Fellows mentioned in this story: Kamuela Enos, Cohort III

From Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine:

What follows is primarily the intellectual work of Kamuela Enos, and presents in the first-person voice (his), with assistance from Miwa Tamanaha in producing this work in written form. Kamuela Enos and Miwa Tamanaha are spouses to each other, creative thought partners professionally, and coparents to their children in every space.

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This article explores kinship from a Native Hawaiian perspective as a binding construct of “ownership.” Kinship with place—and the integrity of the ecologies, wisdom, and people our places hold—stands as a central tenet of ownership often lost in our contemporary nomenclature born of capitalism.

An important underlying technology Hawai’i has to offer its contemporary self is kinship to land. Kinship is our unbroken connection to our “operating system,” so to speak—the OS of our lands, our complex and interdependent relationship with the ecological systems that allow for life, our ancestral sciences (in service of living in and creating abundance). This connection persists and thrives despite almost two hundred and fifty years of brutal assault, including catastrophic population loss from introduced diseases, racist policies, political overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, and deliberate and continuing dispossession of land. It is the foundation for a just, abundant economy in Hawai’i.

Here I share my father’s kinship story, my kinship story, and some of the lessons I have gleaned from living them. This story is a Hawaiian story, but it is repeated across our planet. Vested in kinship to land, the contemporary work of Indigenous communities is iterating prototypes and frameworks for a resilient, just economy.

Continue reading at nonprofitquarterly.org.