Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando
17. Hawaiʻi: A Pivot of Empire or Piko of Aloha ʻĀina?
Resistance to Empire and Militarization - Reclaiming the Sacred - Jude Lal Fernando
Kyle Kajihiro [+]
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (PhD candidate)
Description
Hawaiʻi and numerous other islands in the Pacific have been weaponized by the US to form an archipelago of sites crucial for projecting its military power over the earth. And yet, these sites remain unmentioned in most discussions on the costs and consequences of America’s wars. Attending to this “lost geography” of US empire in the Pacific, and Hawaiʻi’s crucial role in it, this chapter argues that dismantling the US imperial infrastructure of island military bases is necessary for improving the prospects for peace, for advancing self-determination and for social and environmental justice of the people of these military-occupied islands. As Hauʻōfa has argued, Oceania is not a vast emptiness peppered with remote and insignificant specks; rather it is a region with epic histories and visionary futures, deep cultural wisdoms about more sustainable ways of living within the limits of finite resources and the potential to help us reimagine international politics through a global ethics of care.