Geoscience Obligations to Decolonization: A Diasporic ʻŌiwi Methodology for Empowering Sovereign Indigenous Seaweed Cultivation through Biogeochemistry

Keywords: Indigenous methodologies, decolonial science, Indigenous aquaculture, seaweed, Blue Carbon
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Conventional geoscience upholds the ongoing settler-colonial systems of oppression at the root of the climate and planetary crises and must be confronted. Researchers must investigate their roles in advancing justice and decolonization, even through laboratory-based and so-called basic science, or else remain complicit. To do so, geoscientists should articulate and re-orient their research methodologies to address their standpoint-derived obligations to the local Black and Indigenous Peoples, communities, and environments impacted by their research. As a diasporic kanaka ʻōiwi (Native Hawaiian) environmental scientist and transient settler on Indigenous Ainu land, I investigate my own kūlana (position, station, situation)-derived kuleana (rights, responsibilities, authorities, obligations) as a case study. Rooted in ʻōiwi scholarship, I use an ʻupena of pilina (fishing net of social-ecological relationships) worldview, my moʻokūʻauhau (genealogies), and ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi (Hawaiian language) concepts and values. From this, my kuleana is to ensure my research on macroalgal biogeochemistry (including Blue Carbon sequestration) empowers sovereign Indigenous seaweed cultivation, particularly for ʻōiwi and Ainu Peoples. This relational framing also confronts the value of transactional carbon offsets and ecosystem services accounting. While this methodology remains flawed, it may provide some guidance for researchers engaging with their own standpoint-derived obligations to Black and Indigenous sovereign liberation.