Returning Children to the ’Āina and Fanua: Indigenous Survivance in Pacifica Early Childhood

Abstract

Researchers of child learning and development continue to hone understandings of cultural and social impacts on cognition, development, and education. Concurrently, Indigenous educators call for decolonizing schooling at all levels. Land-based education (LBE), as an instructional approach, responds to calls to decolonize education. The authors use LBE to understand the cultural and social nuances and complexities of Indigenous learning in preschool and primary school age Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children. Through ethnographic case studies in Hawai’i and Sāmoa, we expand conceptions of culture in learning to attune to the diversity and specificity of Indigenous contexts, argue that LBE must be place-based, and recognize land is an active and necessary coparticipant in the learning process.

Far too often, the vast Pacific is captured by the United States’s geographic imagination as a tropical paradise and exotic tourist destination far removed from the hustle and bustle of mainland U.S. life. Hegemonic ideologies of Western colonial education also capture these Pacific Island lands. For generations, Indigenous Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) children—the original peoples of Hawai’i, Guåhan, Sāmoa, or other Pacific Island nations—have been trapped in formal education systems that served to remove and replace Indigenous ways of knowing (Corntassel, 2013; Coté et al., 2007; Goodyear-Ka’ōpua, 2009; Kanaʻiaupuni et al., 2021; Kimmerer, 2002). As Indigenous and critical researchers have noted, from forced residential schools to programs designed to “civilize,” formal education programs (hereafter referred to as “schooling”) have long been places of anguish, trauma, and violence for Indigenous children (Manuelito, 2004; Mutua & Swadener, 2011; Smith et al., 2018).

Indigenous educators and their allies have called for decolonizing schooling at all levels through community-engaged or place-based learning, yet fundamental colonial schooling structures have remained relatively intact (Corntassel, 2013; Kanaʻiaupuni et al., 2021; Kulago, 2016). Despite long-standing urging for the recognition of community cultural wealth and asset- and strength-based education for children from nondominant communities (Yosso, 2005), schools under U.S. jurisdictional control continue to reinforce dominant power structures and white supremacy (Grace & Serna, 2013; Kaomea, 2012).

Moreover, even in Hawai’i and Sāmoa, places geographically, culturally, and politically distanced from the U.S. mainland (whether as a state or territory), schooling remains predicated on U.S. settler onto-epistemologies that assume questions of their connection to the United States to be a settled matter (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua, 2009, 2013; Kanaʻiaupuni et al., 2021). As Kulago (2019) wrote, “Quite literally, the genocide of Indigenous people at the metaphysical level has been the goal of American education” (p. 23). This displacement and elimination continue through curricular omission (Calderon, 2014; Sabzalian, 2019), beginning in early childhood (Nxumalo & Cedillo, 2017).

Although researchers have made great strides in child learning and development and there are ongoing efforts to hone our understanding of cultural and social impacts on cognition, development, and education, both within and outside of schooling contexts, the decolonial implications of this research are still emerging (Bang et al., 2015; Immordino-Yang et al., 2019; Rogoff et al., 2014; Viruru, 2001, 2003). All is not lost. Despite more than a century of assimilatory schooling, Indigenous peoples maintain, albeit differentially and in new ways, kinship relationships with land that are distinct and sovereign from those relationships imposed by settlers (Cluderay et al., 2022). Over the past 20-plus years, land-based education (LBE) has developed as an instructional approach that connects Indigenous students to land and the knowledge that resides therein while attending to imperialism’s structural and colonial impacts and expectations (Schneider, 2022). We acknowledge that LBE is not new.

In this chapter, we, a white-settler early childhood researcher and a Kanaka ʻŌiwi Indigenous politics scholar, draw on our community-engaged work that blends Indigenous knowledge, anthropology, cultural psychology, and learning sciences to reimagine learning in early childhood education from and through ’āina and fanua, the Hawaiian and Sāmoan terms for land, respectively. Bringing together data produced within two NHPI community-produced ethnographic research studies (Campbell & Lassiter, 2010), we ask: How might Indigenous learning flourish toward survivance in LBE for early childhood education? Through ethnographic case studies, one in Hawai’i focused on land-based learning designed to meet third-grade science outcomes and one in Sāmoa focused on preschool learning experiences in the community, we make three analytical moves. First, we expand conceptions of culture in learning to attune to the diversity and specificity of Indigenous contexts. Second, we argue that LBE must resist surface-level, one-size-fits-all lenses with little regard for context. Third, we contend that land is an active and necessary coparticipant in the learning process and that through acknowledgment of Indigenous onto-epistemologies, renewed possibilities for learning and schooling emerge (Marin & Bang, 2015).

Through thick descriptions (Geertz, 2008) of LBE opportunities with a loʻi kalo (wetland taro farm) in Hawai’i (2013–2015) and umu (above-ground ovens) construction in Sāmoa (2012–2018) and from practices within public school buildings, we show how learning, including cognition, develops in connection to the land and cultural repertoires (Rogoff, 2003; Rogoff et al., 2014) while attending to how teachers, students, and community partners build on this knowledge inside and outside of the classroom (Lee, 2006, 2009; Lerner & Benson, 2003). As Immordino-Yang et al. (2019) noted, “When given adequate opportunity, support, and encouragement, children naturally think, feel emotions, and engage with their social and physical worlds” (p. 186). We contend that an Indigenous-centered land-based approach does more than resist the eliminatory logic of settler colonial school settings; it produces conditions for developing land-based literacies, relationality, and thinking for futurity—thus, it contributes to Indigenous resurgence and, ultimately, survivance (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua 2013).

A Note about Translation and Culture

Throughout this chapter, we use the terms Kanaka Maoli, Kanaka ʻŌiwi, and Native Hawaiian to refer to the Indigenous peoples of Hawai’i. Regarding spelling, we do not italicize or put in quotations non-English words in solidarity with Sāmoans and Kanaka Maoli, who assert linguistic sovereignty and resist the colonial hegemony of English. Relatedly, we use Sāmoan to refer to the Indigenous people of Sāmoa.

There are unavoidable and intentional tensions throughout the chapter, one of which is conceptualizing culture. As a product of Western colonialist anthropology, culture has long been used in problematic and essentializing ways to police Indigenous authenticity (Smith, 2021). Therefore, a nuanced and complex understanding of culture to facilitate analytical comparison across Indigenous contexts that resist homogenization or overgeneralization is needed (Urietta, 2015).

Indigenous identity and cultural practices continue to be eclipsed by and yet transcend geopolitical borders despite the colonial past/present (Bang et al., 2015; Hau’ofa, 1999). As Brayboy (2023) reminded us, Indigenous peoples are simultaneously tethered to place and migratory. Continuity is particularly evident in the case of Sāmoa. The Sāmoan archipelago is a single linguistic and cultural entity. At the turn of the 20th century, under the auspices of being colonial spoils of war, the island nation was divided, the Western islands (including Upolu, Savai’i, Manono, and Apolima) were given to Germany. In 1914, with a reshuffling of European imperial power in the Pacific, colonial administrative control shifted to New Zealand until 1962, when Sāmoa successfully secured independence. From 1904 until now, the Eastern islands of Tutuila, Aunu’u, Ofu, Olosega, and Ta’u were renamed “American Sāmoa” and remain under U.S. administrative colonial rule. Despite the geopolitical divisions, Sāmoans have reconstituted relationships across borders and islands through malaga, a practice of reaffirming connection (Lilomaiava-Doktor, 2009). Today, most Sāmoans in the Eastern islands have extended family members in Western Sāmoa, and migration across the divided archipelago by boat and plane is common.

