“In the world we want — many worlds fit.”
Adapted from “The Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle” [1]
I am Kanaka ʻŌiwi (native Hawaiian) from the island of Oʻahu. I experience the world as an urban Hawaiian who grew up in Honolulu’s version of middle class America and I am now engaged in a transdiciplinary study of Indigenous political organizing and alternative futures.
I bring an island perspective to our discussion of social change and paradigm shifts. I have focused my research on small Hawaiian communities. I am particularly interested in the way that place-based ʻŌiwi values motivate, enliven and are otherwise integrated into these communities. My Master’s thesis was an analysis of political organizing in the rural community of Moloka`i.[2] Leadership in the community is dominated by Native Hawaiians, who are in the majority on the island. Community organizing is generally directed at protecting the island’s rural lifestyle and preventing the State and various transnational corporations’ from setting the island’s development agenda. In my thesis I argued that the community was able to weather internal strife around particular development projects because a preponderance of those living on Molokaʻi – native and settler alike – embrace a set of values expressed in the following vision statement:
Moloka`i is the last Hawaiian island. We who live here choose not to be strangers in our own land. The values of aloha `āina and mālama `āina (love and care for the land) guide our stewardship of Moloka`i’s natural resources, which nourish our families both physically and spiritually. […] We honor our island’s Hawaiian cultural heritage, no matter what our ethnicity, and that culture is practiced in our everyday lives. Our true wealth is measured by the extent of our generosity.[3]
Wealth for the handful of transnational corporations present on the island is measured in terms of capital accumulation rather than generosity. Transnational corporate notions of economic progress are very different from community-based notions and yet community and corporation are bound together not only by geography but also by a complex play of social, political and economic forces.
The community vision statement has been used extensively by Molokaʻi residents to leverage public and private funds for community-based development. It has also been deployed with varying success to galvanize community support around resistance to exploitation of Molokaʻi resources by transnational capital. It expresses a self-determining identity that is shared by Native Hawaiians and settlers alike on the island. There are few amenities and most residents who make a commitment to living on Moloka`i provide for themselves by hunting, fishing and gardening. Native Hawaiians particularly have an intimate knowledge of the island and family and neighbors commonly share work and resources. Molokaʻi has a vibrant sustenance economy defined by sharing and reciprocity that operates alongside the ubiquitous market economy defined by profit-taking and resource exploitation.
In the specific struggle I analysed in my thesis, community members on Moloka`i were able to thwart a development plan put forth by Molokaʻi Ranch, a wholly owned subsidiary of a Singapore based transnational development corporation, but this power was localised and fleeting. Development on a particularly sensitive parcel of land was averted. In another struggle community opposition forestalled industrial wind farms on the island that would provide electricity to urban Oʻahu via inter-island cable but that project is dormant not dead. And community efforts to shutdown a seed corn operation owned by the mega-corporation Monsanto have been ineffective to date. The segment of the community opposed to Monsanto’s operation acknowledges that community-wide support will be hard to muster so long as Monsanto is the largest employer on the island.[4]
I became interested in studying Molokaʻi because I wanted to know what makes Molokaʻi the last Hawaiian island. Has the geopolitical reality of being rural, bounded by water, with very little resources available for exploitation by industrial capital protected the island from the kind of urban development that has robbed other communities in Hawaiʻi of a Hawaiian sense of place? Or is it because the island itself has mana, a spiritual power that guides social relations on the island? Stories survive from the time before Western dominance in the islands that portray Molokaʻi as a sacred space, a place of learning and a place that engenders a fierce independent people. These stories form the backbone of social relations on the island not only for native Hawaiians but also for a large percentage of the long-time settlers to the island.
Molokaʻi political organizing emerges out of an ethical framework that Dene scholar Glen Coulthard calls grounded normativity. Coulthard explains the concept:
Indigenous struggles against capitalist imperialism are best understood as struggles oriented around the question of land—struggles not only for land, but also deeply informed by what the land as mode of reciprocal relationship (which is itself informed by place-based practices and associated form of knowledge) ought to teach us about living our lives in relation to one another and our surroundings in a respectful, nondominating and nonexploitative way. [5]
Molokaʻi political organizing draws on social relations and practice that have evolved over centuries of living on the island. These social relations emerge out of the ethical framework of grounded normativity.
