Candace Fujikane, Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future: Kanaka Maoli and Critical Settler Cartographies in Hawai’i – Duke University Press, March 2021

The Introduction is open access here.

In Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future, Candace Fujikane contends that the practice of mapping abundance is a radical act in the face of settler capital’s fear of an abundance that feeds. Cartographies of capital enable the seizure of abundant lands by enclosing “wastelands” claimed to be underdeveloped. By contrast, Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) cartographies map the continuities of abundant worlds. Vital to restoration movements is the art of kilo, intergenerational observation of elemental forms encoded in storied histories, chants, and songs. As a participant in these movements, Fujikane maps the ecological lessons of these elemental forms: reptilian deities who protect the waterways, sharks who swim into the mountains, the navigator Maui who fishes up the islands, the deities of snow and mists on Mauna Kea. The laws of these elements are now being violated by toxic waste dumping, leaking military jet fuel tanks, and astronomical-industrial complexes. As Kanaka Maoli and their allies stand as land and water protectors, Fujikane calls for a profound attunement to the elemental forms in order to transform climate events into renewed possibilities for planetary abundance.

“Mapping Abundance for a Planetary Future slays settler colonial cartographies that diminish life. The book breathes with the voices of Hawaiian communities, lands, movements, elements, and Candace Fujikane herself, at her best. Saturated in the abundance of Kanaka Maoli mappings and mo‘olelo, this book is a spear and a spade, medicine and masterpiece, a diagnosis and a portal, a lei and a ho‘okupu.” — Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘opua, author of The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School

“With intellectual verve, analytical agility, and ethnographic gracefulness, Candace Fujikane unpacks the perversity of settler capitalism, which produces scarcity in order to claim its toxic surplus, as she amplifies Kanaka Maoli support of an earth cartography of abundant healing and protection. A groundbreaking work; a must-read.” — Elizabeth A. Povinelli, author of The Inheritance