"We're Asking You to Remember Why We're Here"Interview with Joy Enomoto Joy Enomoto (bio), Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada (bio), and No'u Revilla (bio) Joy Enomoto is an 'Ōiwi aloha 'āina, artist, and activist. With an extensive background in nonviolent direct action and popular education, Joy not only stood on the front lines at Maunakea in 2019 but she also continues to contribute visual art and important intersectional analysis to the movement, linking our struggles to movements for climate resilience, Free West Papua, and Black Lives Matter. Mahalo nui loa iā 'oe e Joy for your fearless vision. July 14, 2020 No'u Revilla: Could you tell us about the visual art you contributed to the Maunakea Syllabus and what motivated you to create that content? How did you approach representing Poli'ahu in this project? What kinds of conversations do you hope your art sparks or transforms about akua, 'āina, gender, and governance? Joy Enomoto: I've been thinking about the feeling that I had this time last year. Trying to sift through COVID and the Black Lives Matter movement and all these other things that I've been having to talk about, and just to sit with the Mauna again and get re-grounded is nice. In terms of the Maunakea Syllabus, it was really interesting. I was approached in the beginning of the year. It had already been six months since I had been on the Mauna, I had already been teaching, when you're up there in the moment dealing with the police, dealing with the lāhui, and trying to set up the Pu'uhonua, you're aware of the presence of akua but you're not always thinking of that, you know? You're thinking "How am I not to going get hit in the head with a baton by the police?" You're grounded and you're not grounded. But I remember really being drawn to the story of these akua, these wahine akua in particular, and I went to seek [End Page 596] out images of them, and none of them satisfied me. We tend to fix our akua into a traditional, kind of Herb Kane look, which was needed at that time, and I totally honor those works in the sense that it was a reclaiming of a Hawaiian who was honorable and traditional. But we're in the twenty-first century now, and I've always imagined our akua being ahead of us. Impossible beings. They exist in this realm of impossibility and they allow for us to dream impossible things, like getting our country back. So I remembered my fascination with these akua and wanting to rethink how they are presented, how I imagine them to be. They're these super beings that are badass and cool-looking. They're sexy, in a way. So Poli'ahu, to me, was always going to be this wahine that is larger than life who would wear an impossible cloak. It would take the entire lāhui many, many years to make the cloak that she is wearing in that drawing. I was really stressed out because daring to draw akua is a big deal because we do have stringent ways of imagining our akua. We feel like there's rules about how they can be drawn. Our akua are human-like, they get jealous, they cheat on each other, they lie, they hurt each other, they kill each other—they kill each other several times, they set things on fire! They're amazing and flawed. And I like the flaw. Because that's who we are on that Mauna. We were doing something completely impossible in a completely flawed way. So we mimic our akua lives in that way and they mimic ours. I imagined a young girl looking at a drawing of Poli'ahu. All the other drawings I've seen of Poli'ahu, they either make her prone, very flowy in white, very … appropriate, I guess. But I could not imagine her commanding the snow or a snow storm. So what would that being actually look like? She's a badass. I don't even know if...