Ancestral relationships and oral storytelling traditions tie Pacific Islanders to the land, sea, and sky – to places and spaces. The familial relationships between Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiians) and the environs are reciprocal, they take care of each other. Visions of a future that center ‘ike kupuna (ancestral knowledge) and the ‘āina (land; that which feeds) open the door to artistic and architectural innovation. In this talk, I examine the work of Pacific Islander architects and artists endeavoring to recover Kanaka lands, lifeways, and ecologies amid ongoing acts of militarization and Indigenous dispossession. I center place, place-making, and well-being to explore the liberatory possibilities of practicing and communicating architectural histories that are culturally responsive.

Reception in Scales Lobby afterwards.

Kelema Lee Moses, Ph.D. is an assistant professor of urban studies and planning at the University of California, San Diego. Her research and teaching foregrounds race, indigeneity, and politics. She endeavors to create meaningful discourses that transcend spatial and temporal dimensions of architectural histories. Moses's scholarship appears in Ardeth, The Avery Review, Platform, The Contemporary Pacific, and other peer-reviewed journals. Her work has been supported by a Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowship, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the East-West Center at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and the Black Studies Project at UCSD.