Conceptualizing Hoʻokuʻikuʻi (bricolage)

One challenge facing Indigenous educators is resisting being entrapped within the simplistic dichotomies of Western versus Indigenous or tradition versus modern when considering curriculum and development. To fight the pull of these colonial binaries, we draw on the best Indigenous and Western theories and modes of inquiry, learning, and development, braiding cultural and psychological approaches with Indigenous survivance theory to conceptualize the power and necessity of LBE for NHPI children. Theoretically, we are indebted to Kaomea’s (2016) hoʻokuʻikuʻi research methodology, in which she stitches unlikely methodological, epistemological, and theoretical bedfellows together to produce new critical understandings. Thus, we ask: How can we draw on the innovative education research being produced and rethink it so that it achieves the goal of Indigenous survivance?

Making Meaning

For cultural psychologists, how one learns is also inseparable from what one knows (Cole, 1998). Scholars have increasingly turned to interdisciplinary approaches, moving beyond the “tsunami of starkly mechanistic views that reduce human development to processes in the brain rigidly constrained by genetic blueprints” and the reductive nature/nurture debate (Stetsenko, 2008, p. 471). Comprehensive understanding means drawing on the approaches of various fields and disciplines to unpack the contextual nature of development fully. Contemporary transdisciplinary approaches to development consider the ecology in which one learns using a relational metatheoretical system and a recognition of the interplay of psychic and biological factors in development (Stetsenko, 2017). Transdisciplinary approaches such as developmental systems theory (Bornstein, 2014), cultural historical activity theory (Cole, 1996, 1998; Rogoff, 2003; Stetensko, 2008), thriving (Lerner & Benson, 2003; Lerner et al., 2011), and situated cognition and learning theory (Lave, 2021) exemplify this ecological perspective. Albeit emanating from vastly different traditions and histories and focusing on varied aspects of development, each transdisciplinary approach attends to the complex interplay of various biological and macro-cultural factors on the development of humans and culture.

We regard learning and development as dialectical processes. Rejecting a Western rationalist approach grounded in Cartesian dualism, we understand ways of knowing to include embodied models of knowledge production (Wilcox, 2009). Learning is an act of situated meaning-making, and thus, the challenge is understanding how children organize their experience in, knowledge about, and transactions with the social world (Cole, 1996, 1998). Cognition and human development are produced as the individual interacts with the rich context(s) in which they participate (Cantor et al., 2021; Cole & Packer, 2019; Osher et al., 2021). Relatedly, we avoid the reductive stance of categorizing learning and development as a separate individual mental realm or, alternatively, an essentially sociological realm of collective discourses and practices (Stetsenko, 2008). Instead, we recognize knowledge construction, development, and context as co-constructed, interrelational, interdependent, and always informed by various ever-changing cultural and historical practices (Ochs, 1988; Tagoilelagi, 1995; Tagoilelagi-Leota, 2017).

A dialectical and relational ontology opens up and expands considerations of what it means to know (Aikau, 2015). As such, it does not narrow or exclude a recognition of biological and neurological developmental impacts. Children’s situated learning experiences establish what Siegal and Varley (2002) termed “representational templates.” These representations and ways of seeing the world matter in how future learning experiences are connected, interpreted, reappraised, and processed (Moll, 1990). Both verbal and nonverbal language are tools for learning, mediums through which values, beliefs, and knowledge are shaped and conveyed (Vygotsky, 1987). The adaptations that young people make to one context can carry over to other contexts, enabling them to succeed in environments that pose new and differing challenges (Lee, 2009). However, when children enter new contexts, the fit and proximity of these representational templates to new challenges matter significantly (Pande & Chandrasekharan, 2017).

To date, much of the focus in developmental systems theorizing has primarily been located within the intersection of various Western traditions (Bame Nsamenang, 2006). Given the history of structural violence at the hands of researchers (Smith et al., 2018) and the vulnerability of NHPI communities to climate change (Hay & Mimura, 2013), we emphasize the need to ground equitable development for NHPI children and communities within Indigenous knowledge systems. Indigenous knowledge systems offer a unique and ecologically valid window into considering a wider range of understanding learning ecologies, particularly in relationship to land. We add to the strong tradition of researchers who have addressed inequity for minoritized children such as NHPI children using integrated and correlational models of development (Tharp & Gallimore, 1991), bridging (Au & Kawakami, 1985, 2011), and incorporating place-based approaches toward culturally and linguistically sustaining methods (McCarty, 2006).

Our focus, following the work of Bang et al. (2015), Bruce et al. (2023), Medin and Bang (2014), Nxumalo and Ross (2019), and Nxumalo and Cedillo (2017), centers on the affordances of relational ontologies in NHPI development and survivance. Theoretically, we embrace a radically different relational ontology that regards all processes (development, learning, cultural production, and reception) occurring in the dialectical and intersubjective realm between individuals and their world (Stetsenko, 2008). In this understanding, humans and the material world share aspects of “one and the same unified reality.”

Development (physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and cultural well-being) is reciprocally fostered as children engage with land (Cajete, 1994, 2000; Kermoal & Altamirano-Jiménez, 2016). However, fully integrating Indigenous knowledge systems and values, including community, self-determination, and sovereignty (Kana‘iaupuni et al., 2017), necessitates a deliberate recentering of Indigenous onto-epistemologies, those cognitive, perceptual, and affective maps that guide, organize, and regulate people’s living and sensemaking of their world (Calderaro, 2018). Associated with relational residing in a place from time immemorial, these traditional norms and social values dictate and guide behavior and attitudes and inform perceptions and practices (Stark et al., 2023).

Survivance Theory

Survivance, a concept coined by Ojibway author Gerald Vizenor, asserts that Indigenous communities are more than just survivors of oppression or victims of settler colonialism: They are actively resistant, present, and full of life (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua, 2018; Vizenor, 2009). Crucial in survivance is recognizing Indigenous communities as actively resisting historically accumulated processes of colonial violence, including removal, dependency, and forced assimilation (Skewes & Blume, 2019; Smith et al., 2018). Survivance theory provides four predicates for our work.

First, whereas survivance centers Indigenous peoples’ resilience and creativity to survive and thrive despite settler colonialism, this framework also recognizes that inequality informs community and societal needs. For example, Kanaka Maoli education scholars Wright and Balutski (2015) wrote,

By foregrounding the consequences of racism, colonialism, and occupation on communities of color and (re)imagining ways to realize transformational change, these theories have been particularly beneficial in helping us examine and understand the complexities, possibilities, and outcomes of participating in higher education for Kanaka’ Ōiwi. They enable us to name the structural, normative, or overt oppression while helping us reframe the issues and build equitable educational environments. (p. 87)

While recognizing the legacies of genocide and persistent attempts at cultural erasure by white settler colonialism, Indigenous communities in the Pacific and Turtle Island continue to thrive (Dennis et al., 2022) through coexistence and responsibility for community and broader societal needs.

Second, survivance theory foregrounds Indigenous worldviews, cosmologies, and epistemological knowledge in considerations of learning and development. Within Indigenous cosmological contexts, individual, familial, and community survivance (thriving and survival) is conditioned and reciprocally interdependent with the health and well-being of the natural world. Indigenous epistemologies “[acknowledge] the interconnectedness of individuals’ physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects with all living things and with the earth, the star world, and the universe” (Lavallée, 2009, p. 23). Associated with the generational knowledge of being in deep relationships with land from time immemorial, these traditional norms and social values dictate and guide behavior and attitudes and inform perceptions. They are cognitive, perceptual, and affective maps that show, organize, and regulate people’s living and sensemaking of their world.

Third, survivance emphasizes the values of interdependence and communal relationships over individual aspirations. To thrive in Indigenous contexts often shifts consideration from the scale of the individual to the collective. Thriving means attending to values, pedagogies, and practices that contribute to the ongoing persistence of Indigenous peoples and their ancestral lands.

