View article

The first of these might fit in the vein of “solidarity tourism”(see Kelly, this issue). The “de” in the “Detour” I was taken on in 2012 was all about demilitarization and decolonization. 1 We began at ‘Iolani Palace, the site of the Native Hawaiian monarchical sovereignty that was usurped in the name of US interests in 1893. We ended it at Ke Awalau ‘o Pu ‘uloa—better known as Pearl Harbor—where our longtime activist guides Kyle and Aunty Terri bemused other tourists with their dissonant counternarratives. They acknowledged the tragic loss of so much life on December 7, 1941, while insisting on the need to remember the prior significance of the landscape, its confluence of streams—a veritable food basket for kanaka maoli—an area once governed by a chiefly woman before it was coveted and illegally acquired as a base for expanding US imperialist interests in the Pacific. Still an active naval base today, the harbor …