Sea and Space
Development of a Comprehensive Index for Beaches
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Estefania Basurto
Beaches are intricate social-ecological systems with natural and socio-cultural components, providing protective, recreational, and ecological functions. Given their economic benefits and the diverse ecosystem services they offer, beaches require comprehensive management for sustainable use and user well-being. While established tourist destinations often implement monitoring systems focused on physical parameters like water quality and safety, these approaches can be expensive and overlook the system's complexity. Most beaches lack comprehensive monitoring due to budget constraints, resulting in unsafe conditions, lower visitor satisfaction, and a higher risk of drownings. To address this gap, we propose a Comprehensive Index for Beaches (CIB) based on a holistic approach, treating the beach as a socio-ecological system. The CIB includes traditional aspects of monitoring, such as resource quality and infrastructure, but also incorporates social dimensions and safety perceptions. Our study involved reviewing existing global and local beach indices, focusing on South Carolina, and conducting a literature review to include social and safety factors. The proposed index was validated through expert reviews and surveys of beachgoers in South Carolina, followed by confirmatory factor analysis. This study advances the understanding of beach management by integrating social behaviors and safety perceptions, which are often neglected. The CIB highlights the importance of addressing social factors in beach safety and management, offering a more accessible and effective approach for a wider range of beaches.
Indigenizing Arts and Education as a Non-Native Ally
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Thomas Meacham
To be an effective ally for the indigenous community and to help facilitate change within higher education and the arts takes considerable time and energy. It also takes financial support. Having served as the principal investigator and co-investigator on several grants to promote indigenous arts and culture, I have learned some useful approaches (and advice) for indigenizing education and promoting indigenous performance as a non-Native ally. In this paper, I discuss my experiences in association with two year-long grants: 1) NEH grant to create an “Indigenous Languages and Culture” certificate and 2) NEA grant to promote “Indigenous Art and Performance” in partnership with the university’s Arts Center, which functioned as an “arts incubator.” I examine principles of non-Native advocacy and practices of indigenizing education and artistic programming through community building, storytelling, caretaking, and the decentering of western educational practices. In regard to the former, I also explicate ways in which we used the Indigenous Evaluation Framework (IEF), developed by the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, to expand the scope of humanistic study for Native and non-Native students and move education beyond the traditional classroom. Per the later, I discuss the development of works written and performed by Tomantha Sylvester (in association with Double Edge Theater) and Woodland Sky Native American Dance Company to bring about awareness of violence and injustice towards indigenous communities.
Global Transpacific Intimacies in Narratives of Hawaiʻi Belonging
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Leanne Day
Building off of Erin Suzuki’s incisive Ocean Passages that considers “what it means to articulate an embodied local identity in the hope of reconnecting the desire for local belonging to the project of Indigenous resurgence” (129), this paper mediates on the possibilities and limits of attempting to connect “local” Hawaiʻi identity to Kānaka Maoli through rejecting the neoliberal promise of belonging through settler colonial capitalist subjectivity. I question how and if “local”/settler/non-Indigenous Hawaiʻi narratives have the capacity for decolonial solidarities to imagine beyond the confines of multicultural settler colonial nationalism through analyzing recent Hawaiʻi fiction by Joseph Han, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, Jasmine ʻIolani Hakes, and Kawai Strong Washburn. As such, this paper takes up the question of the contemporary aesthetics of “local” Hawaiʻi novels through examining transpacific kinship, global nuclearism, Indigeneity and belonging. I suggest that perhaps the global intimacies embedded in nuclearism, anti-militarism, and (anti)-tourism offer possibilities for expanding the often limited and exceptional focus on Hawaiʻi as a site and subject for Kānaka Maoli and immigrant Asian relations. Even further, the failures of belonging and ambivalent intimate kinship might actually excavate a constellation of transpacific decolonial affinities that centers, as Suzuki calls for, Indigenous resurgence.
Planting the Seeds for Pacific Island Identity in Theatre, Literature, and Education: The Legacy of John Alexander Kneubuhl
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Justina Mattos,
Victoria Kneubuhl,
Jacquelyn Pualani Johnson
John Alexander Kneubuhl was a Pacific Island playwright, writer and educator, born in American Sāmoa in 1922 as an afakasi (mixed race) child. He went on to become an influential force in Pacific Island Literature and Pacific Island Theater, an educator, as well as a successful Hollywood screenwriter during the early years of the television industry. His plays reflect not only the rich cultural tapestry of the Pacific region, but also reflect on themes of authenticity, cultural preservation, colonization, equality and the constant challenge indigenous people face in dealing with western culture. His early work in theater planted the seeds for the present day blossoming of Pacific Island and “Local” Theater, and his dramatic literature was instrumental in introducing modernism to the literature of Oceania. In his civic engagement as an educator, he helped establish the Community College of American Sāmoa and was an early and fierce advocate for bilingual/bicultural education. He also personally inspired many young people from the Pacific to pursue their dreams. The story of his life and his struggle to reconcile his bicultural background offers the opportunity for reflection and discussion of many issues and themes relevant to the humanities.