Fourth, it expands the consideration of one’s community to include an interdependence and reciprocal relationship with the more than human (MTH) beings that comprise Indigenous-specific worlds. Hawaiian cosmology, for instance, recognizes natural and human worlds as genealogically interconnected whereby the natural world (’āina) is the elder sibling of human beings (kānaka). In turn, humans must contribute to ensuring the health of the natural world and are considered their other-than-human kin (Duhn, 2012). In the Hawaiian language, this reciprocal relationship is called mālama ‘āina (to care for the land, which feeds), a cultural value and practice that sustains life and sovereignty. Similarly, in Sāmoan worldviews, culture, place, knowledge, and wisdom cannot be extracted from fauna (Lilomaiava-Doktor, 2020) and the health and well-being of the land, and humans are always already conjoined (Toso, 2011; Tugalu, 2023). This is represented in the practice of tofa sa’ili. Atua Tupua Tamasese Ta’isi Efi (former head of state of Sāmoa and Sāmoan knowledge custodian) theorized wisdom and learning as a past, present, and future unfolding in which life forms, human and nonhuman, are cosmically connected (Tufuga Efl, 2007).

Why Reimagine Learning and Development in the Pacific?

For NHPI, learning and schooling are far from synonymous. In the 19th century, missionaries invaded Hawai’i and Sāmoa and established schools (Kaomea, 2009). Aikau and Gonzalez (2019) noted that although 19th-century missionaries who arrived in Hawai’i focused on harvesting souls for God, generationally, this evolved to capturing Hawaiian land for profit and cultivating sugarcane and pineapple. A similar pattern emerged in Sāmoa, although the focus was on establishing coconut plantations. Schools remained instrumental in missionary endeavors. Later, a new form of settler colonialism arrived on both islands as their political affiliations were changed to U.S. territories.

Before the U.S. occupation, participatory, embedded approaches were common for NHPI communities—where NHPI children were expected to contribute and learn as community members (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua, 2013). In Hawai’i and Sāmoa, Indigenous counting systems (an example of ethnomathematics) thrived and were taught to children to meet their immediate social and physical needs to quantify (Furuto, 2014). Ethnomathematics—or “mathematical knowledge expressed in the language code of a given sociocultural group” (Borba, 1990 p. 40)—involves highly contextual practices typically in intergenerational settings and often in purposeful community-integrated activities (E. K. Kukahiko, 2014; Taeao & Averill, 2021). However, this is far from unique to the United States (Carr et al., 2018, in Papua New Guinea; Rau & Ritchie, 2011; Ritchie, 2013; Ritchie et al., 2014; Ritchie & Skerrett, 2013, in Aotearoa; Sims & Tiko, 2019).

In these island nations, literacy rates before occupation were extraordinarily high—reportedly 91.2% in Hawai’i (Kamakau, 1869). Before the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, ’ōlelo Hawai’i was the official language. Books, bibles, and newspapers were printed using ’ōlelo Hawai’i and used in all government activities and institutions (Kawakami & Dudoit, 2000). High literacy rates, crucial for full citizenship, were evidenced in 1898 when nearly every Native Hawaiian adult alive signed a petition contesting the U.S. annexation (Silva, 2004).

In Sāmoa, Hawai’i, and many other Indigenous communities, the introduction of age-segregated schooling was catastrophic—removing children from land, elders, and traditional ways of knowing (Lees & Bang, 2023). For example, following an 1835 gubernatorial order, coral and lava rock schoolhouses were constructed in Hawai’i, and beginning with the Aliʻi (or chief’s children), classes were divided by age and instructed in pedagogy aligned with middle-class, white standards. Throughout the early 20th century, subjects included reading, arithmetic, geography, spelling, handwriting, singing, drawing, English composition, and religion, aided by U.S. mainland texts (Hyams, 1985). With the increased U.S. control of schools, previous missionary models bent on reforming and civilizing Indigenous children (Grace & Serna, 2013) were replaced with standardized curricula intended to assimilate Native children into good, productive laborers, first for an agricultural plantation economy and now, for a global tourist economy (Trask, 2004).

Human relationships can serve as critical drivers of development (Cantor et al., 2021). Indeed, relationships, intrasubjective experiences, and children’s social and emotional states impact learning processes and outcomes. Unfortunately, given the discourse found in archival records from Indigenous schools, there is little evidence that NHPI students found warm relationships or social and cultural support in schools (Taira, 2018, 2021). As Grace and Serna (2013) described in their archival analysis of early childhood programs in 1930s Hawai’i, the Free Kindergarten Children’s Aid Association began a program for a Hawaiian homestead community in central Oahu. Led by White missionary women, the goal was child saving—the Indigenous children were assumed to be “dirty, underfed, malnourished, neglected, and carrying diseases” (Grace & Serna, 2013, p. 312). Historians also refute the likelihood that children would have developed constitutive relationships in these schools (Schachter, 2013; Taira, 2016). Constitutive relationships depend on social synchrony and emotional attunement by teachers (Cantor et al., 2021; Yamauchi et al., 2021).

In these United States-affiliated territories, settler colonial populations swiftly replaced Hawaiian and Sāmoan teachers, who often had only emerging knowledge of the local language or culture. Teaching populations were comprised mainly of U.S. White and, later, Japanese women (Taira, 2016). Further interrupting the cultural attunement for NHPI children was the introduction of curriculum and practices from the U.S. mainland—instructed in English. In Hawai’i, beginning in 1900, the Indigenous language was completely outlawed (Aikau, 2012). Pacific culture consciousness depends on children’s ability to access language repertoires and culture; therefore, removing Indigenous languages from schooling in the Pacific was deleterious (Ritchie, 2016; Thaman, 2012; Tiko, 2016).

Colonial Cultural Conflict

Children’s connection and sense of belonging can enhance and impact the development of holistic skills and competencies, but emotionally subtractive schooling can exacerbate inequity (DeNicolo et al., 2017). As contemporary developmental theorists note, when placed in subtractive (culturally challenging) contexts, children must expend mental and emotional energy, diverting energy and focus from concept building (Cantor et al., 2021).

These colonial pasts are still present today—with ongoing ramifications for Indigenous learning and justice. In the 21st century, health, social services, and schooling often remain out of Indigenous hands in Hawai’i (Kaomea, 2005). Today, approximately one-fifth of the population in Hawai’i reports Native Hawaiian heritage (K. Kukahiko et al., 2020). Native Hawaiians and part-Hawaiians still rank low regarding Hawai’i’s health, education, and economic well-being (Benham, 2006; Kana’iaupuni et al., 2005; Kaomea, 2009). In education, Native Hawaiians score lower in reading and math and have lower attendance and graduation rates in public schools than other major ethnic groups in the state (Cintina & Kana’iaupuni, 2019; Kaʻanehe, 2020).

Pacific nations, like many others, are facing ever-increasing neoliberal pressures. Following Davies and Bansel (2007), neoliberalism is a global logic/power in which competition, responsibilities, and the transfer of risk have moved to individuals rather than states, institutions, or communities. Children, in a neoliberal logic, must properly develop into economically competitive agents, and schools are the central institutions aiding in this process (Lakhani & Macfarlane, 2015; Sims, 2017). Neoliberal citizenry requires children to be measurable and understood through ratings, rankings, metrics, and indices (Henward & Iorio, 2011; Roberts-Holmes & Moss, 2021). To achieve this outcome, schools have turned to commercially produced curriculum and increased standardized readiness markers and metrics (Simpson et al., 2015).

