Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai'i

by Candace Fujikane

In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, Candace Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital's fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing "wastelands" claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cartographies map the continuities of abundant worlds. Vital to restoration movements is the art of kilo, intergenerational observation of elemental forms encoded in storied histories, chants, and songs. As a participant in these movements, Fujikane maps the ecological lessons of these elemental forms: reptilian deities who protect the waterways, sharks who swim into the mountains, the navigator Maui who fishes up the islands, the deities of snow and mists on Mauna Kea. The laws of these elements are now being violated by toxic waste dumping, leaking military jet fuel tanks, and astronomical-industrial complexes. As Kanaka Maoli and their allies stand as land and water protectors, Fujikane calls for a profound attunement to the elemental forms in order to transform climate events into renewed possibilities for planetary abundance.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Academic, Anthropology, Environment

304 pages, Hardcover

First published March 12, 2021

About the author

Candace Fujikane is Professor of English at the University of Hawai‘i and coeditor of Asian Settler Colonialism: From Local Governance to the Habits of Everyday Life in Hawai‘i.

Reviews

[C · Rating 5 out of 5]

This really was a book I needed to read, and one I hope anybody looking to learn about Hawaiʻi will read. Fujikane does an amazing job of really showing us what colonization has wrought, what the concrete has covered and erased, while also showing that colonization is reversible and stoppable, climate change mitigable: dry riverbeds can have the waters brought back, the fish can populate the loko iʻa (fish ponds) again, we can learn from the kūpuna (ancestors, elders) and kānaka who deeply knew/know and took/take care of the ʻāina (land), and people can stop evictions of kānaka ʻōiwi from their homelands and stop the desecration of Mauna a Wākea. The two chapters in this book on Mauna Kea are really incredible and greatly inform a reader on what the settler state and media won't acknowledge.

Knowledge of the ʻāina and so much more has been recorded in moʻolelo (hi/stories [spelling from Brandy Nālani McDougall's Finding Meaning]), some only available currently in Hawaiian, and some like Keaomelemele and Hiʻiakaikapoliopele available in translation. In this way, Fujikane's literary, social, and political economic natural moʻolelo of Hawaiʻi reads really well when paired with those two moʻolelo and with Brandy McDougall's book Finding Meaning: Kaona and Contemporary Hawaiian Literature.

Looking forward to reading Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio's Remembering Our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea and Marie Alohalani Brown's Ka Poʻe Moʻo Akua: Hawaiian Reptillian Water Deities after having read this and McDougall's book.

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF. I enjoyed much of it, but found it more theory than exposition which made it slow going. I was going to work on it over the semester but now that it’s winter break I don’t see me going through and finishing it up.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

A boldly optimistic take on the end of late stage capitalism learning from kanaka maoli abundance.

[Yisu Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

原住民视角的夏威夷制图史。了不起的艺术，也追溯了一些原初关于大地和宇宙的概念。反现代化和反资本的论述；这方面写得过于抽象，说服力欠佳。

[Valerie]

great insights. my reading experience would have been immensely improved by the inclusion of a glossary