Outstanding thinkers of the Western world are pulled into his creation, adding luster, interest, and academic panache to this highly readable book.

In the summer of 2019, a group of kia'i, or protectors, made up of kānaka 'ōiwi (Native Hawaiians) and their allies came together to prevent the construction of the Thirty-Meter Telescope (TMT) on the dormant volcano Maunakea. In Mele on the Mauna, Joseph Keola Donaghy explores how music, and especially haku mele, or Hawaiian language composers, played a crucial role in this defense. Musicians flocked to the mauna (mountain) to perform for the kia'i and a worldwide audience via social media. Haku mele created new songs at unprecedented levels, releasing many commercially with proceeds benefiting organizations providing support services and supplies to the kia'i. This book features over 30 of the author's interviews with individuals who participated in musical activities connected with this movement, including kia'i and their supporters, composers, musicians, and community leaders. Donaghy explores Indigenous Hawaiian concepts and theories like mana (power), mo'okū'auhau and pilina (genealogy and relationships), kapu aloha (philosophical code of conduct), and aloha 'āina (love of land, patriotism), and western academic concepts like connectedness and community building, poetics, sound(ing) and silenc(e/ing), conflict, and creativity. Mele on the Mauna illuminates how music played a powerful role in building solidarity, inspiration, and activism, reveling in the most contentious confrontations about protecting Maunakea and the outpouring of musical performances and creativity that occurred.

Book written from a decolonization perspective of Hawaiian history. The woerk is derived from oral and written Hawaiian language texts by invoking Native representations as alternatives to those constructed by outsiders and settlers.

Paul Pearsall's research shows that individual success and the solitary pursuit of happiness may be hazardous to one's health. Although many self-help books champion the singular approach to success and personal power as the path to well-being, Partners in Pleasure challenges this "singularity" by presenting new research and ancient cultural lessons regarding collective and connective ways to fulfillment and wellness. Drawing in part on 2,000-year-old Polynesian wisdom, this book shows how to go beyond self-fulfillment to shared pleasure.

Sports Matters brings critical attention to the centrality of race within the politics and pleasures of the massive sports culture that developed in the U.S. during the past century and a half.

Indigenous Symbols and Practices in the Catholic Church presents views, concepts and perspectives on the relationships among Indigenous Peoples and the Catholic Church, as well as stories, images and art as metaphors for survival in a contemporary world. Few studies present such interdisciplinary interpretations from contributors in multiple disciplines regarding appropriation, spiritual and religious tradition, educational issues in the teaching of art and art history, the effects of government sanctions on traditional practice, or the artistic interpretation of symbols from Indigenous perspectives. Through photographs and visual materials, interviews and data analysis, personal narratives and stories, these chapters explore the experiences of Indigenous Peoples whose lives have been impacted by multiple forces – Christian missionaries, governmental policies, immigration and colonization, education, assimilation and acculturation. Contributors investigate current contexts and complex areas of conflict regarding missionization, appropriation and colonizing practices through asking questions such as, 'What does the use of images mean for resistance, transformation and cultural destruction?' And, 'What new interpretations and perspectives are necessary for Indigenous traditions to survive and flourish in the future?'

Through their search to achieve a sense of academic identity the authors in this volume have brought us new textures and ideas from their research to help us all in our creation and location of spaces we can claim as our own. Working within the traditions of academic scholarship, we are reformulating what we see and presenting it in a previously unexplored perspective of connections and possibilities. Through our presentation of this view, we are asserting a new location for the academic identity negotiation that will challenge and reinforce our positioning within scholarly endeavors. The articles contained in these pages are themselves markers of identity produced within and created to define the academic culture. From this base of academic tradition, the essays contained in this volume share grounding in the exploration of culturally produced markers of identity pulling from various academic disciplines. Through the examination of the performance of identity markers, each scholar develops and reveals connections that we may utilize in our ever-expanding perspective of scholarly subjects and approaches.