I would like to now turn to an articulation of grounded normativity in an urban setting. Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is an agricultural park on the upland edge of Kalihi Valley in the urban core of Honolulu. Kalihi Valley runs from the lowland industrial harbor to a lush tropical forest in the uplands. It is a densely populated working class community with a number of public housing complexes. A large percentage of Kalihi residents are immigrants from the Philippines, Marshall Islands, Samoa and other Pacific basin island groups.
Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is a part of Kōkua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services (KKV), a Federally Qualified Health Center. A KKV patient, community partner and immigrant from the Philippines, describes the relationship between Hawaiian values and the mission of the health center:
The first time that I was brought in to KKV, I was so moved by the way they saw reality. They knew all this was happening (alienation, frustration, violence) and they knew where the remedy was found. They were bridge builders … connecting the Asians and Pacific Islanders together, and rooting it in Hawaiian values and protocols.[6]
The following is how KKV describes its relationship to Hoʻoulu ʻĀina on the company website:
KKV sees the ‘āina as a vital member of the community, and so we are pleased to offer opportunities for community gardening, reforestation, environmental education and the preservation of land-based cultural knowledge at Ho`oulu `Āina (the Kalihi Valley Nature Preserve). In this “welcoming place of refuge for people of all cultures,” healing the land heals us as well. Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is flourishing under the enthusiasm and hard work of its staff and hundreds of community volunteers. As the land is restored to health and productivity, the healing is reciprocal, creating a healthy, resilient Kalihi Valley community.[7]
Ho‘oulu ‘Āina’s beginnings go back to a decades-long land struggle between residents living at the back of the Valley and State and private interests that wanted to develop the property. One report on KKV activities describes the way that this community struggle and KKV’s program needs came together:
KKV was looking into various ideas, including community gardening activities at public housing projects, for how to make exercise a natural part of the daily life of patients and community members when a life-long Kalihi resident approached her doctor at KKV with the idea for a park.[8]
The desire/need of residents in the valley to protect the health of the land and the health of the people continues to guide Ho‘oulu ‘Āina. In 2005 KKV signed a 20-year lease with the State of Hawai‘i for the 100-acre parcel. The collective activities of the organization are effectively operationalizing transformative social relations relating to food production. These social relations are based in ʻŌiwi practices and protocol that also model anarchistic principles.
Working at Ho‘oulu ‘Āina is an example of anarcha-indigenism, a process grounded in indigenous practice and knowledge that models anarchist principles of fluid leadership and horizontal power.[9] I am most familiar with the social structure of the monthly community workdays but I would surmise based on a limited number of observations at the clinic, at the restaurant, and at the park that this horizontal leadership structure is present throughout the organization. At the community workday the garden staff hosts between 100 and 300 volunteers. It is common for the gathering to include school groups from across the island and visitors from across the globe. No matter the size of the group the day begins with an aloha circle to orient volunteers and staff to the day’s activities, which include a variety of gardening and forestry projects and preparing the mid-day meal for all participants. The community works for three hours and then re-convenes in a mahalo circle in which everyone has the opportunity to express something for which he or she is grateful. The day ends with a meal prepared from donations from the volunteers and food harvested from the garden. Volunteers are also encouraged to take home the day’s harvest. Food grown in the garden is also distributed to the elderly and others who have limited access to fresh vegetables and fruits as well as the restaurant operated by KKV.
According to Hoʻoulu ʻĀina’s project director, the park operates on the ʻōiwi economic principle of waiwai, a principle that associates wealth with abundance. Hoʻoulu ʻĀina provides opportunities for urban dwellers to experience the sustenance economy that is prevalent on Molokaʻi. Sharing and reciprocity are required activities.
Conclusion:
Does political organizing on Molokaʻi based in grounded normativity and practices at a health center in urban Honolulu based in anarcha-indigenism advance large=scale transformative social change?