Neoliberal standardization and logic have substantial consequences for all children but can disproportionately impact NHPI children. Curricular and pedagogical narrowing (accompanying the neoliberal agenda) has been shown to limit children’s learning to what is measurable (Sims & Waniganayake, 2015), and often, teachers are less able to recognize children as individual learners because curricula set standard learning outcomes as desired goals (Sims & Tausere Tiko, 2016).

Schooling is often a space of cultural synchronicity for those who have developed repertoires that align with dominant cultural contexts and powers. Meanwhile (and simultaneously), critical researchers have demonstrated that schooling inflicts symbolic violence on children whose linguistic practices, goals, means, and interests do not align with those in schools (Bourdieu, 2018; Nieto, 2015). McCarty (2006) conceptualized “language, literacy, and schooling as interrelated axes of power” that configure in articulating one’s access to intellectual, social, economic, and political resources and rights (p. XVIII). Importantly, these power relations remain obscured by dominant power structures that posit schools and knowledge systems as universal and neutral (Bourdieu, 2018).

However, comparative researchers have, through ethnographic comparison, dispelled this fallacy (Gupta, 2006, 2014). For example, as Gaskins and Alacalá (2023) noted, when Indigenous Mayan children are removed from land, community, and participation structures and asked to perform school-like tasks, they demonstrate marginal levels of achievement. However, when asked to demonstrate knowledge aligned with culturally interpretable tasks, these children performed remarkably better. In other words, children’s familiarity with materials and concepts mattered considerably in their ability to demonstrate competency and transfer knowledge to new contexts and tasks (Rogoff & Chavay, 1995).

Cultural and linguistic specificity of knowledge is rarely acknowledged in standardized tests. Consequently, students living in poverty and/or those whose assets are unrecognizable by schools comprise most children who score poorly on standardized tests (Morrell, 2006).

In turn, these scores provide “scientific” evidence that the societal and educational inequalities children experience (including the denial of culturally and linguistically sustaining school practices) are legitimate, justified, and natural.

Situated Learning in Ma Ka Hana Ka’ Ike (In Work is Knowledge)

As Gaskin and Alacalá (2023) demonstrated in their work with Mayan children, there is a substantial gulf between learning as it is conceptualized in schooling and learning that occurs informally within Indigenous communities. Beginning with the sociocultural premise that the learning and teaching of cultural information is dynamically transmitted between humans and environments over generations and the construction of meaning is drawn from situated experiences, advancing foundational knowledge about human learning and development requires an expanded focus on the ecologies, the processes of interaction that happen in everyday contexts (Bang et al., 2015; Vossoughi & Gutiérrez, 2014). Noting the “context of situation” (à la Malinowski, 1922) remains central in analyzing socially situated meanings, functions, and language styles (Ochs, 2017; Pau’uvale, 2012; Rogoff, 2003; Whiting & Whiting, 1975), this tradition moves beyond a myopic focus on formal schools to consider learning wherever children reside (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1988).

Long before (or if) young children come to school, they have learned higher-order cognitive and linguistic skills (Tharp et al., 2007; Tharp & Gallimore, 1991). Children form knowledge as they participate and contribute to everyday events within local cultural ecologies (Bang et al., 2015; Rogoff et al., 2015). For example, Rogoff et al. (2015) identified the culturally specific pedagogy and practices that shape Mayan children’s learning in her seminal work. Mayan children are apprenticed into Mayan knowledge systems, as she conceptualized, learning by observing and pitching in (LOPI) within community work, activities, and practices. Through careful and thick ethnographic description, she showed how community participation structures reinforce the learning of cultural values and the development of embodied communicative practices, participation frameworks, and culturally specific linguistic systems.

LOPI and similar community participatory approaches are found in other Indigenous contexts. For example, in Nahua communities, children are given ample time to observe and learn necessary skills and knowledge (Fernández, 2015). This practice aims to teach Nahua children traditions by cultivating corn, raising and protecting domestic animals, and participating in health, family, and community ceremonial practices (Fernández, 2015). Although primarily associated with Indigenous communities in Mexico and Central America, similar techniques have been shown in NHPI communities.

For example, in Sāmoa, children are apprenticed into the multigenerational tautua system from birth (Fa’aea & Enari, 2021). As Ochs (1988) noted, within Sāmoa’s community-focused and hierarchical context, infants participate in the community by being turned outward to teach and socialize children about the importance of learning by watching community members. As infants grow, they regularly observe community activities at the periphery of houses, by sides of the road, or near elders, where they begin to help. As Ochs and Izquierdo (2009) documented, children are taught to observe closely, listen carefully, and speak when spoken to by developing keen observation and participation skills. This approach is consistent with the Sāmoan practice and value of tautua (serve to serve). Older siblings and parents fulfill the role of tautua ia pule (serve to lead). Finally, elders, especially Matai (village chiefs), engage in pule ia tautua (lead to serve) through tautua upu (oration). Through watching and participating in these activities, children develop Sāmoan language fluency, so they will eventually be able to be called on for pule ia tautua (lead to serve).

As these empirical examples suggest, learning in Indigenous spaces is facilitated through purposeful, goal-directed activities in communities of practice, always with culture and context (Lave & Wenger, 1991).

Land-based Learning In Early Childhood: What it is and What it is not

There is a growing body of empirical research in early childhood that recognizes the developmental advantages (physical, intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and cultural well-being) that can be fostered through engagement with land (Cajete, 1994, 2000; Kermoal & Altamirano-Jiménez, 2016). Land-based learning allows Indigenous children to organize and label the natural world according to their epistemologies, reinforcing their sense of identity and place (Butterworth & Candy, 1998). Because colonization dispossessed Indigenous peoples from land, decolonization must involve education that reconnects Indigenous peoples to land and the social relations, knowledge, and languages that arise from the ground (Smith, 2023). Our task, following Kulago et al. (2023) and Tuck and Yang (2021) as Indigenous and Indigenous-allied educators, is to reestablish the connections and relationships that Western schooling has historically severed.

More recently, learning considerations in early childhood development have expanded to recognize the role of land in learning through relational ontologies. Following Wildcat et al. (2014), we ask what it means to think of land as a source of knowledge and understanding. How do our relationships with land inform and order how humans conduct relationships with each other and other-than-human beings? How do we educate people on the land in ways grounded in Indigenous knowledge?

In moving forward in early childhood education, decolonizing efforts need to be mindful of settler colonial and white supremacist power relations on land (Nxumalo, 2021; Nxumalo et al., 2022) and expansion of onto-epistemological diversity (Pérez & Saavedra, 2017). Effective LBE for survivance necessitates Indigenous counternarratives with the explicit goal of political transformation as found in Grande’s (2015) red pedagogy model, Wright and Balutski’s (2016) ’ŌiwiCrit, and Nxumalo and Cedillo’s (2017) efforts.

Very young children are often left out of consideration in these critical participatory models, considered too developmentally immature to grasp or contribute to counternarratives and critical practices—consequently, LBE may be whitewashed (Nxumalo, 2019). Age and development are often used to explain depoliticization in early childhood (Grace & Henward, 2013). First, children’s development and capabilities vary significantly between contexts, including their ability to learn inferences from peripheral participation (Hayashi & Tobin, 2020; Ochs & Izquierdo, 2009). Second, there are many documented accounts of 3- to 5-year-old children critiquing issues of power concerning race, class, and other forms of social inequity (Henward, 2015; Nixon & Comber, 2005; Thomas, 2019; Vasquez, 2017). As Nxumalo (2019) argued, LBE has “the decolonial potential of disrupting the normalization of the exclusions that occur when predominantly white middle- and upper-class children participate in North American nature or forest schools and become positioned as future earth saviors and stewards” (p. 1).

