Island Natives

This paper argues that director Dutilleux, while well intentioned, does not actually fight for the preservation of the Toulambi community. In truth, he is fighting for the rights of an inaccurate and dehumanizing construct of the Toulambi identity.

As wondrous lands are represented as “wastelands” to make way for urban and industrial development in Hawaiʻi, kūpuna or elders and cultural practitioners are currently building a movement across the islands to mobilize moʻolelo (stories and histories) in huakaʻi aloha ʻāina, (physical and spiritual travels to view and remember celebrated and sacred places) in order to protect them.  On these huakaʻi, moʻolelo have critical decolonial effects as they articulate an ʻŌiwi moʻoʻāina economy of abundance that restores “wastelands” to ʻāina kamahaʻo (wondrous land) and ʻāina momona (abundant land).  In this essay, I focus on a 2010 community struggle to protect the birthplace of the kupua (supernatural hero) Māui in Lualualei valley from a developer’s proposal for a light industrial park. The Concerned Elders of Waiʻanae organized the Huakaʻi Kākoʻo no Waiʻanae environmental justice bus tours to share the Māui moʻolelo and build a broad base of support for their struggles, enabling wonder to grow into direct action.  I discuss the ways that Indigenous and critical settler cartographies map the wonder of the Māui moʻolelo on the ground, and I look to narrative conventions of moʻolelo that compare and connect distant places, helping to grow affinity activism.

This paper will study the ancient climate recollections in the archives of societies. We review the emerging study of ethnic climate recollections and define the discipline of ethnoclimatology with its practical aims. We then proceed to work out to prove this concepts through the various examples of how very early climate recollections can be retrieved from the meristic or material archives of societies. We look at figurativeallegorical, or literal-factual sources, and then proceed to work out their practical value for our research field to understand how the ancient people experienced and recorded climate changes. We recognize that besides our sister science ethnobotany, there are ten other major related disciplines that link with ethnoclimatology such as: ethnomycology, ethnozoology, ethnogeography, ethnogeology, ethnobiology, ethnohistory, ethnochemistry, ethnoastronomy, ethnomedicine, and ethnopsychology. Some ideas are often disputable and highly controversial their findings, conclusions and discoveries can be subjected to scientific fact-finding enquiry and ultimately become the basis of above-listed ethnosciences proper. This applies from claimed botanical healing properties to the ethnic claims made about past climates, which is the area this paper focuses on. We use ethnic material and ethnoscientific methodologies from related fields to help us understand the setting in which any particular subtype of ethnoclimatology might have emerged. Our study incorporates research findings from numerous fields of modern science to reach its scientific conclusions.

Ethnoclimatology will initially proceed with hypothesis to propose a perception of ancient people what climate and its associated environments were understood at the time (whether or not the described climate was a real one or a fictitious one) and this enquiry - if desired - can then later be expanded from positivist-neutral statement to prescriptive-normative policy to propose climate actions on basis of aforesaid ethnoclimatology.

Conferencia Mundial de los Pueblos sobre el Cambio Climático y los Derechos de la Madre Tierra 1 (CMPCC 1) also known as the Cochabamba - Tiquipaya Climate Summit which convened in Bolivia between 19-22 April 2010 in the aftermath of the failed Copenhagen Summit (COP15) where Southern Nations, Small Island States, and Indigenous Peoples representatives discussed their response to the UN Conference of Parties (COP) process.  I presented an update on the investigation request by the First Nations of the Americas to the United Nations' General Assembly (UNGA101292) that was also the closing plea of the opening proceedings of the first United Nations Year of Indigenous Peoples (1993) in the immediate aftermath of the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit that had established the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its annual UN Conference of Parties road show.

Desde mediados del siglo XVI se vinculó la bahía de Matanzas con el sitio de los hechos -Guanima-, pero no fue hasta el siglo XIX cuando se fundieron las versiones del relato como historia y se sobre impuso la localidad de la aldea aborigen “Yucayo” sobre la ciudad de Matanzas. Ello ha conllevado a recrear un paisaje o tradición históri-ca que carece de fundamento científico, considera-do así por algunos investigadores ya desde el siglo XIX. En esta ocasión exponemos algunos de los puntos y problemas sobre la instalación del mítico poblado de “Yucayo” en la ciudad de Matanzas, desde la panorámica de la arqueología aborigen y urbana.Todas las suposiciones que componen el relato tradicional de los supuestos eventos resultan cuestionables por la falta de coincidencia de los documentos primarios y el alto nivel de distorsión que ha sufrido a través del tiempo (Orihuela y Viera, en prep.). ¿Pero se ha encontrado evidencia arqueológica en la ciudad o sus alrededores que compruebe o refute remotamente la hipótesis de la existencia del alegado poblado aborigen al tiempo de la conquista que pueda identificarse como “Yucayo”? Esta es la pregunta que intentamos responder aquí.

