No one is gonna pay attention to this, but I’m gonna say it anyway. The “early modern” is a white periodization. Please don’t take other Peoples’ histories & places to serve the needs of that discourse. It’s factually wrong & exploitative & a discursive act of settlement. 1/

Days ago, I posted my concerns abt that BS Nature article “proving” Polynesian & “Native American” DNA mixing. Take a look at the article. They cite Heyerdahl. They describe the “mixture” as “interbreeding.” They recycle a tired, WS version of “history.” 2/

The continuing traction of that piece & pop press pieces about that piece are insulting & erasing. They feed a WSC appropriation of my People & our cousins. The authors seek to justify their piece by saying they did it for some Pac Islanders to tell them abt their ancestors. 3/

I don’t think any of us know details of this DNA pact the researchers made. I’ve read 1 acct of someone on Rapa Nui who is questioning that tale. Regardless, that should be a red flag that these guys are profiting off the bodies of Natives, consent or no. And outsiders consume.4/

And revelation time: the 1100s is like yesterday in the long stretching lines of time-place-genealogy in Pacific Peoples’ histories. It’s not ancient. There are chants that tell us the sea-ways taken & families who travelled, linking islands and oceans. 5/

The name “Hawai’i” reminds us of the deep, long histories of our relationships with each other, not just IN the island throughout the Pacific, but also AROUND the Pacific, integrating continental relations in the largest place on the planet. 6/

Our languages are exceedingly diverse yet often, surprisingly close, as words (even clusters) reveal linguistic roots that track historical movements. Best of all, family names tell us even more, as do the oral histories that are kept in family genealogies. Thousands of years. 7/

It’s never enough to keep restating what we know, what reformed & indigenized anthro, archo, linguistics, history have written & presented & published. It’s never enough b/c settlers gotta settle. And take. 8/

But thousands of years of our relations to ‘aina, wai, kai, and each other LIVE. Hoping the next time I get to write about our places and peoples, those lives and histories are front and center. A mama, ua noa!

PS: @Elysabethgrace characterized a certain stimulus as a “prick”-ing. Knowing the resonance of that term, this bird was prickt to sing. But aestheticization of a response to ongoing violences shouldn’t obscure the pain of erasure endured & refuted. Kaumaha requires a response.