Methods

These two community-produced ethnographic research studies began in partnership with Indigenous communities (Henward, Tauaa, & Turituri, 2019a, 2019b; Henward, Turituri, & Tauaa, 2019). The similar U.S. jurisdiction and colonial histories of Christianization and militarization between Sāmoa and Hawai’i brought these stories together for analysis (Gonzalez, 2013). Beginning with our daughters’ kula kamalii (preschool) and neighborhood banyan tree adventures, we, two mother scholars (Scott & Henward, 2016), discovered overlap in worldviews, paradigms, and ultimately, our community-based and participatory commitments with NHPI communities (Campbell & Lassiter, 2010). Although separately conceptualized and conducted, each study used similar ethnographic methods, frameworks, and at its core, explicit decolonizing goals of social transformation (Bejarano et al., 2019). As justice-based research projects, each study foregrounded relational and place-based approaches in which our research was guided by community and the findings were returned to benefit said communities (Kwaymullina, 2016; Swadener & Mutua, 2008; Sauni, 2011).

Meta-ethnography is a comparative, textual analysis of ethnographic or qualitative studies that seek the recovery of these complex larger social, cultural, historical, political, and theoretical contexts and their comparison across studies (Urrieta & Noblit, 2018a, 2018b). Interpretive and inductive, it involves an explanatory synthesis because the goal is to identify analogies that work across separate studies and the points of similarity across ethnographic cases (Noblit et al., 1988). Although strict parallels are unnecessary, similarities in methods, focus, and analysis—constant comparative method (Charmaz & Thornberg, 2021)—aided this qualitative synthesis. It enables us to compare the conditions necessary for Indigenous survivance in various NHPI contexts.

The Cases

The Sāmoa preschool study (2013–2017) was launched to understand the interaction of increasingly stringent federal Head Start policy mandates and local cultural practices as it pertained to curriculum and pedagogy in Sāmoa’s public early childhood program. For Allison, this ongoing collaboration emerged in Sāmoa over a chicken katsu lunch in Tafuna, Tutuila, with Mene, ¹ a Sāmoan friend and colleague. At the time, we worked for the University of Hawai’i in collaboration with the American Sāmoa Department of Education and the American Sāmoa Community College. Allison visited Tutuila frequently, including month-long stretches.

As Sāmoan music played in the small cafe, Mene dropped his voice and indicated a problem. Although his exact words remain in the past, his concern was evident: The preschool teachers were struggling to navigate the new Head Start curriculum, and we needed to help. After a third colleague, Ron, joined our research community, we conceptualized research questions and studied ethnographic methods and theory. This study later evolved until it included nearly 80 participants: preschool children (3–5 years old), families, and early childhood educators. Over 2 years, our three-person team jotted field notes and captured pictures of artifacts and classroom practices in a total of five classrooms. To amplify educator voices, we videotaped a typical day in one classroom, using selected clips to prompt and organize discussion (Tobin et al., 2009). During classroom fieldwork, Allison welcomed invitations from teachers, parents, and community members for deep hanging out outside the classroom—this included visits to churches, sports, community celebrations, pageants, and umu building.

The Hawai’i (2012–2014) study aimed to reconceptualize how Indigenous education could impact classrooms in times of increasingly standardized regulations. The project began as a community-engagement project with Hokulani, Ms. Fay (teacher), and Kapena, a community-engaged specialist of a land-based taro restoration project. Ms. Fay teaches at Maikaʻi, a public charter school in the middle of busy Honolulu. Maikaʻi is housed in a rented three-story building near a major highway and from the exterior, looks more like an office building. Keiki are ethnically and socioeconomically stratified; however, Maikaʻi primarily serves middle-class families.

Following a parent newsletter describing the science curriculum focused on a year-long snap pea gardening project, Hokulani, a researcher and parent to a student in Ms. Fay’s class, suggested an alternative—working with Mālama’ Āina (MA), a community-based organization working to restore wetland taro (kalo) cultivation, or what is known as lo’i kalo. At the time, Hokulani was working with MA staff to revise their land-based curriculum. The author introduced Ms. Fay and Kapena, and the three began working on a lesson plan that invited keiki to increase their cultural, historical, and ecological knowledge about Hawaiian plants and the water cycle (Hawai’i state learning objectives for third-grade science) through classroom and hands-on, place-based learning—creating this community of practice allowed Hokulani to fulfill her kuleana (responsibilities and obligations) to her communities by extending the resources within the academy.

Data were collected for a year during the kalo project (October to October), which aligned with the life cycle of the kalo plant. Centering the kalo’s life cycle meant foregrounding Hawaiian ways of knowing and values in schooling. In visits to the lo’i, children learned from mahiʻai kalo (taro farmers) through hands-on experiences of growing kalo and moʻolelo (stories) intended to introduce and orient students to the nuances of the farm. Over the school year, students visited the lo’i twice and cared for kalo grown on site as part of a research experiment.

Growing in Context: Entering the Lo’i classroom in Hawai’i: The Kalo Curriculum Project

It is a sunny morning on the island of Oʻahu. Off a major street in the bustling city of Honolulu, the students, Ms. Fay, and I (Hokulani) get on the school bus that will take us to the Mālama’ Āina lo’i on the windward coast. When we arrive, the children jump off the bus and go to the fields, their kāmaʻa (slippers) pounding the āina. Framing our outdoor classroom are the towering Koʻolau mountains, their leafy green faces illuminated by the morning sun. Kapena has invited us to visit the lo’i. She greets us warmly. We caution the children not to run off. According to Hawaiian protocol, Kapena must ask us into the space. Standing in a circle with hands clasped, we take turns introducing ourselves, beginning with Kapena, who models to the children how to introduce themselves. She also explains that they are introducing themselves to her, the other staff, and the ’āina. She told us the Hawaiian name of the place where we were gathered. Later, Kapena will introduce the students to the deity/guardian of this place. Once everyone has introduced themselves, Kapena begins an oli (chant) in ’Ōlelo Hawai’i to welcome us to the lo’i.

With the opening protocol complete, Kapena leads the group to a pond filled with kalo plants. Standing on its grassy edge, Kapena tells us the story of Wākea (sky father) and Hoʻohōkūkalani (the maker of stars), who are the celestial parents to Hāloanākalaukapalili, a stillborn infant. She explains that they were heartbroken about the loss of their baby, and so they buried his body beside their hale (home). From that place grew the first taro plant. Wākea and Hoʻohōkūkalani would have a second child whom they also named Hāloa. This child survived and became an aliʻi (leader) among the people. Kapena says this story is important because it explains the familial relationship between kānaka (human beings) and the MTH beings that comprise the lo’i—the sky, the stars, and the kalo. According to this story, kalo is the elder sibling of kānaka. Kapena remarks that this story is also essential because it tells us what our respective kuleana or responsibilities are: Kalo’s kuleana is to feed kānaka. Kānaka has the kuleana to care for kalo. “This reciprocal relationship is called mālama’ āina,” she says. “Kalo depends on us to care for him, and we depend on kalo to feed us.”

Kapena moves our group to a nearby lo’i. Unlike the kalo in the previous lo’i, which looked to be nearing harvest, the kalo in this lo’i seems a few months old. Standing on the pond’s banks, Kapena confirms what I observed; these kalo were planted 3 months earlier, and this entire lo’i needs to be weeded. Ms. Fay jumps into the conversation and reminds students about the kalo life cycle they studied in class the week before. She asks students which stage these kalo plants are in in their life cycle. Several hands shoot in the air. Ms. Fay calls on Makana, a girl I know of Hawaiian and Filipino ancestry; she enthusiastically replies, “The ’ōpio stage.” Ms. Fay praises this correct response, and Kapena adds that the kalo in the lo’i we were previously standing beside had kalo in the mākua life cycle stage. Students begin chatting and pointing at the different lo’i.

