Dilemmas of an Indigenous Academic: A Native Hawaiian Story

Abstract

In this article, the author draws upon the Native Hawaiian practice of ha'i mo'olelo, or storytelling, to problematize her role as an indigenous, Native Hawaiian academic working and researching in Native Hawaiian elementary and early childhood educational communities. Focusing on her personal dilemmas and struggles within this role, she attempts to unpack a number of ethical, cultural and political issues that can present special difficulties for indigenous academics who work partly as insiders and partly as outsiders within both the academy and their home communities. By intertwining Marxist and post-structuralist theory with Native Hawaiian protocol and tradition, she considers possibilities for reconnecting indigenous academics with native communities through the development of hybrid indigenous/Western research methodologies that draw from and speak to both indigenous and Western ways of knowing and being.