Wai? Indigenous Words and Ideas

This episode introduces an idea Dr. Hafoka and I have been working through and developing, inspired by and extending out of the undercommons. We reflect on intellectuals that remain connected to home communities or who emerge organically from communities. We also consider the re-framing of study as common knowledge or as a shared and subversive project grounded in the Black Radical Tradition, which is revealed in the multiple embodied identities we traverse. Undercommons/Undercurrents examples include the social networks of knowledge and even (im)material economic support that occur within marginalised communities based in their relationships that strive for liberation. We spend time focused on Hafoka’s personal and academic work with Kakai Tonga (Tongans) in the airline industry, which broadens the view of Moana-Oceanic and Tonga peoples beyond dominant narratives. This unique presence in this industry has also facilitated a space where cultural values are nurtured, enacted, and spread including the perpetual cultivation of a collective relational consciousness. The undercurrents is in one sense a synthesis of the undercommons with Moana-Oceania relational ethics that is introduced in this talanoa (discussion/dialogue/storying).   Additional references that further add context and insights to this episode can be found in the following resources: The Undercommons – Fugitive Planning and Black Study https://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf [https://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf] From Navigating the Seas to Navigating the Skies:Unloading Tongan Knowledge through the Undercurrents of Airline Employment in the Ano Māsima https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0hn2p9kd [https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0hn2p9kd] Knew World Undercurrents https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365768129_Knew_World_Undercurrents [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/365768129_Knew_World_Undercurrents]

This episode begins with a reflection on this podcast project reaching its 50th episode. I share some additional background and future plans, including some of the symbolism behind the WAI logo. This episode introduces some ideas from the article, Indigeneity as a Post-Apocalyptic Genealogical Metaphor [https://www.mdpi.com/2313-5778/8/3/121], which explores the metaphysics of indigeneity - Indigenous metaphysics through a global Indigenous consciousness. In conclusion, a diverse range of Indigenous experiences are presented in the constellation of Indigeneities identified as Elder/Local, Continental/Regional, Diasporic, Creole, Born-Again, Global/Trans-Indigenous, which are described in the artice, A Wīnak Perspective on Cosmovisíon Maya and Eco-Justice Education [https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/mayaamerica/vol6/iss2/5/]. Terms: Yamanik (Green Stone/Jade in K’iche’-Maya), Hoa/Soa (Partner/Companion – Pair in lea faka-Tonga and gagana Sāmoa). References mentioned or inspirational to this episode: ‘Tongan Hoa: Inseparable yet indispensable pairs/binaries [https://lir.byuh.edu/index.php/pacific/issue/view/293]’, by Lear, Māhina-Tuai, Vaka, Ka’ili, & Māhina Pasifika Webinar Series: Signature Event [https://youtu.be/WQqjuf2K8cw?si=0t0MnhbOxV4a2-VD] featuring Dr. Tēvita O. Ka’ili The Polynesian Iconoclasm [https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/SissonsPolynesian] by Jeffrey Sissons Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2514848618777621?journalCode=enea] by Kyle P. Whyte Naming, A Coming Home: Latinidad and Indigeneity in the Settler Colony [https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/decentering-the-us/naming-a-coming-home-latinidad-and-indigeneity-in-the-settler-colony] by Flori Boj Lopez The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean [https://nyupress.org/9781583676639/the-apocalypse-of-settler-colonialism/] by Gerald Horne The Black Shoals: Offshore Formations of Black and Native Studies [https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-black-shoals] by Tiffany Lethabo King The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses [https://ou.edu/content/dam/Education/documents/the%20university%20and%20the%20undercommons.pdf] by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study [https://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/undercommons-web.pdf] by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten The Empty Wagon: Zionism’s journey from identity crisis to identity theft [https://www.eichlers.com/the-empty-wagon-zionism-s-journey-from-identity-crisis-to-identity-theft-cis590.html] by Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness [https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674076068] by Paul Gilroy Creole Indigeneity: Between Myth and Nation in the Caribbean [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816677764/creole-indigeneity/] by Shona N. Jackson Sovereign Embodiment: Native Hawaiians and Expressions of Diasporic Kuleana [https://kamehamehapublishing.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2020/09/Hulili_Vol11_12.pdf] by Kēhaulani Vaughn Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9780816678198/trans-indigenous/] by Chadwick Allen

This episode seeks to share an understanding of coloniality as a global system by engaging with the Matrix film series franchise, focusing on the initial trilogy. The Matrix trilogy is applied as a metaphor to build critical consciousness of coloniality, settler-colonialism, and Indigeneity, while also exploring other social constructions. This compliments an early episode on modernity and Indigeneity and confronts the world as we know it.   References: Liliana Conlisk Gallegos – Thinking Coloniality of Power Tedx Jack Forbes – Columbus and Other Cannibals Sylvia Wynter – Unsettling the Coloniality of Being Nelson Maldonado-Torres – On the Coloniality of Being; Against War Anibal Quijano – Coloniality of Power Maria Lugones – Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System Ty Tengan – (En)gendering Colonialism The Red Nation Afropessimism – Frank Wilderson III John Trudell - Trudell David Graeber and David Wengrow – The Dawn of Everything

This episode focuses on ideas about critical thinking in systems of power. Topics include critical pedagogy, critical consciousness, belief, agnotology (study of ignorance), and aesthetics as ethics. Concepts mentioned include the banality of evil and the illusory effect with pop culture references to the films Don’t Look Up and The Lorax as well as the TV Series Barbaren (Barbarians). The reflection shared draws on historical perspectives and contexts to thoughtful questioning and remembering.   References mentioned include: Agustín Fuentes - Why We Believe, 2019. Lewis R. Gordon, Fear of Black consciousness, 2022. Simon Frith, Music and Identity, 1996. George Gmelch, Baseball Magic, 1971. Robert N. Proctor and Londa Schiebinger, Agnotology: The making and unmaking of ignorance, 2008. Adrienne Mayor, Suppression of Indigenous Fossil Knowledge, 2008. Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 2002. John Trudell, Trudell (2005); DNA:Descendant Now Ancestor (2001). Ty Kāwika Tengan, (En)gendering Colonialism: Masculinities in Hawai‘i and Aotearoa, 2002. Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 2005. Henry Giroux, On Critical Pedagogy, 2011. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951. Elizabeth Ellsworth, Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy, 1989. Alison Jones, The Limits of Cross-Cultural Dialogue: Pedagogy, Desire, and Absolution in the Classroom, 1999.

Lana Lopesi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon interested in Indigenous and Women of Colour Feminisms, Contemporary Art, and Global Indigeneities. We begin this episode by reflecting on both of our recent shifts in social and political context moving from Aotearoa-New Zealand to the continental United States. This episode covers terms and the differences of scale across societies, feminisms including Sāmoan perspectives, and an analysis of various systems of power from the macro level to the internal. We conclude with a reflection on ideas, community impact, as well as consider cultural values and their entanglements within an assumed system of morality, which is gendered in particular ways.   Bloody Woman [https://www.bwb.co.nz/books/bloody-woman/] by Lana Lopesi.   Terms: Karanga (a formal or ceremonial call); karakia (ritual chant, say grace), Nafanua (Guardian/Patron/Goddess of War), Salamasina (15th century paramount who held all four district titles as Tafa‘ifa), Vā Moana [https://www.vamoana.org/about], Kaukalaikiiki/Tautalaitiiti (‘to speak above one’s age’, impudent, cheeky).