Ms. Fay helped Kapena regain the students’ attention, and the lesson continued. Kapena explains that the group will care for the kalo by pulling weeds. She invites 8-year-old Kai, a boy with sandy-blond hair who transferred to the school that year, to step forward. Hesitantly, Kai moves close to the edge of the lo’i. As the other keiki look on and watch, Kapena instructs Kai on safely entering and exiting the pond. She then shows him and the other kids how to move down the rows safely so as not to damage the fragile kalo plants. Now it is Kai’s turn. He slowly slides from the grassy bank into the cool, muddy water. His eyes widened, and he gasped from the shock of the cool, slimy water. The rest of the class laughed along with him. Some are bouncing on their toes, eager to follow Kai into the water, while others have a look of disgust on their face and are saying, “Gross.” Again, Kapena reiterates which plants students are to mālama (the kalo plants) and which ones they need to pull out (the weeds). To stress the difference, she points Kai’s finger to touch the kalo plant and then points his finger to the weeds. She then demonstrates how Kai is to pinch the weed’s stem to pull it out. Kapena plucks the stem from the muddy soil surrounding the kalo plant. Turning to Kai, she gestures that it is Kai’s turn. He pulls a few weeds, mimicking Kapena’s actions. They clear space around a kalo plant for 3 minutes while the other students watch and learn from the pond’s banks. With the demonstration finished, Kapena turned to the rest of the class and invited them to slide into the pond. She and Ms. Fay have assigned three kids per row, and for the next 40 minutes, we hear kids chatting as they pull weeds.

Once the entire pond has been cleared of weeds, Ms. Fay and Kapena have the kids climb out of the lo’i. The students are covered in mud—some remain relatively clean with mud caked on their legs, while others look like they spent their time swimming in the thick, muddy water. All the kids smiled, laughed, and joked with each other. Ms. Fay gets their attention once again. Sitting on the banks of the freshly weeded lo’i, Kapena asks them to describe what they see about how the water moves through this freshly weeded pond and the one to their right that is not. The energy among the kids was so high that Kapena allowed students to shout out their observations. One student says they can see the water moving in the lo’i they just weeded, while another described how the kalo leaves move gently by the breeze. Another student wonders aloud if the water in the other lo’i would feel the same as the one they just left. Kapena lets the students speak freely with her and Ms. Fay and with each other for a few more minutes before moving on to another lo’i, where they repeat the process of sliding into the water, pulling weeds, and climbing out.

As we moved from one lo’i to another, Kapena pointed out which stage of the kalo life cycle the plants represented. She also explained how the plants needed different kinds of care in each cycle of life. Toward the end of the morning, she directed our group to an empty pond. On the pond’s bank was a wheelbarrow filled with huli (the stalks of the kalo plant) ready for planting. Kapena pointed to Kanoe, a thin, brown-haired boy who appears to be more comfortable playing video games than working in the mud, and asked if he would like to learn how to plant kalo. Confidently, Kanoe says he already knows how to plant kalo because he has been to a lo’i before. Kapena asks him to demonstrate the process to his classmates. Before sliding into the lo’i, which has mounds of soil in neat rows the width of the pond, Kanoe walks over to the wheelbarrow and picks out two huli. Once he has his footing, he points to the green stalk and says, “This is the huli.” He then points to the end and explains, “This is the kohina. When you plant the huli, you want to make sure this part is fully pressed into the mud.” Confidently, he bends down and expertly presses the kohina into the soft mud. He uses his arm to measure the distance between the plants. He firmly presses the second huli into the earth, stands, and takes a bow. His classmates applaud, as does Kapena.

Kapena then instructs each student to pick two huli to plant. She reminds students that the plants need to be an arm’s length from each other, and when growing the Huli, they should have good thoughts and encouraging words for their plants. Students eagerly pick their huli and climb into the lo’i. The huli are planted within minutes, and kids play in the mud again. Because this is the final activity for the session, Kapena has the kids move from the muddy water into the clear water of the ’auwai, or canal, that carries water from one lo’i to another. They must get as much mud off as possible in the clear water. For some of these kids, this is an exercise in futility. Once mostly clean, Ms. Fay and Kapena direct the kids back to the tables under the 20 × 20 tent, where they eat their sack lunches. Ms. Fay also distributes each child’s kalo journal, where she invites them to write or draw their feelings from the day.

Kapena’s lesson demonstrates what contextualized, land-based ways of knowing makes possible. Her lesson and the children’s participation exemplify the hūnā (sacred, hidden) nature of moʻolelo (stories). Unlike Western notions of knowledge acquisition, in moʻolelo, not everything is free and open or accessible to all students; instead, the assumption is that students will hear the lessons in the stories that will help them carry their kuleana. Understanding depends on one’s context and participation and the specific needs of the student, underscored by observation of Hawaiian protocol and practices. While the importance of caring for kalo is demonstrated, which the children can only learn through participation, this activity is far more than keiki helping to pull weeds. Kapena clarified that pulling weeds and observing water flow, levels, and temperatures are all essential to mālama kalo (caring for kalo) and part of our collective kuleana as kānaka (human beings).

When Kapena tells the students about Wākea, Hoʻohōkūkalani, and the brothers, Hāloa, from the banks of the lo’i, she is doing more than telling an abstract story. The presence of Hāloa communicates to students that Hawaiian knowledge and practices are material and accessible to them. The story, the process of pulling weeds, and the method of planting new kalo demonstrate how Kanaka Maoli cosmologies are enacted and how they sustain human life in this place. The lessons learned in the classroom, which preceded the visit to the lo’i, reinforce how Indigenous peoples in other places have their own stories that connect them to their lands, waters, and food systems.

As we moved around the lo’i, Kapena allowed children to tend to the kalo at every stage of the plant’s life cycle. From watching, listening, and then doing, Kapena’s actions teach children to understand the importance of ecological systems that sustain the kalo and the specific roles human beings have in that system. Skills such as kilo (observing the natural world) are demonstrated, carried out, and connected to the place through their participation. The creative reflection process at the end of the day invites students to make connections between their experiences that day and other aspects of their contemporary lives. This particular day at the lo’i will be foundational in shaping how the students interact with and care for the kalo they will grow outside their classroom back at school. They will return to these experiences when the science experiments conclude the following year.

Connecting ’āina (land) and moʻolelo (stories)

In the classroom, a few miles and worlds apart from the lo’i, Ms. Fay and I, Hokulani, worked with the children to mālama their māla (gardens) of kalo. Planted in October in tandem with the visit to the lo’i, the students tracked changes, observed plant differences, and documented their findings in their kalo journals. Reminding the keiki of the watersheds and experiences of the lo’i and recounting the interconnectedness of moʻolelo, keiki were asked to describe and identify the factors needed to mālama their māla (take care of their garden). The experience at the lo’i made a visible impact on the children. Ms. Fay reports during one of our regular debrief sessions that each week when she asks for volunteers to mālama the kalo and track their progress, she always has multiple students eager to participate. She showed me their kalo journals, and I saw students using both numeracy and illustrations to track the growth of each kalo plant. Midway through the process, we are delighted with the outcomes.

I observed the students’ first day of the new school year as Ms. Fay brought the new third-grade students outside to be introduced to the kalo her previous class planted. I was thrilled to see Ms. Fay follow the same process Kapena used last fall when teaching students how to introduce themselves and why it was necessary. As planned, Ms. Fay tells the students how these kalo plants came to be grown at their school. In sharing this story, she actively incorporates the new students into the moʻolelo (narrative) that connects Hawaiian cosmology, the lo’i, the previous class, and the new keiki class. She also used this time to give students a verbal overview of how they will continue the kuleana (responsibility) to mālama the kalo.

