Description
Book SynopsisHow Native Hawaiians’ experience of Mormonism intersects with their cultural and ethnic identities and traditions
Trade Review"A Chosen People, a Promised Land is a fascinating book. Attending to fraught and revealing episodes in Hawaiian-Mormon history, Hokulani K. Aikau opens up new terrain for historical analysis in a manner that is theoretically engaged yet accessible."—Greg Johnson, author of Sacred Claims: Repatriation and Living Tradition
"More than finding an eager audience, this pathbreaking book will add convincingly to the growing body of work inside and outside the continental United States and the Pacific Islands region that compels critical audiences in the studies of American culture and Native Pacific struggles of the absolute need to read work coming out of the other."—Vicente M. Diaz, author of Repositioning the Missionary
"An excellent examination of the complex intersection of race, religion, and culture in Hawaii."—Indigenous Peoples Issues and Resources
"Aikau's personal experiences, her interviews with LDS members in the islands, the inclusion of oral history and journal entires and her storytelling skills provide fresh and valuable insight into a fascinating segment of Hawaii's people and history."—Honolulu Civil Beat
"This groundbreaking, transnational, and more inclusive approach to Hawaiian studies grants Native Hawaiians agency and offers a much needed alternative representation of Hawai’i within the national history of the United States."—American Studies
"This book shows the complicated nature of colonial interactions. Aikau masterfully uses native voices, especially through oral histories, to critique existing scholarship that has not addressed the colonial legacy of the Church. This book is an important work for other scholars to build on as they do further research on Mormonism in the Pacific."—Journal of Mormon History
Table of ContentsContents
Preface
Introduction: Negotiating Faithfulness
1. Mormonism, Race, and Lineage: The Making of a Chosen People
2. Lā‘ie, a Promised Land, and Pu’uhonua: Spatial Struggles for Land and Identity
3. Called to Serve: Labor Missionary Work and Modernity
4. In the Service of the Lord: Religion, Race, and the Polynesian Cultural Center
5. Voyages of Faith: Contemporary Kanaka Maoli Struggles for Sustainable Self-Determination
Conclusion: Holo Mua, Moving Forward
Acknowledgments
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index
