Kū Kiaʻi Aloha: Protecting Maunakea and Birthing Decolonial intimacy in an Emerging Generation of Aloha ʻĀina Activists
October 13, 2021 | 4:00 – 5:00 pm PST
Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist/ activist / scholar born and raised in Pālolo Valley to parents Jonathan and Mary Osorio. Heoli earned her PhD in English (Hawaiian literature) in 2018 from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Currently, Heoli is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Heoli is a three-time national poetry champion, poetry mentor and a published author. She is a proud past Kaiāpuni student, Ford fellow, and a graduate of Kamehameha, Stanford University (BA) and New York University (MA). Her book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea is forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press in Fall 2021.
Abstract: Native Hawaiians are in a multi generational battle to protect sacred sites and practice self determination. The recent iterations of the fight to protect Mauna a Wākea from further white supremacist and capitalist encroachment by the state has transformed modern Hawaiian (and Indigenous) resistance and resurgence. This presentation will focus directly on how these emerging movements are born out of and strengthened by an intimate return to indigenous moʻolelo (histories) and ʻike (knowledges) which is transforming the very nature of what is possible in the building of Decolonial futures.