Connections of Community

Mehana Vaughan, a faculty member in NREM and the Sea Grant College Program and a member of Hui ‘Āina Momona, will be presenting from her book Kaiāulu: Gathering Tides in the Brown Bag Biography series, which offers “discussions of life writing by and for town and gown.”

• Date: Thursday, September 19
• Time: 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m. 
• Location: Kuykendall 410

Drawing on two decades of interviews with more than sixty Hawaiian elders, leaders, and fishers, Kaiāulu shares their stories of commmunity efforts to perpetuate kuleana, rights and responsibilities. These efforts include nurturing respectuful relationships with resources, guarding and cultivating fishing spots, collective harvesting and sharing, maintaining connections with family lands, perpetuating local governance rooted in ancestral values, and preparing future generations to carry on. 

Kaiāulu has been praised as “an important contribution to scholarship in the fields of natural resource management, geography, indigenous studies, and Hawaiian studies,” as well as “a skillfully written and deeply personal tribute to a community based not on ownership, but reciprocity, responsibility, and caring for the places that shape and sustain us all.”

Mehana’s presentation is co-sponsored by NREM and the Sea Grant College Program. All are welcome to attend. For more information, please contact the Center for Biographical Research at 956-3774 or biograph@hawaii.edu.