Place-based Knowledge Research Articles

Comparing Historical and Contemporary Observations of Avian Fauna on the Yáláƛi (Goose Island) Archipelago, British Columbia, Canada.

In an era of global change, historical natural history data can improve our understanding of ecological phenomena, particularly when evaluated with contemporary Indigenous and place-based knowledge. The Yáláƛi (Goose Island) Archipelago is a group of islands in Heiltsuk (Haíɫzaqv) territory on the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada. Not only has this region been important to the Heiltsuk for millennia but also it is both a federally and internationally recognized important bird area. In this study, we compare data collected by Charles J. Guiguet, a biologist who documented bird communities at Yáláƛi in the summer of 1948, to three different contemporary surveys and to citizen-science data. We find that the relative abundances of forest bird species (i.e., birds that use the terrestrial island ecosystems) in 1948 differed to those observed in systematic surveys in 2011. While Orange-crowned Warblers, Dark-eyed Juncos, and Red Crossbills comprised 55% of detections by Guiguet in 1948, the three most abundant species in 2011 were Bald Eagles, Varied Thrushes, and Pacific Wrens, and these accounted for only 25% of detections. Although we could not make a quantitative comparison, we provide summaries of each species observed in surveys or reported on eBird. We also incorporate Heiltsuk place-based knowledge to enrich our discussion of the variability in bird communities over time, from how changes in mammal communities and human use may have shaped vegetation dynamics to how large-scale natural phenomena impacted topography. To understand which birds are present and how their communities are changing over time, we recommend continued monitoring of the bird communities at Yáláƛi.

Methodologic Strategies for Quantifying Associations of Historical and Contemporary Mortgage Discrimination on Population Health Equity: A Systematic Review.

Mortgage discrimination refers to the systematic withholding of home mortgages from minoritized groups. In recent years, there has been an increase in empirical research investigating associations of historical and contemporary mortgage discrimination on contemporary outcomes. Investigators have used a variety of measurement methods and approaches, which may have implications for results and interpretation. We conducted a systematic review of peer-reviewed literature that has quantified links between both historical and current mortgage discrimination with contemporary adverse environmental, social, and health outcomes. Our goals were to document the methodology used to measure and assign mortgage discrimination, to assess implications for results and interpretation, and to make recommendations for future work. Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines, literature searches were conducted in September 2022 using terms that combined concepts of mortgage discrimination, health, and neighborhood environment. In total, 45 papers fit the eligibility criteria. In these, researchers investigated associations between mortgage discrimination and: (1) health outcomes (N = 28); (2) environmental and social exposures including heat, air pollution, greenspace, soil lead levels, and crime (N = 12); and (3) built environment features, including presence of retail alcohol, fast food, and tobacco stores (N = 5). Eleven included studies used Home Mortgage Discrimination Act (HMDA) data to identify racialized bias in mortgage discrimination or redlining, and 34 used Homeowner Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps. The construction and parametrization of mortgage discrimination or redlining and the spatial assignment of HOLC grades to contemporary addresses or neighborhoods varied substantially across studies. Results from our review suggest the need for careful consideration of optimal methods to analyze mortgage discrimination such as HOLC spatial assignment or HMDA index parametrization, contemplation of covariates, and place-based knowledge of the study location.

Impacts of commercial and subsistence fishing on marine and cultural ecosystem services important to the wellbeing of an Indigenous community in Hawai'i

Marine ecosystems provide essential services to coastal residents, particularly for indigenous fishing communities that have strong ties to the environment and obtain multiple benefits from their use and management of ocean spaces. However, understanding of how these are impacted by fisheries, external pressures, and ocean management, remains limited due to a focus on economic valuation and aggregated metrics. This study explores the importance of select marine ecosystem services to the wellbeing of an indigenous community in West Hawaiˈi and the observed impacts on these ecosystem services by commercial and subsistence fishing. We used a mixed-methods approach that combined a workshop with an online survey of community perceptions regarding community important marine resources and cultural values. We find that both fish and non-fish species are important to all four well-being categories, including food security, culture, mental wellbeing, and income, though the least importance was given to the economic value. This study also found that commercial fishing is perceived to have a higher negative impact on marine resources and cultural values than subsistence fishing, but a generally lower impact on non-fish than fish species. The lack of community input into legislation development and a lack of enforcement capacity were perceived to aggravate these further, whereas the integration of place-based knowledge, values and rules of the environment was seen as beneficial to both marine and cultural ecosystem services. Overall, this study shows that non-economic and disaggregated valuation approaches are critical for revealing the variable ecosystem services that marine environments provide to local communities and the importance of more inclusive resource management approaches to manage impacts on these services.

