Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i ed. by Hōkūlani Aikau and Vernadette Vicuña Gonzalez (review)

at the intersection of settler colonialism, tourism, and Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) resistance, Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawai'i unsettles and disturbs "the 'fact' of Hawai'i as a place for tourists" (2). Encompassing a variety of communities, histories, and paths, Detours refuses "the tourist imaginary, [unless we might] (wittingly or unwittingly) contribute to reproducing the occupation and colonization of these places, people, and practices" (3). Contributors, who range from academics to cultural practitioners, "relate stories that foster decolonial approaches and imaginaries of Hawai'i" in order to push us "toward opening up the future we desire" (5). By linking their stories to the project of decolonizing Hawai'i, contributors to this volume actively work to dismantle "the myth of Native hospitality [that] has supported this pattern of material dispossession" (7). Detours demonstrates the possibilities of "unfamiliar and alternative narratives, tours, itineraries, mappings, and images of the Hawaiian Islands" to give us "a decolonial understanding of Hawai'i that goes beyond global tourism's marketing" (2). To the editors of this volume, colonialism "is the ultimate breach of guest protocol [that] violates a welcome, one that was never actually extended, in order to fulfill a desire to take and possess land that is not one's own" (9). By telling decolonial stories and remapping Hawai'i, the editors remind us that "encounters effect change … toward people who want to be changed by experience and contribute toward ea," the Hawaiian concept of sovereignty, breath, and interdependence, "and a decolonized future" (12). Through the encounters found in Detours, the editors push readers to be changed by Hawai'i, by our histories, and by our ongoing struggles for ea.

Chapters found in Detours retell stories often silenced by the colonial tourist guidebook. S. Joe Estores and Ty P. Kāwika Tengan's chapter, "Sources of Sustainment: Fort Kamehameha and 'Āhua Point," weaves the oral history of Estores's childhood at Fort Kamehameha, where the reef runway of the Honolulu International Airport currently sits; Hawaiian language archives; and the continued military occupation of Hawai'i to unsettle the tourist imagination of arrival by witnessing "the absurdity that is the transformed land and imagine another, more amazing way of being in this place" (84). Similarly, Halena Kapuni-Reynolds and Wendy Mapuana Waipā, in "Nā Pana Kaulana o Keaukaha: The Storied Places of Keaukaha," use mele (song, poetry) to take readers on a walking tour of Keaukaha and its wahi pana (sacred places) to highlight its rich and storied histories. In this way, they highlight the importance of mele in "passing down ancestral knowledge in the form of wahi pana," refusing settler narrativization of Hawai'i (118). Conversely, David Chang departs from the Hawaiian archipelago to consider the kuleana (responsibility) of the Hawaiian diaspora to other Indigenous and racialized peoples. Through his reflections on the history of Hawaiian migration, Chang reminds us that Hawai'i is both in the Pacific and within Kanaka Maoli, no matter where our travels take us, and "from that can emerge a sense of kuleana that spreads outward across the Hawaiian diaspora and far beyond" (361).

As a text that brings together so many voices, Detours is indispensable to scholars in Indigenous studies and Pacific studies, as well as activists and organizers at the intersections of decolonization and demilitarization. By challenging the settler-colonial view of Hawai'i as a paradise for the sole indulgence of tourists, Detours is a critical disruption to business as usual. The text works to unsettle, to shake up, and to create the possibility for something beyond the horizon of colonization and occupation. By sharing a small portion of the many decolonial projects in Hawai'i and beyond, projects undertaken by both Kanaka Maoli and our allies, Detours opens a critical dialogue to "reflect [on] our imagination, a possible future we create together" (391). Rather than close these stories with its conclusion, Detours sends...