the detrimental impact of tourism in the local ecology. Criticizing ongoing American exploitation of her homeland, the issues depicted in Davenport's fictions is distinct from Anglo-Saxon natural writing in which the focal point is on preservation, pastoral and agrarian outlook. Davenport articulates the native Hawai'ians' ancestral epistemology concerning human and non-human relationship through aloha aina (respect and love to the land and all the entities) as a counter to the anthropocentric Western perception of nature. Moreover, her literature shares similar concern with the environmental justice movement that underlines the shared connection between marginalization of the ethnic minorities and the degradation of their environment. This present study applies environmental justice ecocriticism, as theorized by T.V Reed that ethnic literature functions as a cultural artifact which performs an advocatory role to articulate the resistance of the disempowered social group. To conclude, this paper argues that reconciliation between the indigenous people and the white majority is needed so that environmental sustainability can be achieved.