Remembering Our Intimacies

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.