Marine pilots and the choreographic work of seaport mobilities

Research on cargomobilities has emphasised containerisation, algorithmic management, and the cost-driven calculus of logistics firms. Less visible is the necessary human labour that coordinates cargomobilities in challenging environments—for example, those workers who manoeuvre ships at seaports. In response, we take to the water to learn how ports function as spaces of everyday mobilities work. We follow a day in the working life of marine pilots—a specialist, locally-based workforce who board foreign-flagged ships to dock them safely. Their labour process is, we argue, a form of choreography: executing motions in correspondence with other workers, infrastructures, vessels, and environmental forces. Increasingly volatile oceanic conditions require technical knowledge of ships and guiding equipment, plus deep place-based knowledge of port idiosyncrasies and responsiveness to elemental forces—working with rather than against swell and wind, tides, channels, and weather. While global shipping becomes ever more cutthroat in pursuit of efficiencies, marine pilots choreograph mobilities with respect for earthly forces and the bulk and power of ships and seas, and thus perform the necessary infrastructural labour that offsets risk. Amidst worsening environmental hazards, we offer choreography as an analytical frame to centre the work, workers, collaboration, and more-than-human interactions underpinning mobilities.

The impact of government policies and regulations on the subjective well-being of farmers in two rural mountain areas of Italy

AbstractThe sustainable development of rural areas involves guaranteeing the quality of life and well-being of people who live in those areas. Existing studies on farmer health and well-being have revealed high levels of stress and low well-being, with government regulations emerging as a key stressor. This ethnographic study takes smallholder farmers in two rural mountain areas of Italy, one in the central Alps and one in the northwest Apennines, as its focus. It asks how and why the current policy and regulatory context of agriculture affects farmer well-being. Interviews and participant observation were conducted with 104 farmers. Three common scenarios emerged that negatively affect farmer well-being. First, policies and regulations designed for lowland areas do not always make sense when applied in the mountains. Second, when subsidies are put into effect at the local level, the reality of their implementation can veer away from the original goals of the funding program and have unintended effects on farmer well-being, agricultural practices, and the environment. Finally, when regulations are implemented on farms in rural mountain areas, the primacy of a techno-scientific knowledge system over other, local and place-based knowledge systems is exposed. These three scenarios affect well-being by eliciting feelings of stress, frustration, and disillusionment; by reducing farmer control over their work; and by fostering the perception that farming is not valued by society. They also create conditions of inequality and insecurity. The ways in which government policies and regulations play out on mountain farms can erode trust in government institutions, lead to an us versus them mentality, and contribute to the further abandonment of agriculture and rural areas.

Invisible innovation: Intellectual labour on regional university campuses in Australia

In Australia, regional university campuses occupy a geographically and institutionally peripheral position in a metrocentric higher education system. We argue that the concentration of research funding and capabilities at metropolitan campuses devalues the intellectual labour of academics working on regional university campuses. The authors use collaborative autoethnography to explore a common theme of ‘gap filling’, that is, mobilising scarce resources to create unique solutions for local issues, and draw on Southern Theory to theorise the implications for our work in the location-based power relations of the Australian knowledge production economy. In this context, we utilise Eversole's concept of ‘invisible innovation’ to theorise how the important place-based knowledge work associated with ‘gap filling’ on regional university campuses is rendered invisible by the metrocentric geopolitics of knowledge production within Australia. The research reveals that the place-based knowledge work of regional academics fills gaps in regional services and resources through innovations largely unrecognised within the higher education system.

