Talk By Maile Arvin | Jan 16 | 3:00pm - 4:30pm

January 16, 3:00pm - 4:30pm
Mānoa Campus, Business Administration Building (BUSAD) A101

Title: Towards a Collective Fullness: Reckoning with Histories of Child Incarceration at Waiale驶e Drawn from a larger book project on the history of child institutionalization in Hawai驶i, this talk addresses the history of the Waiale驶e Industrial School for Boys (operational from 1900-1950) within contexts of capitalism and settler colonialism in Hawai驶i, as well as present-day efforts to engage with this history at Waiale驶e through the land restoration efforts of the North Shore Community Land Trust. Drawing on Kawela Farrant鈥檚 vision of making Waiale驶e 鈥渓ako pono鈥 鈥 well-supplied, abundant鈥攁gain, as it was once described by John Papa 驶莫驶墨, I argue that Kanaka Maoli are leading placemaking efforts to heal from the physical and spiritual legacies of the industrial school by working towards an ideal of collective fullness. This fullness is not exclusive to, but deeply inclusive and interdependent on, Kanaka Maoli relationships to other non-Indigenous peoples, including all Asian, European and Latinx immigrants whose communities come to work on plantations in Hawai驶i, whose children were also taken and held at Territorial industrial schools. Seeking collective fullness is a way to re-establish Kanaka Maoli forms of intimacy, care, and kinship that capitalist and settler colonial violence have attempted to eradicate, but carry the promise of a more just future for us all. Dr. Maile Arvin is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) feminist scholar. At the University of Utah, she is an associate professor of History and Gender Studies, as well as the founding director of the Center for Pasifika Indigenous Knowledges. Her first book, Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai驶i and Oceania, was published with Duke University Press in 2019. She also directs the research project N膩 Lei Poina 驶Ole (Beloved Children Never Forgotten), a community-engaged history project about reformatories and industrial schools in Hawai驶i. This project has been awarded an NEH chair鈥檚 grant and an ACLS Digital Justice Seed Grant. Learn more about the project at: naleipoinaole.com.


Event Sponsor
Department of Ethnic Studies and Public Administration Program, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Department of Ethnic Studies, 808956806, esdept@hawaii.edu,

Share by email