Living Genealogies: Embodiment and Colonialism in the Creation of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park

In this dynamic new analysis of colonialism and empire, Susan Y. Najita centers indigenous knowledge and embodied practice. This brings into clear focus the disruptions to creational and life-giving relationships between people, the more-than-human, and the environment. Living Genealogies focuses on the colonizing processes that led to the establishment of Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on one of the most sacred places in the Pacific, the home of Pele, goddess of fire. Colonization works by severing ties to sacred life-giving places maintained through kinship and mutual thriving. In bringing together disparate fields of study―the volcano, the overthrow and annexation, and leprosy―with the embodied practice of sacred hula, Najita shows how genealogy is the basis for both critique and decolonial praxis. Reading the epic tale of Pele and her sister Hi'iaka-i-ka-poli-o-Pele teaches us about what Najita calls genealogics, the connections that structure the reciprocal care and nurturing that form the basis of vibrant health of generations of living communities over time. In the end, Najita argues, we can look to this relationship of repair and mutuality as an answer to our wider health and environmental crises.