Incorporating First Nations, Inuit and Métis Traditional Healing Spaces within a Hospital Context: A Place-Based Study of Three Unique Spaces within Canada's Oldest and Largest Mental Health Hospital.

Globally and historically, Indigenous healthcare is efficacious, being rooted in Traditional Healing (TH) practices derived from cosmology and place-based knowledge and practiced on the land. Across Turtle Island, processes of environmental dispossession and colonial oppression have replaced TH practices with a colonial, hospital-based system found to cause added harm to Indigenous Peoples. Growing Indigenous health inequities are compounded by a mental health crisis, which begs reform of healthcare institutions. The implementation of Indigenous knowledge systems in hospital environments has been validated as a critical source of healing for Indigenous patients and communities, prompting many hospitals in Canada to create Traditional Healing Spaces (THSs). After ten years, however, there has been no evaluation of the effectiveness of THSs in Canadian hospitals in supporting healing among Indigenous Peoples. In this paper, our team describes THSs within the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Canada's oldest and largest mental health hospital. Analyses of 22 interviews with hospital staff and physicians describe CAMH's THSs, including what they look like, how they are used, and by whom. The results emphasize the importance of designating spaces with and for Indigenous patients, and they highlight the wholistic benefits of land-based treatment for both clients and staff alike. Transforming hospital spaces by implementing and valuing Indigenous knowledge sparks curiosity, increases education, affirms the efficacy of traditional healing treatments as a standard of care, and enhances the capacity of leaders to support reconciliation efforts.

Equity, Justice, and Drought: Lessons for Climate Services from the U.S. Southwest

Abstract Drought is a complex hazard, with many interconnected impacts on environment and society. Droughts are difficult to monitor as they are slow-moving events with impacts that are not always visible. There is an increasing call to study and monitor droughts as a human–environment process and to provide climate services that can inform proactive decision-making on drought. While climate services strive to make droughts visible and therefore manageable for society, many of the equity issues that arise during periods of drought remain largely invisible. In this article we explore inequity in drought impacts in the U.S. Southwest, focusing on agriculture, household water security, and wildfires. Drawing from lessons in the literature on equity, environmental justice, and climate services as well as our experience researching drought impacts in the Southwest, we recommend that climate services can support drought decision-making that addresses equity issues by 1) integrating both physical and social dimensions of drought in climate services, 2) investing in engagement and trust building with diverse communities, and 3) better integrating place-based knowledge to reconcile scaling challenges. With the acceleration of the warming and drying of many parts of the world, there is an ever-increasing need to focus on reducing inequities in drought preparedness and response, which we propose starts with production of drought information that is more reflective of how droughts are experienced across all parts of society.

Place-based knowledge transfer in a local-to-global and knowledge-to-action context: key steps and facilitative factors

Place-based knowledge transfer in a local-to-global and knowledge-to-action context: key steps and facilitative factors

Making a place special—The development of Restorative Marine Ecotourism at a dive destination village

Marine ecotourism is a multifaceted social-ecological activity that seeks to balance economic benefits with support for sustainability and positive ecosystem impacts. Successful marine ecotourism relies upon ecosystem health and has the potential to restore or regenerate nature. Restoration efforts of marine habitats aim to foster social and ecological resilience, requiring novel management strategies. To date examples of successful restorative tourism are rare in marine habitats. It is early days, emphasizing the importance of exploring opportunities for the development of restorative practices. To help frame opportunities for the development of Restorative Marine Ecotourism (RME), this study explores the relationship between ecological restoration initiatives and marine ecotourism in the New Zealand village of Tutukaka. This qualitative study assessed stakeholders' perspectives of opportunities and challenges to develop local RME initiatives in Tutukaka, where development has been strongly influenced by the possibility to access a nearby offshore marine reserve and internationally famous dive site. Data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with marine ecotourism businesses, ecological restoration actors, and governance authorities, and analyzed through thematic analysis. The interviews identified a set of core social-ecological relationships around which strategies to guide the development of RME coalesce: ongoing coastal and marine environmental issues and the discussion around how best to address them; opportunities to develop local restoration initiatives; economic and ecological challenges to realizing those opportunities; and the costs, benefits and opportunities of RME. Interview respondents emphasized the importance of diverse approaches to address the challenges around RME development, including collaboration among stakeholders, the willingness to experiment widely around experiential learning and take risks, and importantly adopting strategies to make places “special.” This study offers insights that can inform the planning and implementation of RME initiatives at a local scale to support the achievement of both ecological restoration goals and sustainable tourism practices. These include trusted relationships among stakeholders, fostering bottom-up processes, and the value of producing social-ecological knowledge. The Tutukaka case highlights possible avenues for restoration to effectively contribute to marine ecotourism. The focus on the “specialness of place” highlights the importance of place-based knowledge and preservation that facilitates trust, entrepreneurialism, environmental ethics, and supportive management.

