Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada – författare

An essential contribution to contemporary Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) scholarship, Moʻolelo: The Foundation of Hawaiian Knowledge elevates our understanding of the importance of language and narrative to cultural revitalization. Moʻolelo preserve the words, phrases, sentences, idioms, proverbs, and poetry that define Kānaka Maoli. Encompassing narratives, literature, histories, and traditions, moʻolelo are intimately entwined with cultural identity, reciprocal relationships, and the valuing of place, collectively informing and enriching all Hawaiian life. The contributors, all Kanaka Maoli scholars, artists, and advocates from across the Pae ʻĀina o Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian archipelago), all fluent in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language), describe how moʻolelo constantly inform their linguistic, literary, translation, rhetorical, and performance practices, as well as their political and cultural work. Chapters in ‘Ōlelo Hawaiʻi alternate with chapters in English, with translanguaging appearing when needed.Kamalani Johnson honors Larry Kauanoe Kimura’s commitment to the revitalization of ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi. Cover artist ʻAhukini Kupihea tells the story of his own creative process and uncovers the layers of meaning behind his artwork. Through careful analysis of nineteenth-century texts, R. Keawe Lopes, Jr., demonstrates the importance of moʻolelo and mele (song/poetic expression) preservation. Hiapo Perriera explores the profound relationship between moʻolelo and the resurgence of kākāʻōlelo (oratory). Kekuhi KealiʻikanakaʻoleoHaililani shares a methodology and praxis for engaging with moʻolelo. Highlighting the ideology of aloha ʻāina embedded in mele, Kahikina de Silva reveals themes of political resistance found in mele about food. Kaipulaumakaniolono Baker examines mele that archive key movements in Hawaiʻi’s history and employs contemporary practices to document current events. Tammy Hailiʻōpua Baker delineates the political implications of drawing on moʻolelo heritage in Kanaka Maoli theatre. kuʻualoha hoʻomanawanui focuses upon moʻolelo found in the politically conscious artwork of Kanaka Maoli wāhine (women) visual artists. Kamaoli Kuwada evaluates the difficulties and benefits of translation and stresses the importance of fluency. C. M. Kaliko Baker further demonstrates how fluency and comprehension of moʻolelo make it possible to retrieve essential empirical data on Hawaiian linguistic practice. Kalehua Krug takes us on his journey of learning to become a kākau mōlī (traditional tattoo artist). The essays together provide rich perspectives for Kānaka Maoli seeking to understand their pasts, to define who they are today, and to set their courses for desired and necessary futures.

An Ocean of Wonder: The Fantastic in the Pacific brings together fifty writers and artists from across Moananuiākea working in myriad genres across media, ranging from oral narratives and traditional wonder tales to creative writing as well as visual artwork and scholarly essays. Collectively, this anthology features the fantastic as present-day Indigenous Pacific world-building that looks to the past in creating alternative futures, and in so doing reimagines relationships between peoples, environments, deities, nonhuman relatives, history, dreams, and storytelling. Wonder is activated by curiosity, humility in the face of mystery, and engagement with possibilities. We see wonder and the fantastic as general modes of expression that arenot confined to realism. As such, the fantastic encompasses fantasy, science fiction, magic realism, fabulation, horror, fairy tale, utopia, dystopia, and speculative fiction. We include Black, feminist, and queer futurisms, Indigenous wonderworks, Hawaiian moʻolelo kamahaʻo and moʻolelo āiwaiwa, Sāmoan fāgogo, and other non-mimetic genres from specific cultures, because we recognize that their refusal to adopt restrictive Euro-American definitions of reality is whatinspires and enables the fantastic to flourish.As artistic, intellectual, and culturally based expressions that encode and embody Indigenous knowledge, the multimodal moʻolelo in this collection upend monolithic, often exoticizing, and demeaning stereotypes of the Pacific and situate themselves in conversation with critical understandings of the global fantastic, Indigenous futurities, social justice, and decolonial and activist storytelling.In this collection, Oceanic ideas and images surround and connect to Hawaiʻi, which is for the three coeditors, a piko (center); at the same time, navigating both juxtaposition and association, the collection seeks to articulate pilina (relationships) across genres, locations, time, and media and to celebrate the multiplicity and relationality of the fantastic in Oceania.