This paper takes as its starting point a definition of islands that goes beyond geographical isolation to consider islands as social constructs insofar as they reflect feelings of isolation, separateness, distinctiveness and otherness. Nowhere is this truer than in the case of the ‘dry’ island, an island that although once surrounded by water has long since lost its physical isolation due to changes in sea level and drainage patterns. Taking the Isle of Ely in the fens of East Anglia in the United Kingdom between AD 1200-1600 as a case study, and utilising archaeological evidence for diet and for the local Ely ware pottery, it is possible to reconstruct a cognitive mappa, which describes the perception of islandness amongst the island’s medieval inhabitants.

Waipiʻo Valley Towards Community Planning, and Ahupuaʻa Management - Phase II, Planning Practicum Fall 2001. Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, Honolulu, Hawaiʻi.

Jennifer Bethel, Marissa Furfaro Phyllis Maike-Ganileo, Nilka Julio, Kimberly Mills, Kenneth Roberts, Stephen Roberts, and Ellyn Tong. Luciano Minerbi, Faculty Participant, co-editor and PI. Wiwik Bunjamin, RA.

Abstract
This study is the continuation of the previous one of 1999 by the same title, it explore the same themes in more depth including spatial analysis using GIS mapping.
Access to Waipiʻo Valley is one of the most contentious issues within the valley. Inquiry into the historical ownership and current laws for the roads has uncovered some key answers, but the research has not been exhaustive and further research is needed because of the complexity of land tenure and Native Hawaiian land rights.
Waipiʻo Valley is rich in known and yet undiscovered very important historical and cultural resources that are in direct need of care and restoration. Supportive programs need to be established to ensure these unique resources are preserved. In return, these resources will help to uplift the study of Hawaiian culture for all practitioners on all islands and beyond.
Tourism needs to integrate the values of environment, economy, and community to discover limited operational levels that are sustainable and practical in this valley.  The Community Circle of Waipiʻo Valley has started in this endeavor to heal old wounds and establishing networks that will drive the community to help it find opportunities by which to heal.
Waipiʻo is a leading force in taro cultivation. Through technical expertise from outside help, Waipiʻo can overcome some barriers that in the past have not allowed the valley to realize its potential for conservation and taro cultivation.
Culture is dependent upon natural resource tools that are used in cultural practices. If Waipiʻo is to become a sustainable wahi pana, noted celebrated place, organized restoration of its cultural and natural resources needs to be accomplished.
A long-term comprehensive stream management plan needs to be facilitated by community-based processes. Non-mechanized, nature based, and community driven activities should be incorporated into the plan.
Field-work for this project was supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Conservation Service (USDOA/NRCS). The project was a planning technical assistance to the Waipiʻo Valley Community Council (WVCC), facilitated by Friends of the Future, a local CBO.  The WVCC was a pioneering community participatory process that anticipated, as a model, the community development plan action committee meetings later organized by the County of Hawaiʻi in providing input to its district planning process.

'Islands in Flux' is a compilation of writings on key issues and developments in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over the last two decades. Written by Pankaj Sekhsaria, one of the islands' best known and most consistent chroniclers of contemporary issues, it features information, insight and perspective related to the environment, wildlife conservation, development and the indigenous communities of these islands. The book provides an important account that is relevant both for the present and the future of these beautiful and fragile but also very volatile island chain. It is both a map of the region as well as a framework for the way forward, and essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of our world.

'In this update of his earlier book on the Andamans, Sekhsaria demonstrates his unwavering commitment to chronicling the life and times of these beautiful but endangered islands. Few environmental journalists in the country have tracked one area so perceptively. This book is a testimony to his dedication.'
- Darryl D’monte

The book is available in stores and via amazon: http://tinyurl.com/y9pnz9ml

My commentary and extensive bibliography on 'Human Geography and Islands'.