Expertise, trading zones and the planning system: A case study of an energy-from-biomass plant

Planning disputes are sites of contestation in which science-based regulations come into conflict with the place-based knowledge of local communities. The procedural and often technical nature of these regulations means that these controversies are marked by an asymmetry of resources that is often experienced by community groups as an asymmetry in credibility. In short, the expertise of developers is generally accepted as such, whilst the knowledge claimed by citizens is dismissed as ‘anecdotal’ or ‘NIMBYism’. In this article, we make the argument that the asymmetries of expertise are less stark than the current system typically allows and that recognising and accommodating this would improve the planning system by enhancing the representation and inclusion of community voices. We explore this position by using a case study of the construction of a Energy-from-Biomass plant in South Wales. Drawing from 30 qualitative interviews, we maintain that the planning process has the potential to function as one of a network of ‘trading zones’ in which different communities enact their rights and have their claims to knowledge and expertise recognised. Crucial to this argument is understanding that the levels and kinds of expertise that different parties bring to the interactions are more than just matters of attribution: community groups can have genuine expertise.

Local Ecological Learning: Creating Place-based Knowledge through Collaborative Wildlife Research on Private Lands.

Wildlife across all land tenures is under threat from anthropogenic drivers including climate change, invasive species, and habitat loss. This study focuses on private lands, where effective management for wildlife conservation requires locally relevant knowledge about wildlife populations, habitat condition, threatening ecological processes, and social drivers of and barriers to conservation. Collaborative socio-ecological research can inform wildlife management by integrating the place-based ecological and social knowledge of private landholders with the theoretical and applied knowledge of researchers and practitioners, including that of Traditional Owners. In privately-owned landscapes, landholders are often overlooked as a source of local ecological knowledge grounded in learning through continuous embodied interaction with their environment and community. Here we report on WildTracker, a transdisciplinary socio-ecological research collaboration involving 160 landholders in Tasmania, Australia. This wildlife-focused citizen science project generated and integrated local socio-ecological knowledge in the research process. The project gathered quantitative and qualitative data on wildlife ecology, land management practices, and landholder learning via wildlife cameras, sound recorders, workshops, questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews. Through this on-going collaboration, landholders, researchers, and conservation practitioners established relationships based on mutual learning, gathering and sharing knowledge, and insights about wildlife conservation. Our project documents how local ecological knowledge develops and changes through everyday processes of enquiry and interaction with other knowledge holders including researchers and conservation practitioners. Qualitative insights derived from the direct experience and citizen science practices of landholders were integrated with quantitative scientific assessments of wildlife populations and habitat condition to produce a novel model of collaborative conservation research.

Between Global History and Microhistory: Rethinking Histories of “Small Spaces” and Cities

AbstractHow can historians of “small spaces” and cities focus on local events and issues and at the same time carry on conversations with peers in a disciplinary mode marked by the spatial expansiveness of global history, on one hand, and a focus on objects and individuals of microhistory on the other? At stake here are key questions connected with the intellectual value of place-based knowledge and detailed single-site historical case studies. I argue that as long as we are caught between the positivist idea that causal regularity and time-place independence of explanatory mechanisms are the hallmark of theory, and the postmodernist resistance to generalizations, histories of cities and other small spaces will suffer from “defanged empiricism.” This problem is particularly debilitating for non-global histories of small spaces and cities of the global South, which often “do not travel well.” Is there a way out? I argue that a critical engagement with the stratified ontologies of critical realism— in particular, a version that I call “soft critical realism”—and Charles Tilly’s “deep order” can enable historians of small spaces and cities to re-situate their research at the heart and center of social theory, and simultaneously strike a better balance between attention to local details, the narrative form, and engagement with larger processes, concepts, and theories. Finally, I concretize the discussion by offering the example of how my own research on late colonial and early postcolonial Calcutta has benefitted from this approach.