In The Mana of Translation: Translational Flow from the Baibala to the Mauna, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada makes visible the often unseen workings of translation in Hawaiʻi from the advent of Hawaiian alphabetic literacy to contemporary struggles over language and land. Translation has had a massive impact on Hawaiian history, both as it unfolded and how it came to be understood, yet it remains understudied in Hawaiian and Indigenous scholarship. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Kuwada examines illuminative instances of translation across the last two centuries through the analytic of mana unuhi, the mana (power/authority/branch/version) attained or given through translation. Translation has long been seen as a tool of colonialism, but examining history through mana unuhi demonstrates how Hawaiians used translation as a powerful tool to assert their own literary, cultural, and political sovereignty, something Hawaiians think of in terms of ea (life/breath/sovereignty/rising). Translation also gave mana to particular stories about Hawaiians—some empowering, others harmful—creating a clash of narratives that continue to this day. Drawing on sources in Hawaiian and English that span newspapers, letters and journals, religious and legal documents, missionary records, court transcripts, traditional stories, and more, this book makes legible the utility and importance of paying attention to mana unuhi in Hawaiʻi and beyond.Through chapters on translating the Hawaiian Bible, the role of translation in the Hawaiian Kingdom’s bilingual legal system, Hawaiians’ powerful deployment of translation in nineteenth-century nūpepa (newspapers), the early twentieth-century era of extractive scholarly translation, and the possibilities that come from refusing translation as demonstrated in legal proceedings related to the protection of Maunakea, Kuwada questions narratives about the inevitability of colonial victory and the idea that things can only be "lost in translation." Writing in an accessible yet rigorous style, Kuwada follows the flows of translation and its material practices to bring forth the power dynamics of languages and how these differential forces play out on ideological and political battlefields. Specifically rooted in Hawaiʻi yet broadly applicable to other colonial situations, The Mana of Translation provides us with a transformative new way of looking at Hawaiian history.

In The Mana of Translation: Translational Flow from the Baibala to the Mauna, Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada makes visible the often unseen workings of translation in Hawaiʻi from the advent of Hawaiian alphabetic literacy to contemporary struggles over language and land. Translation has had a massive impact on Hawaiian history, both as it unfolded and how it came to be understood, yet it remains understudied in Hawaiian and Indigenous scholarship. In an engaging and wide-ranging analysis, Kuwada examines illuminative instances of translation across the last two centuries through the analytic of mana unuhi, the mana (power/authority/branch/version) attained or given through translation. Translation has long been seen as a tool of colonialism, but examining history through mana unuhi demonstrates how Hawaiians used translation as a powerful tool to assert their own literary, cultural, and political sovereignty, something Hawaiians think of in terms of ea (life/breath/sovereignty/rising). Translation also gave mana to particular stories about Hawaiians—some empowering, others harmful—creating a clash of narratives that continue to this day. Drawing on sources in Hawaiian and English that span newspapers, letters and journals, religious and legal documents, missionary records, court transcripts, traditional stories, and more, this book makes legible the utility and importance of paying attention to mana unuhi in Hawaiʻi and beyond.Through chapters on translating the Hawaiian Bible, the role of translation in the Hawaiian Kingdom’s bilingual legal system, Hawaiians’ powerful deployment of translation in nineteenth-century nūpepa (newspapers), the early twentieth-century era of extractive scholarly translation, and the possibilities that come from refusing translation as demonstrated in legal proceedings related to the protection of Maunakea, Kuwada questions narratives about the inevitability of colonial victory and the idea that things can only be "lost in translation." Writing in an accessible yet rigorous style, Kuwada follows the flows of translation and its material practices to bring forth the power dynamics of languages and how these differential forces play out on ideological and political battlefields. Specifically rooted in Hawaiʻi yet broadly applicable to other colonial situations, The Mana of Translation provides us with a transformative new way of looking at Hawaiian history.