Abstract
Tourism provides a vehicle for Indigenous maintenance and reconnection, but this relationship is often contradictory and paradoxical; the Indigenous dancer uses the colonial narratives of tourism to reconnect with their heritage and establish a livelihood, and tourism uses their bodies and cultural expressions to fuel its industries and maintain these narratives. Through an auto-ethnographic approach, and performance analysis, this essay explores the dinner cruise Star of Honolulu and its titular show “Beyond the Reef,” which ran from 2014-2018, highlighting the navigations and negotiations of a touristic dancer and cultural practitioner. Through this discursive analysis of a single production and interpersonal experience, this essay argues that the navigation and negotiations of the touristic dancer/cultural practitioner are critical to establishing routes and roots of decolonization, Pacific Island sovereignty and agency as they reclaim the touristic stage to embed their Indigenous praxis and reconnect to their severed histories.
Presenters
Asalemo M CrawfordStudent, PhD. American Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Hawaii, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Post-Pandemic Tourism Transformations
KEYWORDS
TOURISM, INDIGENEITY, HAWAII, DANCE, AUTOETHNOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE, CULTURE, PACIFIC, COLONIALISM, DECOLONIALISM
