Reimagining for our children: Aloha ‘āina in higher education

Abstract

Aloha ‘āina is at the core of a Hawaiian belief system that has guided Native Hawaiians to live sustainably with their natural environment for generations. However, 125 years of the illegal occupation of Hawai‘i by the USA has led to an intentional drift away from aloha ‘āina. Today, the University of Hawai‘i, the only public system of higher education in Hawai‘i, can have a great role in reintegrating aloha ‘āina into not only the academy but also the community for reasons of both social and environmental justices. This chapter looks at core tenets of as well as pathways to aloha ‘āina in the academy and ultimately for our communities. The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM) is predominantly non-Hawaiian by every definition. At the same time, it is situated upon and reaps the resources from the Native Hawaiian land and natural resources: ancestors of the Native Hawaiian people. Therefore, while UHM has been predominantly non-Hawaiian for its 110-year history, the foundation upon which it sits and the ancestral memory that surrounds it along with the Native Hawaiian people who continue to work for social justice in their homeland have the potential to transform UHM into a Hawaiian place of learning. This chapter will explore how this is possible using core Native Hawaiian concepts, values, and practices. Because Hawai‘i is an unrecognized nation that suffered from an illegal occupation in the late 1800s, the belief system that survived for thousands of years has been heavily influenced by outside power systems and settler colonialism. The university represents a Western canon of belief systems and relegates Native Hawaiian epistemologies to a second-class status. This chapter outlines the history of knowledge and the role of the university and reimagines higher education rooted in the belief systems of the first peoples of these pacific islands.