Challenges and opportunities in the indigenisation of the Marautanga Hangarau (the Māori-medium technology curriculum): Indigenous knowledge and an emerging philosophy of Hangarau

This article examines the challenges and opportunities in the indigenisation of the technology curriculum to support Māori-medium schooling. Since the emergence of indigenous curriculum design in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) in the 1990s in response to the emerging Māori-medium schooling movement, English-medium education and its philosophies, beliefs, and needs have prevailed. These Eurocentric beliefs and ideologies are often opposed to the key goals of Māori-medium education, including the aim of self-determination through the revitalisation of Māori language and mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge). Māori-medium is the collective term used by the New Zealand Ministry of Education to identify learning programmes where 51–100% of instruction is in Māori (Ministry of Education, 2022). These schools are officially required to implement the core national curriculum national framework for Māori-medium contexts including Hangarau (Technology). This article shares initial findings about the development of Hangarau curriculum to date by drawing on primary data from a series of semi-structured interviews conducted with three mātanga Hangarau (Hangarau curriculum developers). The mātanga were involved as curriculum designers, in the authoring of curriculum support materials, and design of professional learning for teachers. Beyond the Aotearoa-NZ context, this study has wider implications for the decolonisation of technology education in general, which involves balancing and negotiating the tensions between indigenous and western, commercial and environmental, and general and local indigenous knowledge. As the sociocultural political landscape changes, and spaces for indigenous knowledges are being claimed, we need to remember what is important to our communities. We want to be working at the micro level, that of whānau and hapū (wider family) daily practices, reclaiming and reframing place-based knowledge as we identify its significance for the Hangarau curriculum.

Constructing Orange Economy to Sustaining Local Communities in Bali, Indonesia

The sustainability of local communities whose economic and social well-being depends on nature, culture and place-based knowledge is threatened when transfers of ideas, investments and resources occur at the global level in the era of globalization. When global trends have an impact on local populations, traditional ways of managing community resource development may be outdated. Therefore, to support the sustainability of local communities in Bali where culture is at the core of sustainable development, we propose a conceptual framework through a multi-disciplinary approach to guide researchers and policies in these interconnected cultural, economic and social fields. This article reveals three dynamic components; the place identity with local wisdom as a character in which the Balinese concept of the balance and harmony of life between beliefs, nature, and people, known as Tri Hita Karana as the basis, orange economy as an opportunity for economic activities based on a culture that is constructed, and culturally sustainable development and policies that should support the components.

Food laborers as stewards of island biocultural diversity: reclaiming local knowledge, food sovereignty, and decolonization

