Roots vaka transits: Traversing seas of urban diasporic indigenity with the songs and stories of the kava canoe Event as iCalendar

Daniel Hernandez | University of Auckland

Faikava represents the most common and diverse types of kava drinking gatherings among Tongans in the Kingdom of Tonga and its diaspora, which is the focus of this multi-sited ethnographic research. Based primarily in Aotearoa and Utah and among the increasingly expansive multi-ethnic and pan-Oceanic groups, this research explores what faikava is today, what it tells us about diaspora and urban Indigenous identities, as well as the contemporary relationship between music and kava. Faikava are practical and creative ways for urban diasporic populations to make and keep connections to their Indigenous identities by transporting ocean, land, and ancestors through time and space.

Indigeneity is revealed through performances of identity in kava settings, such as the embodiment of ancestors and the transmission of indigenous knowledge through evolving stories and songs faikava is a space of mediating mana (potency) and tapu (sacredness) to yield noa (equilibrium) revealing truths. Faikava cultivates and transmits cultural values such as relational mindfulness and cultural arts such as strategic poetic language. Indigeneity is conceptualised as remembering place-based ancestral identities and re-forming them in diverse ways, which contest modern temporalities.

This presentation will explore the growing phenomenon of urban and diasporic Indigenous identity today. Additionally, the topics of gender, displacement, metaphor, religion, history, hip hop, and more will be navigated as they collide and are rearranged in contested space and time.

My parents are my first teachers and taught me story, reading, and life. I’m married with four children and I descend from K’iche’, Mam, Tz’utujil, and K’aqchiquel peoples. I’m an urban diasporic Maya who grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah, (US) where my Tongan and Moana relations began in the Mormon community. I received a B.A. in Anthropology, and a M.Ed. in Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah. I am now completing my PhD at the University of Auckland in Anthropology and Ethnomusicology. My research explores Indigenous identities in diaspora through Kava songs and stories.