The Slyly Reproductive Lessons of Haunani-Kay Trask

Abstract

Haunani-Kay Trask’s theorizations of settler colonialism, Indigenous feminisms, and community-grounded political work produces scholars, thinkers, and activists, including many Hawaiians, other Pacific Islanders, and Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Her teachings and work with Ka Lāhui Hawai‘i emphasized the need to build relationalities among Indigenous communities. This essay builds on Trask’s critical interventions and theorizations of settler colonialism, to ask how Hawaiians at home and in the diaspora can further Trask’s scholarship and political organizing, incorporating trans-Indigenous recognitions. I document these relationalities among Native nations and other Pacific Islanders as an embodiment of the legacies of Haunani-Kay Trask, including her theorization of settler colonialism and the groundwork she laid for Indigenous feminism. In this way, I link her teachings as slyly reproductive at creating generative futures beyond the settler state.