Remembering Our Intimacies: Mo'olelo, Aloha 'Aina, and Ea

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Recovering Knaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) relationality and belonging in the land, memory, and body of Native Hawaii

Hawaiian aloha ina is often described in Western political termsnationalism, nationhood, even patriotism. In Remembering Our Intimacies, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio centers in on the personal and embodied articulations of aloha ina to detangle it from the effects of colonialism and occupation. Working at the intersections of Hawaiian knowledge, Indigenous queer theory, and Indigenous feminisms, Remembering Our Intimacies seeks to recuperate Native Hawaiian concepts and ethics around relationality, desire, and belonging firmly grounded in the land, memory, and the body of Native Hawaii.

Remembering Our Intimacies argues for the methodology of (re)membering Indigenous forms of intimacies. It does so through the metaphor of a upenaa net of intimacies that incorporates the variety of relationships that exist for Knaka Maoli. It uses a close reading of the moolelo (history and literature) of Hiiakaikapoliopele to provide context and interpretation of Hawaiian intimacy and desire by describing its significance in Knaka Maoli epistemology and why this matters profoundly for Hawaiian (and other Indigenous) futures.

Offering a new approach to understanding one of Native Hawaiians most significant values, Remembering Our Intimacies reveals the relationships between the policing of Indigenous bodies, intimacies, and desires; the disembodiment of Indigenous modes of governance; and the ongoing and ensuing displacement of Indigenous people.

Reviews

"A stunning example of archival research, translation, and analysis, Remembering Our Intimacies is both a khea (call) and makana (gift), a truly inspiring offering to the lhui and the fields of Native and queer studies. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio innovatively theorizes how Knaka Maoli create multiple forms of pilina (intimacy) to manifest the responsibilities and possibilities of collective pleasure. This is the moolelo that queer Natives have been waiting for."Lani Teves, author of Defiant Indigeneity: The Politics of Hawaiian Performance

"With a fearless commitment to land-based love, Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio channels the multi-bodied powers of Hiiaka to cast an intimate yet expansive net of relating that reaches across geography, generation, and gender. Poetically moving from Hawaiian language archives to Mauna movement memories, this book creates both a refuge for queer Indigenous politics and a map for remembered futures."Ty P. Kwika Tengan, University of Hawaii at Mnoa

"[Remembering Our Intimacies] generously offers all readers a way to imagine intimate relations beyond the settler-capitalist constructions of land as property and love as patriarchy."Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association

Author Bio

Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is assistant professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian politics at the University of Hawaii at Mnoa, as well as an award-winning poet, musician, and a lifelong activist.