Chapter 15: Stories of Native Educators in Hawai’i Navigating Their EdD Journeys

Native perspectives of epistemology emerge from and are sustained by lived and oral traditions. Within oral societies, recitation and storytelling are a valued means of transmitting cultural and historical wisdom, histories, values, and beliefs. Recitation of the 2,102 lines of the cosmological genealogy known as the Kumulipo narrates the creation and evolution of the earth, its flora and fauna, including the deities of the Hawaiian pantheon and Hawaiian people. Ancient Polynesian and Micronesian migration chants relate epic stories of navigation spanning the Pacific Ocean. Ancestral experiences are brought to life within families; a Marshallese wave pilot remembers lying in his father’s arms listening to his father’s stories and feeling that he was in the canoe with him. Recent brain research reveals the abilities to navigate are directly tied to our ability to imagine, make decisions, learn from our past, and plan for the future. Furthermore, navigation is directly tied to our mental processes that enable storytelling (Tingley, 2016). “If storytelling, the way we structure and make meaning from the events of our lives, arose from navigating, so too, is the practice of navigation inherently bound up with storytelling, in all its subjectivity” (Tingley, 2016, p. 14).