Dialogical heritage practices at Kahalu’u bay and Keauhou, Hawaiʻi island

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay critically analyzes cultural and natural heritage of Kahalu`u Bay and Keauhou on the west coast of Hawai`i Island, which prospered as the royal centre from roughly A.D.1500 through the 1800s, through the lens of Hawaiian `ike (acceptance of knowledge diversity). Knowledge sources used here are archaeological reports, oral narratives, literature by contemporary Hawaiian scholars, organised into mo`olelo (Hawaiian story, oral history), as well as interviews. Similar to `ike, mo`olelo are alive and adapt to changing times, as seen here through a dialogical model of heritage and ontology of connectivity between multiple stakeholders, human and other-than-human. The analysis focuses on two case scenarios which open hybrid fora between human, Indigenous, land-based, institutional, and business agents. Although this heritage landscape has been sculpted and reordered by the tourism industry and remains entrapped in the late capitalist system, the framework of dialogical heritage brings the potential of co-production of new knowledge as well as new ways of thinking about heritage shaping and thus provides alternatives to Western colonial extractive practices.