Ancestry of Experience : : A Journey into Hawaiian Ways of Knowing / / Leilani Holmes; ed. by David K. Yoo, Russell Leong.

As Hawaiians continue to recover their language and culture, the voices of kupuna (elders) are heard once again in urban and rural settings, both in Hawai'i and elsewhere. How do kupuna create knowledge and "tell" history? What do they tell us about being Hawaiian? Adopted by a Midwes...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Superior document:Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter UHP eBook Package 2000-2013
VerfasserIn:
HerausgeberIn:
Place / Publishing House:Honolulu : : University of Hawaii Press, , [2012]
©2012
Year of Publication:2012
Language:English
Online Access:
Physical Description:1 online resource (248 p.) :; 33 illustrations
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Other title:Frontmatter --
Acknowledgments --
Contents --
Photos --
Preface --
Introduction --
1. Searching Through Texts Texting Memory --
2. Viewfinders View from Outside --
3. Dig Up Our Voices Kalo and Her 'Ohana --
4. We Will Manifest Aunty Limu and Aunty Lau --
5. Place of Confluence Tūtū 'Ōhi'a and the Kā'ai --
6. The Ancestry of Experience: Ha'ina the Experience of Ancestry: Kaona --
Conclusion Bones and Voices --
Appendix A Cast of Characters --
Appendix B A Hula for Aunty Mena --
Notes --
Glossary --
References --
Index
Summary:As Hawaiians continue to recover their language and culture, the voices of kupuna (elders) are heard once again in urban and rural settings, both in Hawai'i and elsewhere. How do kupuna create knowledge and "tell" history? What do they tell us about being Hawaiian? Adopted by a Midwestern couple in the 1950s as an infant, Leilani Holmes spent much of her early life in settings that offered no clues about her Hawaiian past-images of which continued to haunt her even as she completed a master's thesis on Hawaiian music and identity in southern California. Ancestry of Experience documents Holmes' quest to reclaim and understand her own origin story. Holmes writes in two different and at times incongruent voices-one describing the search for her genealogy, the other critiquing Western epistemologies she encounters along the way. In the course of her journey, she finds that Hawaiian oral tradition links identity to the land ('aina) through ancestry, while traditional, scholarly theories of knowing (particularly political economy and the discourse of the invention of tradition) textually obliterate land and ancestry. In interviews with kupuna, Holmes learns of the connectedness of spirituality and 'aina; through her study and practice of hula kahiko comes an understanding of ancient hula as a conversation between 'aina and the dancer's body that has the power to activate historical memory. Holmes' experience has special relevance for indigenous adoptees and indigenous scholars: Both are distanced from the knowledge agendas and strategies of their communities and are tasked to speak in languages ill-suited to the telling of their own stories and those of their ancestors. In addition to those with an interest in Hawaiian knowledge and culture, Ancestry of Experience will appeal to readers of memoirs of identity, academic and personal accounts of racial identity formation, and works of indigenous epistemologies. A website (www.ancestryofexperience.com) will include supplementary material.
Format:Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
ISBN:9780824837723
9783110564143
9783110663259
DOI:10.1515/9780824837723
Access:restricted access
Hierarchical level:Monograph
Statement of Responsibility: Leilani Holmes; ed. by David K. Yoo, Russell Leong.