Creating nutritious and ecologically regenerative food cultures depends on the local knowledge of food system laborers. Food producers in small island developing states center socioecological interdependence in their livelihoods and, as such, conserve biocultural diversity. Amid burgeoning health, economic, and climate crises brought on by colonialism, reclaiming food sovereignty requires a critical and embodied scientific approach, one that considers what traditional ecological knowledge is and who creates and sustains it. This study positions laborers as the primary sources of knowledge in island food systems; discusses declines in nutrition and agrobiodiversity as consequences of food labor loss; and proposes laborers' stewardship as essential to regenerating self-determination. Using critical quasi-ethnographic methods, this report synthesized primary data from narrative interviews in Guam (Guåhan, n = 13) and Puerto Rico (Borikén, n = 30), two former colonies of Spain and current territories of the United States, as specific examples of place-based knowledge production, interwoven into critical discussion of broader literature in this space. Our findings show that local food laborers combine intergenerational, ecosystem-specific knowledge with robust human value systems, negotiating across competing economic, cultural, and ecological needs to sustain livelihoods and regenerate biodiversity. As well-connected nodes in family and community networks, laborers serve as the scaffolding on which compassionate and relational care can thrive. Trade policies and the market dominance of transnational food corporations have severely reduced local food production in favor of food import dependence in islands, aggravating labor shortages and augmenting food insecurity. Through waves of out-migration and cash remittance, social care relationships have become monetized, reinforcing mass-produced food consumption and dietary diversity loss as islanders, both at home and in the diaspora, transition to an industrialized diet. The loss of local labor similarly poses threats to agrobiodiversity, with export-oriented agribusiness simplifying landscapes to streamline extraction. This study demonstrates that to reclaim food systems in Guam, Puerto Rico, and similar island settings, laborers must be valued as stewards of cultural and agrobiodiversity and can be integral to efforts that preserve cultures, agroecosystems, and health.

“The forests are dirty”: Effects of climate and social change on landscape and well-being in the Italian Alps

Over the course of the last several decades, climate and social changes have fundamentally altered Alpine environments, landscapes, and weather patterns. While environmental changes are well-documented by natural science studies, the human dimensions of change remain understudied. Existing in-depth studies of the impact of climate and environmental changes on emotional well-being have revealed cross-cultural similarities in responses to change, but studies of the impact of such changes on the well-being of residents of the European Alps are needed. Through interviews, participant observation, and a questionnaire, the study identified two pathways through which changes to Alpine environments are affecting the well-being of mountain residents in the Lombardy region of the Italian Alps. The landscape and ecosystem changes caused by social changes are affecting well-being through disrupting connections to place and affecting people's sense of identity as tied to an agricultural past. The weather changes caused by climate change are increasing anxiety and worry linked to feelings of unpredictability, uncertainty, and loss of control. There is also overlap. Both the changes caused by climate change and by social changes are affecting well-being by disrupting the reliability of place-based knowledge.

Prioritizing participatory planning solutions: Developing place-based priority categories based on public participation GIS data

Prioritization of knowledge produced in participatory planning has been approached mainly from the perspective of whose perspectives are most in need of consideration. We ask, whether it is also possible to consider which locations, based on the knowledge from participants, should be prioritized. We developed a place-based approach to inform spatial decision making especially when the prioritization of limited resources is necessary. In the place-based prioritization model frequency of use and perceived quality of everyday places were used to identify various priority categories. We argued that especially places that are perceived negatively but used often in daily life pose a risk to wellbeing and the quality of life and should thus be prioritized in development. Such places belonged to the Development priority category, but also three other categories, Development potential, Management potential and Management priority were identified. The prioritization model was tested empirically by using place-based knowledge about inhabitants everyday and quality networks collected in the Finnish city of Espoo. According to the results, the Development priority category was represented only in about 5% of places, most often in land associated with road and rail networks as well as in continuous urban fabric. As hypothesized, high share of the Development priority places in everyday networks reduced individual’s quality of life. We also found that a rather high share of these places was located within existing planning areas of the city.

Centering Place in Tawfiq Canaan’s Literary Cartography

In the early-twentieth century, Palestinian physician and ethnographer Tawfiq Canaan published roughly forty-five studies on the cultural and narrative traditions of the largest section of Palestinian society, the fellaheen (peasantry). In this article, the author examines how Canaan’s expansive collection of stories related to holy sites across Palestine in Mohammedan Saints and Sanctuaries in Palestine (1927) produces a provocative literary cartography—a narrative that operates much like a map. In so doing, she contends that Canaan both contests orientalist constructions of the Holy Land as frozen in biblical time and, critically, unsettles the very spatiotemporal logic governing dominant colonial narrations of place. This epistemic shift, the author concludes, is the result of Canaan’s recentering of Indigenous Palestinian place-based knowledge as both the subject and method of his study. This approach offers instructive lessons applicable within and beyond the disciplinary, regional, and temporal boundaries that have so far circumscribed the study and reception of Canaan’s work.

