Pure Manaʻo

Source: Meyer, M. (2013). Holographic epistemology: Native common sense. China Media Research 9 (2), pp. 94-101.  What is Sacred: First, Manulani Aluli Meyer is my mentor. She helped me to formulate my masters thesis at the University of Hawaiʻi Hilo before she left to do work in Aotearoa. The fact that we are both at the University of Hawaiʻi West Oʻahu at this time cannot be circumstance or chance. Therefore, I continue to work with her and I continue to learn with her as part of my own journey toward conscientization (Friere). She is one who speaks in prophecy so it is not always simple to interpret, but this article keeps giving me pause. My understanding is right at the edge. Perhaps I need to first break down my mis-understandings before I can move to connection.  The title is holographic epistemology. As an English teacher who is really a poor reader, I always need to break things down into familiar terms. In other words, I need to make "maps" of languag...

Source: Waitere, H. & Johnston, P. (2009). Echoed silences: In abstentia: Mana wahine in institutional contexts. Women’s Studies Journal, 23 (2), 14-31. I am labeling this article as source material and at this point, at this time, this article is here for a purpose, as source material for me to contemplate, to cite and to write in response to. The notes therefore, look crazy. I am breaking protocol and revealing my true writing process that is messy and disorganized. I am not an outline person. I always felt that English teachers who made me write outlines first were just being mean and trying to punish me for writing and collecting source material like this. It's a good thing I outwitted them by writing my outline last to comply while still doing things my own way. What is Sacred AND Connection to Current and Future Work: “Putting the onus on indigenous peoples to speak, then, without a concurrent focus on the social conditions that afford a hearing, in effe...

Source: Ah Nee-Benham, M. (2016). From the Dean. In K. R. Oliveira & E. K. Wright (Eds.), Kanaka ʻōiwi methodologies  (pp. vii-viii). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. What is Sacred :  This is a two-page introduction to a book I am reading every day until I am done, but I am reading this because Maenette Ah Nee-Benham's name keeps coming up this month in different conversations so I am following some of her writing and she is currently the dean for Hawaiʻinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at Mānoa, but there are rumors that she is on a short list for something closer to me. I last wrote about her on Day 4 , again just an introduction. I hope I am not following a pattern here.  the authors contributing to this book have intentionally engaged in learning, exploring, and teaching through stories. This very courageous act of framing and articulating knowledge regenerates ritual (knowledge and wisdom of ceremony), responsibility (role and oblig...

Time to an Indigenous woman has to do with efficiency - the close management of time as a precious commodity, like water. I only know this because I was raised by my grandmother, a pure Hawaiian woman who could not keep still. Instead of watching us ride our bikes on the side of the road in Lahaina, Maui, she would pick up a coconut frond that fell down and start sweeping the bike path. When we played in the waves at Sand Box, she would be scouring the beach for shells and beach glass, hardened plastic beach toys that she would gather up and take back with us for her shell garden alongside her house.  So I see my need to zone out, to just stare at Netflix mindlessly or read a book on my iPad as a waste of time. Is it Western to waste time or just moloā (lazy)? It is now 10:12 p.m. and I belittle myself for wasting the day. There is so much left to do. I have articles to write, a syllabus to complete, reservations to make, research to do. I forget that I graded all of my pa...