Art and the Voices Within: Exploring Kānaka Women’s Storytelling in the Visual Medium Through Portraiture and Kānaka ‘Ōiwi Methodologies

Abstract

This research study examines Kānaka women’s storytelling in contemporary Hawai ̒ i through the visual medium. This research was conducted solely by Renuka Mahari de Silva, including its data collection and analysis. The second author, Cheryl Ann Hunter supported this work by editing the written work. In doing this work, the researcher immersed herself in discussing artwork with Kānaka ‘Ōiwi (Native) and Kānaka Maoli (Indigenous) women of Hawai ‘i in artmaking. Using a narrative approach, combined with portraiture methodology, this body of work draws broader parallels through the lens of kānaka ‘ōiwi methodology, to understand the implications of colonial marginalization. Furthermore, this work looks at how these women’s voices and emotions are drawn through the arts to redefine positionality of the kānaka women of Hawai ̒ i toward their cultural and land sovereignty. Findings indicate that despite forced cultural and political changes over time, kānaka women’s innate beliefs and their interconnectedness to land and spirituality has begun to reshape in multidimensional ways both culturally and ecologically. These women not only feel directly tied to a generational spiritual base that nurtures them, but they also feel that “dimensions of traditional knowledge are not local knowledge, but knowledge of the universal as expressed in the local” (Meyer, 2001, p. 4).