Unlike the previous year, the new third graders began their kalo project by observing the previous class harvest the kalo. The (now) fourth-grade students were divided into small groups, and each group was assigned a plant to huki (pull out of the ground). With either Ms. Fay’s or the author’s help, the leaves, stems, and corm were separated and students organized them on a table where they took stock of the kalo yield. They then added these final tallies to their kalo journals.

With harvest completed, Ms. Fay distributes new kalo journals to the new third-grade students. They are instructed to follow their fourth-grade buddy to a quiet spot near the garden to learn about the life cycle of the kalo plant. This activity replicated the kaikaina-kaikuana (older sibling-young sibling) learning relationship. When students learn/teach in small groups, Ms. Fay gathers the huli (stalks that will be replanted), and I gather the corm and leaves. Ms. Fay will have her new students plant the huli the following day. During our ʻahaʻaina (feast), these keiki were instrumental in passing on this knowledge and carrying their kuleana (responsibility) to share their knowledge. When appropriate, during our celebration, the children had space to share land stories connected to the food grown in their māla.

Following this activity, the school raised funds and parents and students volunteered on weekends to build a māla/garden on the school grounds. Many of the teachers we invited engaged in the practice of kuleana by incorporating land-based science projects in their curriculum. For example, one teacher focused on loko iʻa (fish ponds, an Indigenous form of aquaculture) and developed a hydroponic system at the school. The children, their teacher, and I had fulfilled our kuleana to the community.

One of the concerns raised by equity educators is the need for children whose cultural practices are highly contextualized to extend this knowledge beyond local environments (Lee, 2009). As linguists and literacy educators have noted, schools often depend on and require children to analyze information beyond firsthand experience. Thus, we see tremendous promise in the practices that followed this project—the extension of children’s localized funds of knowledge developed on the lo’i and transferred to the classroom.

Because keiki engaged in this holistic land-based learning project, they could also transfer the lessons learned in food systems for survivance to other Indigenous communities of the United States. Later in the year, I observed Ms. Fay as she invited Hopi nation elders to share creation stories and those of the three sisters in their own words. The three sisters refer to corn, beans, and squash together in mounds in an intercropping complex. Although Keiki could not physically engage in land-based learning on Hopi lands, they could apply the knowledge and experience cultivated (literacy, land literacy, ecology, and water systems) on the lo’i and classrooms in Hawai’i. Through land-based cosmological understandings, keiki drew some connection between taro and Kanaka Maoli and the food systems of other Native peoples. While providing space and time to analyze and synthesize food system practices across contexts, this lesson has political significance, inviting connection and solidarity for Indigenous Peoples through land experiences.

Pusaga o le Umu (building the earth oven) in Sāmoa

The connection of LBE for younger children (3–5 years old) was also evident in two American Sāmoa Head Start classrooms.

It was a humid spring afternoon as I (Allison) drove down the one road connecting west and east Tutuila. My drive is taking longer than usual, but as I remind myself, it is Sunday. Church services in American Samoa have ended, and many people are on the road, some walking in cars and others catching aiga (family) buses. Coral rock and wooden churches are predominantly protestant (London Missionary, Methodist, and Baptist), but some Roman Catholic and Latter Day Saints churches also dot Tutuila’s landscape. The paved, windy two-lane road hugs the ocean and the vast natural Pago Pago harbor. As I follow the curve of the island, my car is shaded by lush coconut palms and breadfruit trees. Mountains and beaches are interspersed with villages, and in each are fales (traditional houses), contemporary homes, and small shops. I pass the longboat storage facility and multinational tuna cannery building. The cannery, like many other businesses on Tutuila, is closed—Sunday is reserved for Church and family (Fiaui & Hishinuma, 2009; Hunkin-Finau, 2007). With gratitude, I note the sweet smell of the ocean rather than the usual pungent smell surrounding the cannery.

As my tires halt on the gravel side of the road in a village on the eastern side of Tutuila, I smile hesitantly and greet the neighbors near Ioseph’s house. Knocking on the bright door, I quickly notice Ioseph peeking from behind the house—it is time to make a passage o le umu (circular raised pit for cooking). On Tutuila, umus are built nearly every Sunday, and I am lucky to be invited. Ioseph is almost 5, and now, he can help prepare the umu.

Walking back to the fale next to the steep and lush cliffs, I greet Ioseph’s mother and watch as Ioseph’s older brother, Enele, and dad, Solo, begin constructing the umu. Enele places coconut husks on the ground, and he encourages Iospeh to do the same. Ioseph throws a coconut husk and, with Solo’s direction and Enele’s physical guidance, moves his hand to place it correctly. Next, his father says—the rock. Enele walks over to the volcanic rocks and runs his fingers over the stone. As Ioseph and I watch and listen, Solo shares a fagogo, or fable of the volcanos, and the mythological two brothers. As Ioseph watches, his father examines stones and shows him the correct way to place rocks, cautioning that if one chooses the wrong stones, they will not retain heat or could even explode. Ioseph looks to his father, who nods and says, “Maˆloˆ!” (Well done!). Next, Ioseph watches Solo and Enele slice niu (coconut) husks with a machete. Finally, the fire is lit amid tales of Mafui (from Sāmoan mythology).

Throughout the building, Ioseph follows Enele, who is integral to the activity. Repeatedly, Ioseph pauses, waits, and looks to be guided by Solo. At Solo’s direction, Ioseph brings more meat (food)—banana leaves, niu (coconut), and fish—from the house. Pork and octopus later join this, and taufolo (breadfruit) and palusami (coconut cream, seawater, and onions placed in halved coconuts) are wrapped with banana leaves for a u’au wrapping. Ioseph’s brother waits for his father, removes the rock to put the food, and recovers with lava rocks to avoid losing heat. After Ioseph’s father is satisfied, the food is covered with banana leaves to cook. The men place food on a mailo (mat) woven from launiu (coconut palm fronds) by his father.

Ioseph’s participation with the land was guided by tala le vavau. The fagogo, or tala le vavau, is separate from a fairytale; it provides a moral within the story, a way of learning and activating socially and culturally acceptable practices. However, these stories are not abstract; myths typically have a physical place or landmark that points to where they occurred. When Ioseph’s father used tala le vavau in the umu building, he used the story of the two brothers as a cautionary tale linked to a specific observable place.

The teachers did not intentionally organize a close LBE and classroom connection through projects. Nevertheless, as community members, they had learned cultural practices and protocol—the close relationships teachers had with children and families through interconnection meant they referenced tala le vavau tales and children’s traditions on land. This included fale building, clothing units using land-based dyes and materials, and the incorporation of local foods rather than mainland food into the classroom.

Walking into the fale-style classroom on the edge of Pago Pago Harbor, I am greeted by Ms. Tua. Today, she told me she is teaching food and nutrition units. I join Ms. Tua and the 3- to 5-year-old children on the woven mat. When seated, she points to the pictures at her feet. Camera pictures are accompanied by commercialized images of meats, fruits, and vegetables (which look like they are from the FDA website). As we lean in, I notice they are local foods. The topic, Ms. Tua reminded them, was healthy foods that are good for your body. She then brings pictures of processed foods, including potato chips, which she contrasts with images of breadfruit, coconut, and other foods commonly cooked in umus. Raising the photos to face the children, Ms. Tua asks each child to identify it. Is it healthy for you or unhealthy? Do we have it here? Where can you get this?

In nutrition discussions, Ms. Tua highlights the importance and role of local knowledge. Asking children to come forward, they begin sorting the pictures into piles according to health and types of food.

