Kanaka Hawaiʻi Cartography: Hula, Navigation, and Oratory

Renee Pualani Louis with Moana Kahele Softcover, 256 pp. Kanaka Hawai‘i cartographic practices are a compilation of intimate, interactive, and integrative processes that present place as “experienced space,” situate mapping in the environment, and encode spatial knowledge into bodily memory via repetitive recitations and other habitual practices, such as hula. Kanaka Hawai‘i cartography is both similar to and distinct from Western cartography. It is similar in that it provides a shorthand system of understanding spatial phenomenon. It is distinctive in that Kanaka Hawai‘i cartography places emphasis on multisensual cognitive abilities and multidimensional symbolic interrelationships, and privileges performance as a primary mode of communication. The book is separated into two main parts, with the first part presenting the basics of a Hawai‘i cartographic philosophy and the second part detailing three Kanaka Hawai‘i cartographic practices. The information presented in the main bod