Reviewed by: The Past before Us: Mo‘okū‘auhau as Methodology ed. by Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu Gregory Pōmaika‘i Gushiken The Past before Us: Mo‘okū‘auhau as Methodology, edited by Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2019. isbn hard-back 9780824873387; isbn paper 9780824873394; xiv + 158 pages, index. Hardback, us$78.00; paper, us$27.00. In recent years, the publication of texts reflecting on Indigenous Pacific research approaches has brought renewed attention to Pacific studies’ focus on Indigenous research methods. Edited by Nālani Wilson-Hokowhitu, The Past before Us: Mo‘okū‘auhau as Methodology looks to mo‘okū‘auhau—a term that is often “mistakenly oversimplified as ‘genealogy’” (2) but rather refers to “a complex web of relationality in which everything in our native island world . . . [is] kin”—as a crucial methodological intervention (vii–viii). As a methodology, mo‘okū‘auhau locates Kanaka ‘Ōiwi, one of several terms Native Hawaiians use to describe ourselves (vii), in relation to the “vastness of Kanaka ‘Ōiwi familial relationships that extend well beyond the human realm to include islands, oceans, planets, and the universe” (1). Because mo‘okū‘auhau “within the Kanaka ‘Ōiwi worldview. . . extend[s] to the first single-cell organisms,” to place mo‘okū‘auhau at the center of our methodologies is to speak “to the succession of our ancestors and the mana in their bones, buried in the ‘āina (land), which establishes our place to stand tall, our place from which to speak, protect, defend, and love” (2). Because mo‘okū‘auhau grounds the researcher or practitioner in a relationship to the more-than-human world, mo‘okū‘auhau as methodology [End Page 280] allows us to think of “the function of Indigenous, Pacific, and Kanaka ‘Ōiwi scholarship . . . to be a vehicle for expanding consciousness” (4). Contributors to The Past before Us, ranging from scholars of Hawaiian literature to cultural practitioners, all place mo‘okū‘auhau at the center of their methodological reflections. For example, Kanaka ‘Ōiwi cultural practitioner Kū Kahakalau reflects on the ways in which her methodology of mā‘awe pono, a participatory method of research that “requires the active involvement of a specific group or community concerned with the issue at hand” (14), diverges from Western positivist methodologies because “Hawaiians believe that we bring our mana, or personal power, to every situation and every task” (13). Methods presented in The Past before Us emphasize how our kuleana (responsibility), as informed by mo‘okū‘auhau, can continue the project of decolonizing methodologies. Similarly, in “From Malihini to Hoa ‘Āina,” ethnographer Hokulani Aikau examines the importance of kuleana as dictated by mo‘okū‘auhau in ethnographic work. In thinking through her work as a Kanaka ‘Ōiwi not genealogically tied to He‘eia, the place on the island of O‘ahu where she sought to work with community members, Aikau theorizes the concept of “hoa‘āina,” a positionality that “is tied to and bound to ‘āina based on kuleana that is not genealogical but that comes from hanalima, working with our hands in the lepo (dirt, soil)” (87). Aikau frames kuleana to peoples and places as a necessary component of mo‘okū‘auhau as methodology, demonstrating that Kānaka ‘Ōiwi must be mindful of our mo‘okū‘auhau and work to build relationships where we do not have genealogical ties, should we desire to work in those places. Other essays in this anthology engage more directly with methodologies of cultural practice. In chapter 3, Kalei Nu‘uhiwa looks to the Papakū Makawalu methodology, a study of socioecology that highlights how “Hawaiians did not just notice the interactions among other species around them, but also included their interactions among themselves, with other species, and also with their environment” (44). By highlighting how our kūpuna (ancestors and elders) interpret the natural world through oral history, Nu‘uhiwa’s discussion of Papakū Makawalu asks us to think about how Kānaka and our ancestors have always been mindful of methodology. Similarly, in “He Haku Aloha,” Mehana Blaich Vaughan retells mo‘olelo (stories) of her tūtū (grandmother), whose teaching and making of lei offer “lessons for conducting community based research on ‘āina, as if...