Land-based Literacies for Survivance

Children in each island Nation engaged in activities that required their participation in routine cultural practices. These are but one of many practices these children were involved in throughout our studies. Nevertheless, these practices provided space and time to develop repertoires, hone skills, learn from the community, and for some, prepare and provide staple foods. As noted in situated learning theory, children learn language and skills and exhibit culturally appropriate behaviors and repertoires for this activity. These are the pedagogies needed to develop land-based literacies (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua 2013).

In thriving literature and literature on the science of learning, development must be seen as a situated practice within relational and collaborative contexts (Osher et al., 2020, 2021). A key component of human-centered development and learning considerations involves guidance and scaffolding (Vygotsky, 1987). Our field notes show that children constantly receive continual physical, emotional, and verbal responses through LBE activities. In the umu, it was the words and direction, modeling, and placing hands over hands to guide this practice. This human physical and verbal feedback was always contextualized within their community’s valued actions and patterns. Similarly, at the lo’i, the children’s role was to watch, listen, and learn. And they did, fulfilling the pedagogical expectations of the lo’i staff, their community, and Hawaiian protocol (Kaomea, 2016). Children developed specific knowledge through interactions with ’āina that were scaffolded over a calendar year. Because learning occurred at the lo’i and in the classroom, students were given many opportunities to demonstrate a range of knowledge repertoires. Consequently, their role and the required social practices shifted from a participant who learns while they contribute to one who participates and contributes in different ways. In each case, the keiki were active and fulfilled a meaningful role within the LBE process.

Typically, a human-centered pedagogical approach would include consideration of familiarity with students’ cultural practices and consciously linking subject-specific school knowledge to long-standing cultural patterns in each community for increased educational and social outcomes. Here this is evident. Children demonstrate skills such as classification, modeling, water systems, and ecological concerns for biology. Indeed, many markers point to the children’s success in developing subject-specific knowledge (Lee, 2009). LBE also met the specific goals and needs of oral and written literacy and subject-specific matter in science (ecological and biological concerns), critical aspects of the Hawai’i Department of Education science curriculum. From journaling, measuring, and writing in Hawai’i to classification structures and health in Sāmoa, children demonstrated their acquisition of concepts and skills as defined by various state and federal licensure and accreditation bodies.

Employing survivance theory in consideration of NHPI children’s development allows new understandings and possibilities to emerge. Here, we are concerned with how co-relational onto-epistemologies in LBE allow for the coming together of materials, the human world, and MTH world. Indigenous knowledge systems proved instrumental in shaping conceptions of land (Krishnamoorthy, 2023). Indeed, there is ample evidence that the stories, protocol, and Indigenous epistemologies reconfigured relationships, ways of knowing, and one’s development concerning time. Specifically, we suggest the centering of Indigenous epistemologies, pushed beyond this sociocultural consideration toward engaging in transformative practice. Although humans are essential in learning processes, LBE depends on the interaction and relations of stories, materials, and the MTH world. Rather than relying on a predetermined Cartesian ontology, in LBE, various elements come together and link to produce meaning (Kaipayil, 2009). ² By attending to the specificity of the interaction and, to a certain extent, intraaction of elements in LBE, our concern is on the ways relationships configure in knowledge formation. When children work and contribute to community endeavors on the land, they do so with their eco-cultural community, and this configures substantially in their learning processes and their ability to leverage this knowledge in new ways (Bang et al., 2015). With these activities, there is much to be learned about how co-relational ontology can restructure development considerations over space and over time.

The recognition of Indigenous cosmologies and MTH considerations also invites us to reconsider development as more than stage or even traditional context specific. Acknowledging that Indigenous epistemologies recognize time as the past, present, and future unfolding into one another and in which life forms, human and nonhuman, are cosmically connected prompts us to understand and expand contexts and therefore considerations of how development is shaped over and by time. This was particularly evident in umu building when stories of the two brothers were recited and the MTH and ancestral world folded into the present practice.

Relatedly, pedagogies needed to develop land-based literacies necessitate building relationships (Goodyear-Ka’ōpua 2013). Relationships that are essential to human functioning are also integral to LBE practices and begin with land acknowledgments. As Maori scholar Tuiwai Smith (2023) wrote,

From within my Indigenous context and culture, the land acknowledgment is the beginning or the continuation of a relationship. It begins the task of making the connection between people and places by laying out some epistemic protocols and symbols that form the basis of a relationship. (p. 67)

The introductory activities at the lo’i established the foundation for students to develop relationships with the land. As they became more confident caring for kalo, their relationships and their role as land stewards expanded. These MTH relationships retained their importance when structuring talk and action in the classroom (Krishamoorthy, 2023).

Each teacher incorporated language as a mediating factor to ensure transference between these environments and application to other Indigenous communities. This oral storytelling was picked up and mirrored within the classroom, most notably within the Hawai’i context. The children’s engagement in oral storytelling within the classroom reflected and followed lo’i protocol, allowing them to integrate storytelling in congruent ways that showcased their work and knowledge in contributing to the community (Duranti, 2012).

For example, Ms. Fay drew on mo’olelo as she engaged children in the agricultural practices of other Indigenous Peoples. About midway through the year, she created a week-long lesson that featured the agricultural practices of the Hopi Nation. She included videos and storybooks about the cultural significance of the three sisters (beans, corn, and squash) to extend the learning beyond the lo’i and a Hawaiian context. More deeply, she connected land literacies through multimedia and multiliteracy practices in the classroom. In doing so, students not only learned the cultural significance of these plants for the Hopi Nation but also used Indigenous epistemologies and moʻolelo to connect subject-specific knowledge. For example, Ms. Fay stressed that although each plant can grow independently, together, with each plant contributing something unique to the relationship, they are able to thrive in the hot dry climate of the Southwest. At the end of the week, keiki spent time reflecting on the learning they did that week. Ms. Fay reported she was impressed by how the keiki were able to make connections between how the Hopi and Hawaiians turn to their oral stories to address environmental and food concerns. In doing so, they transferred conceptual frames—encoding them and decoding them in contexts and concerns beyond Hawai’i.

Although learning subject-specific knowledge remains crucial in equity, as we have hopefully made clear, this is but one aspect of development necessary for NHPI survivance. Indigenous survivance in the Pacific depends on an ever-present recognition and connection to learning experiences on land but relies on the thriving of one and one’s community in context. Community means enacting and practicing just relationships with the land, leveraging nature-culture relations, and engaging critically in island nations particularly vulnerable to climate change.

One morning, we arrived at the Sāmoan classroom. Ms. Lora rushes to greet us with a smile—oh good, you are here; you will see the children. It’s the clothing unit. As she explains to the children and us, Teui-la, a four-year-old, is wearing a siapo from traditional u’a cloth (paper mulberry) that is scraped with clamshells and dyed using o’a lama, loa, ago, and soa’a dyes. These are sourced from local plants. She is also wearing a crown of seashells made by her family. Parents and the community enter the classroom, and then the pageant begins. As each child comes forward, waiting to be invited, Ms. Lora describes their clothing, where on the island it was made, and which family members worked together to make it.

Finally, as the activity concluded, the community joined in a song. With poise, Ms. Lora turns to the children and families.

The children display these to remind us all and to remind you not to depend on Palagi (white) clothes. They cost money, and we should produce things with our own hands. We can work together, using things found in our own environment, we should produce our own clothes.

These land-based activities created conditions whereby children and adults were able to produce new meanings by working together on tasks that were fundamentally intended to support the survivance of their communities (Coppens et al., 2014). Even as students felt empowered and were supported by adults throughout the activities, space was also created for young children to begin understanding the cultural disconnects and power dynamics of colonial-informed education because these LBEs were a stark contrast to their “regular” learning. We do not suggest this was overt. However, there is substantial promise in how these activities can provide the counter-stories and counternarratives necessary for children to recognize the disconnects between Western practices and those contributing to cultural revitalization and continuity.