Social change on a large scale that is sturdy enough to engender a paradigm shift comes out of small-scale practice. The modes of life on Molokaʻi and at Hoʻoulu ʻĀina are both grounded in their reciprocal relationship to a specific place as well as being conditioned by larger social issues. These two modes of life are their own paradigms — paradigms that turn away from the global hegemony of neoliberal capitalism.
The actors in both communities are engaged in a set of relationships that are key to building transformative social movements. These relationships come together in meaningful ways in the everyday practices of the people at Hoʻoulu ʻĀina and on Molokaʻi. They are elements of the ethical framework of grounded normativity and the practice of anarcha-indigenism.
These key relationships are:
| Place/Kinship |
Networks/Alliances |
| Resilience/Flexibility |
Responsibility/Reciprocity |
Large-scale transformation happens when small-scale practice converges in networks that recognize difference. There is evidence that these networks are forming globally with Idle No More, Occupy and Zapatista movements. These movements burst onto the regional then global public scene fueled by dramatic public displays of power. This notoriety has faded but the movements continue to inspire practice at the community level. In these communities participants are learning practices that create new place-based ethics which empower them to turn away from a state-based capitalist paradigm and towards a paradigm in which distinct place-based relationships thrive—a world in which many worlds exist.
Authors note: This is an essay I prepared for Uncovering The Politics Of Paradigm Shifts: Learning From Subaltern Movements And Indigenous Struggles, a roundtable discussion at the International Studies Association meeting in New Orleans February 2015.
[1] http://www.struggle.ws/mexico/ezln/jung4.html Accessed 1/15/15
[2] Mary L. Baker, “Challenging Imperial Capitalism: Sustainable Self-Determination Strategies on Molokai, Hawai`i” (University of Hawai’i, 2010); Mary “Tuti” Baker, “Resisting Neoliberal Capitalism: Sustainable Self-Determination on Moloka`i, Hawai`i,” International Journal of Critical Indigenous Studies 4, no. 1 (2011): 12–20.
[3] “Ka Honua Momona, Intl.,” accessed April 22, 2013, http://www.kahonuamomona.org/; Malia Akutagawa, “Restoring `Āina Momona and Sust `ĀINA Bility to the Earth | Sustainable Molokai,” accessed June 27, 2012, http://sustainablemolokai.org/restoring-aina-momona-and-sust-aina-bility-to-the-earth/.
[4] Personal communication from Walter Ritte, respected kupuna (elder) and opponent of Monsanto’s GMO seed corn operation.
[5] Glen Sean Coulthard, Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2014), 60. Emphasis in original.
[6] Jeff Acido, “KKV Honored with Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Construction Monies Today,” June 7, 2012.
[7] “Ho`oulu `Aina – Kokua Kalihi Valley,” accessed November 11, 2013, http://www.kkv.net/index.php/hooulu-aina.
[8] Institute for Alternative Futures, “Case Study: Kokua Kalihi Valley Comprehensive Family Services” (Institute for Alternative Futures, 2010), 3.
[9] Principles of anarcha-indigenism are developed in: Jackie Lasky, “Indigenism, Anarchism, Feminism: An Emerging Framework for Exploring Post-Imperial Futures,” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action 5, no. 1 (August 30, 2011), http://www.affinitiesjournal.org/index.php/affinities/article/view/72; Kathy Ferguson, “Becoming Anarchism, Feminism, Indigeneity,” Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture, and Action 5, no. 1 (August 30, 2011), http://www.affinitiesjournal.org/index.php/affinities/article/view/19; Richard J. F Day, “‘Anarcha-Indigenism’, an Edited Excerpt of a Conference Paper Presented by Richard J.F. Day,” VOID MIRROR, January 4, 2012, http://voidmirror.blogspot.com/2012/01/anarcha-indigenism-edited-excerpt-of.html. For other theorization of the intersection of indigenous political action and anarchism see Taiaiake Alfred, Wasáse: Indigenous Pathways of Action and Freedom (Peterborough, Ont: Broadview Press, 2005).
Incites for the week 