Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, "Beyond Inclusion: Indigenous Abundance, Aloha ʻĀina, and Radical Futures"

About

What does it mean to cultivate well-being in a world structured by colonialism, militarism, racial capitalism, and ongoing dispossession? In this talk, Kanaka Maoli scholar, poet, educator, and organizer Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio reflects on the intersections of Indigeneity, political struggle, and collective well-being. Drawing from indigenous epistemologies, abolitionist and anti-imperialist traditions, and Kanaka Maoli moʻolelo, Osorio challenges the political horizons offered by liberal democracy. Moving between lecture, poetry, and moʻolelo, she considers storytelling not simply as a way of remembering the past, but as a practice of political survival and collective possibility—one that allows us to recover and recenter the radical traditions, relationships, and knowledges through which our people have imagined and built otherwise.

Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist / activist / scholar / educator / storyteller born and raised in Pālolo Valley, Hawaiʻi. She is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi, an internationally recognized poet, subject of an award-winning film, This is the Way we Rise, Co-writer of the VR film On the Morning You Wake (To the end of the world), and author of the award-winning book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, decolonial, and abolitionist futures of abundance.

Light refreshments will be served after the event.