In 'Oxford Bibliographies'. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/OBO/9780199874002-0230

https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199874002/obo-9780199874002-0230.xml?rskey=dDYf0u&result=1&q=pugh#firstMatch

Once on the periphery of international debate, today small islands are seen by many as key to unlocking new ways of thinking about climate change and developing new practices of adaptation in the epoch of the Anthropocene. These approaches differ starkly from modernist, linear, causal frameworks that construct islands as vulnerable objects that require 'saving' or 'protecting'. Instead, islands become instruments of productive knowledge, laboratories for investigation and learning, fundamental to an alternative, correlational, epistemology. In analysing these approaches, we take the prolific trope of islands as the 'canaries in the coalmine' in order to draw out the ontological implications of instrumentalising islands as 'correlational machines' in the Anthropocene. We raise fundamental problems with this literal instrumentalisation of islands and islanders, drawing out how these logics reduce island life to merely sensing and attuning to the co-relational entanglements of the Anthropocene, rather than offering higher normative aspirations for political change.

In 1827, Captain Beechey arrived at what are known today as the Ogasawara Islands and quickly claimed the islands for Britain by attaching a copper plaque to a tree on Peel Island, or present-day Chichijima Island. However, this claim was later complicated by a Japanese assertion of earlier possession. In this article, I trace the provenance of the Beechey Plaque demonstrating that, although the plaque was a powerful tool of sovereign claim over the Bonin Islands, its significance soon diminished and it became merely an object of curiosity shuffled around various private and public collections. However, I argue that the plaque requires greater recognition and attention because it was used as a symbol of sovereign claim that led to some of the earliest Anglo-Japanese diplomatic interactions and Japan’s first negotiations over sovereign territorial claim with the West. Moreover, the plaque represents a territorial assertion by Britain that pinpoints the common origin for the transnational pasts of the descendants of early settlers on the main island of the Osagawara archipelago, Chichijima.

Hei is the Hawaiian tradition of string figure making that is unlike the western tradition of cat's cradle and is more closely related to the dance tradition of my people. Our dance tradition, hula, is poetry based and conveys the thoughts, visions, and prophecies of that poetry through chant accompanied by hand, face, and body gesture and movements that are employed to interpret the essentials of the story being told or remembered.

'Islands in Flux' is a compilation of writings on key issues and developments in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over the last two decades. Written by Pankaj Sekhsaria, one of the islands' best known and most consistent chroniclers of contemporary issues, it features information, insight and perspective related to the environment, wildlife conservation, development and the indigenous communities of these islands. The book provides an important account that is relevant both for the present and the future of these beautiful and fragile but also very volatile island chain. It is both a map of the region as well as a framework for the way forward, and essential reading for anyone who cares about the future of our world.

'In this update of his earlier book on the Andamans, Sekhsaria demonstrates his unwavering commitment to chronicling the life and times of these beautiful but endangered islands. Few environmental journalists in the country have tracked one area so perceptively. This book is a testimony to his dedication.'
- Darryl D’monte

The book is available in stores and via amazon: http://tinyurl.com/y9pnz9ml

The recently released book, Islands in Flux, is a compilation of writings on key issues and developments in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over the last two decades. Coral reefs that are usually below the water completely exposed, after the earthquake and tsunami Chennai: Islands in Flux is a culmination of Pankaj Sekhsaria's journalistic and research-based writing about the Andaman and Nicobar Islands over the last two decades. The attempt is to bring together the wide range of experiences, issues and challenges that constitute the islands, the three main dimensions of which are the histories of the human communities here, the ecological diversity and fragility of the unique island chain, and the constant geologic and tectonic activity that is very much part of life here. " These are subjects I have been writing about since the mid-90s for a range of English publications in India and I realised that there is a considerably vast terrain that these articles have covered. In many contexts, these writings continue to be relevant today, even as the issues they deal with are very interesting. So, Islands in Flux is not one narrative; the idea was precisely to show that there are multiple narratives and stories and all of them are important and relevant in different ways. And this becomes particularly important because of the specific vulnerabilities of the islands — one of the issues that was raised, for instance, during the Home Minister's recent visit to the islands was related to compensation for land and other losses suffered by people here during the cataclysmic earthquake and tsunami of December 2004. A simultaneous demand was for relaxation of Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ) norms because these are coming in the way of Forgotten tale of the Andamans...

The book is available in stores and via amazon: http://tinyurl.com/y9pnz9ml