US Urbanism and Its Pacific Histories

US Urbanism and Its Pacific Histories Kelema Lee Moses (bio) Sean Connelly, Learning from Lē'ahi, Koa Gallery, Kapi'olani Community College, Kalāhu, Pālolo, Kona, O'ahu, 09 23– 12 21, 2021. Kapi'olani Community College's Koa Gallery is located on the slopes of Lē'ahi, a crater on the island of O'ahu that the United States government designated as Diamond Head Military Reservation in 1906. Attuned to the site specificity and history of this place, Sean Connelly's solo exhibition, Learning from Lē 'ahi, visually exposed the environmental and societal effects that the US military has imposed on the Hawaiian Islands. Through bold and engaging visuals—from billboards and street signs to 3D models and GIS maps— Learning from Lē'ahimakes central the role of the architect in perpetuating militarized urbanism in Hawai'i. The show persuasively envisioned possibilities for architectural demilitarization that would lead to sustainable futures for human and more-than-human beings. Learning from Lē'ahioffered visitors an opportunity to reflect on and process their relationship to the Hawaiian Islands as Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians), arrivants, settlers, and/or tourists. The exhibition encouraged architects to acknowledge a shared responsibility to the land and its people by challenging—through text, image, and sound—discourses that have relegated Hawai'i to the academic and architectural periphery. Learning from Lē 'ahiwas Connelly's latest work to situate architecture's practice and pedagogy within an activist ethos. Connelly is a self-described "expert witness geomancer mystic" from Honolulu, working as an artist, design theorist, and architectural historian. 1Their architectural interventions within galleries and cityscapes appear as critical commentaries on the environmentalism and materiality rooted in Pacific Islander mores. Connelly engages Kanaka Maoli sociospatial epistemologies that are spiritual and sensory repositories of cultural knowledge to produce projects that have consistently critiqued settler colonialism and the architect's role in the objectification of Hawai'i's lands. 2Their site-specific works center Indigenous placemaking and imagine architecture's future possibilities. These concerns have been in place for a long time. Thatch Assembly with Rocks (2060s)(2017), for instance, exemplifies the [End Page 419]way architecture's materiality is tethered to place-based knowledge. The long angular form in Honolulu's Foster Botanical Garden was constructed from local wood and features volcanic rocks that produce an aestheticized flooring and thatched loulu palms that provided a thermal protectant. Thatch Assembly with Rocks (2060s)used Hawaiian building techniques and materials for architectural construction that are in harmony with the land and its people. Thatch Assembly with Rocks (2060s)was inspired by Hawaiian hale, traditional shelters for sleeping, cooking, storing canoes, social activities, and communal gatherings. Connelly adopted Hawaiian hale construction methods for the structure to make visible what they describe as a "blind spot" in the theory, history, and education of architecture. 3Until the early twentieth century, Kanaka families and "house-builders" constructed hale using pou (posts), kaupaku (ridgepoles), a'ho (small sticks), and o'a (rafters) latched together with pili grass, pandanus leaves, or ti leaves. 4Hale have vast, open interior spaces that do not make use of columned structural supports. This Pacific Island design feature, an architectural feat not deployed in the United States until the mid-twentieth century, dates back thousands of years. Connelly's desire to interject a deeper historical knowledge about Hawai'i's lands, peoples, and epistemologies into architectural narratives resonated with Dominic Leong, an architect with familial ties to Hawai'i. 5Connelly's work appealed to Leong, in part, because of its engagement with Hawaiian architecture and US legacies of colonial trauma and unrest in the Pacific. In an interview with Flux Hawaii, Leong remarked that he had "a specific responsibility within the architectural discipline, as [a member of the] Kanaka Maoli diaspora, to help pluralize the canon and articulate a more enriched understanding of architecture that is not limited by a Eurocentric legacy." 6In 2020, Connelly and Leong partnered to establish Hawai'i Non-Linear (HNL), a nonprofit collaborative that seeks to "empower Indigenous futures in the built environment" through architectural education. 7 Learning from Lē'ahi's moniker was emblazoned across the...