Important Dates

Abstract

This talk discusses grassroots “Intercommunalism” through the Hawaiian example of Aloha ‘Āina (“love of the land”) and a Philippines/Austronesian archipelagic engagement with Indigenous relationality and solidarity in Hawai’i. Emphasizing non-state and anti-nationalist solidarities, the framework of Intercommunalism – instead of Internationalism – offers an interrogation of the rigidity of nation-states or borders and through flows of post-/colonial migrations across territories and waters. Global South syncretisms voiced within European academia and community-organizing spaces for climate justice transport a harmony (or cacophony) of place-based narratives and spiritual ecologies on the move, assertive against Eurocentric or colonial appropriations of knowledge.

Land is not only land, it is also waters, relations, and spirit, but what does this mean for migrants in diaspora and our engagement in multiethnic community-building? How is reflecting on positionality essential to enacting ethical relationality and reciprocity, without decentering place or tokenizing Indigenous narratives? What does “Traditional Ecological Knowledge” mean when institutionalized or removed from its cultural storytellers?

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