Authors:Tabitha Robin, Paula Morelli, Anaru Eketone, Peter Mataira, Jon Matsuoka, Michael Spencer Pages: 1 - 2 Abstract: JISD Foreword for Special Issue on Love. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Lashana Lewis, Shayne Walker, Paula Toko King, Hunia Te Urukaiata Mackay, Natalie Talamaivao, Daniel Anderson, Susan Kemp Pages: 3 - 27 Abstract: This paper showcases the kaupapa (philosophy) and practices of a Māta Waka (pan-tribal), community-based Kaupapa Māori service provider in the nation-state currently known as New Zealand. Te Hou Ora Whānau Services aims to provide services that support and empower tamariki (children) and rangatahi (youth) to fulfil their potential within the context of their whānau (extended families), their cultural heritage, and their communities. The purpose of this study was to explore the philosophy and values that underpin the everyday practices and experiences of eleven kaimahi (practitioners) who work for the provider. Analyses of the data identified five overarching pou, or foundational supports that underlie kaimahi ways of being, knowing, relating, and doing, together with seven ‘takepū,’ or preferred ways of engaging with others. Te Hou Ora Whānau Services’ holistic philosophy and practice offers an important window into Māta Waka community-based Kaupapa Māori services that are responsive to tamariki, rangatahi and whānau Māori from diverse backgrounds and lived experiential realities. While some of the elements are specific to the New Zealand context, the pou and takepū offer guidance relevant to programs globally that seek to successfully and creatively respond to the priorities, aspirations, and moemoeā/dreams of Indigenous children, young people, their families, and communities. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Chie Sakakibara Pages: 28 - 46 Abstract: This article will explore how the contemporary Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) artist Linda Infante Lyons’s Alaska Native icon portrait series embody the Indigenous ideas of love and resilience. In our times of global climatic and environmental change and the pandemic that disproportionally affect and displace historically underrepresented and underserved communities, it is vitally important to seek out the core of Indigenous social health, wellbeing, and sovereignty through diverse origins of resilience. To accomplish this mission, this paper will shed light on Lyons’s quest of colonial past and the contemporary revival of Alaska Native expressive tradition through the cross-cultural and multispecies entanglement—love— between humans and nonhuman kin as it has been steeped in creative expressions. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Minowaywayjiwan Sinclair Pages: 47 - 49 Abstract: This creative non-fiction text offers a critique and self-reflection about imposed gender identities and roles, and their impacts on Indigenous ways of being and becoming. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Melinda Lloyd, Shelly Tokunaga-May, Laura Pokipala, Staci Hanashiro Pages: 50 - 66 Abstract: Aloha is more than a greeting of “hello” and “good-bye.” Native Hawaiians believe Aloha is a foundational cultural value encompassing love, compassion, and respect. Mindful Forgiveness is a process of releasing negative emotions and thoughts towards a person, or persons, or event (e.g., COVID, cancer) who has caused a grievance, harm, or offense to increase feelings of hope and peace. In this paper, we explore the role of Aloha in enhancing the Mindful Forgiveness process. Via a peer support group with individuals practicing Mindful Forgiveness, we found that incorporating Aloha values and practices into the forgiveness process helped participants let go of resentment and anger towards the grievance and offender and led to increased feelings of peace and well-being in a cultural context. Moʻolelo (stories) and our lived experiences and other findings suggest that incorporating the values and practices of Aloha into Mindful Forgiveness may deeply enhance the therapeutic benefits of releasing grievances and facilitating healing. Further research is needed to fully understand the potentiality of Aloha in promoting Mindful Forgiveness with Aloha in healing grievances and kaumaha (heavy grief). PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Nicole Davies Pages: 67 - 73 Abstract: For Indigenous communities where agriculture is historically or contemporarily a component of their food systems, Indigenous seed keepers provide for the continuation of food production, food cultures and teachings, and the health and sustainability of the ecosystems that receive, germinate, and influence the seeds. To be an Indigenous seed keeper is to be a steward and a carrier of many things. We lovingly dedicate ourselves to our seed relatives’ survival by carrying our peoples’ ancestral inheritances of seed varieties, seed stories, and seed songs through colonialism. Through love for better futures that are necessarily both familiar and different to us, we steward the seed varieties we belong to towards climate change adaptation, partnering with the seeds as co-authors of current and future seasons’ harvests. We are carriers of long and often interrupted seed histories and legacies that have shaped the states of survival and traits that our seed varieties and seed teachings are in today. Indigenous seed keepers intimately know and are exceptionally impacted by all that colonialism and climate change has altered and continues to take from our agricultural food systems. This commentary offers insight on how Indigenous seed keepers, facilitated by our love for the seeds that sustain us, are healers of collective food grief, ensuring the perpetuation Indigenous seed relationships through relational climate adaptation. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Penn Pantumsinchai, Brent Llaneza, Pālama Lee Pages: 74 - 88 Abstract: Love comes in many shapes and may be directed in many directions, be it to oneself, a romantic partner, oneʻs family, the community, and so forth. In Hawaiian culture, one of the most important values is aloha. More than a simple greeting, it is love with all its depths and complexities including pilina (relationships) and ʻōiwi (native intelligence), among many other values. This article describes how aloha as love was taught and reinforced as a life skill for ʻōpio (young adults) living in a transitional housing program in Hawaiʻi. ʻŌpio who have lived experiences with systems such as foster care, juvenile justice, and houselessness often lack the life skills to manage daily life and maintain supportive relationships, leading to cycles of struggles as adults. Yet they have a great capacity for love that can be honed into life skills such as communication, emotional regulation, boundary setting, and reconciliation. This paper tells the moʻolelo (stories) of ʻōpio learning the life skills of love and the staff who sought to build an ʻohana-like (family) community. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
Authors:Brandon Ledward, Shawn Kana‘iaupuni Pages: 89 - 106 Abstract: Truthtelling plays an important role in the wellbeing of Indigenous peoples, allowing for reconciliation and healing to occur. This article traces key markers of vitality and growth for Native Hawaiians that provide hope against the backdrop of conventional—often deficit-based—measures of wellbeing. As with many indigenous peoples, storytelling is a vital way for Native Hawaiians to pass on knowledge, values and beliefs. This story of resistance, resilience and renewal is culled from a comprehensive study published entitled, Ka Huakaʻi 2021: Native Hawaiian Educational Assessment. The authors examine Native Hawaiian wellbeing through available statistics and trends as well as the concepts of aloha ‘āina and collective efficacy. PubDate: 2023-06-30 Issue No:Vol. 12, No. 1 (2023)
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