Forward Without Fear - Studies in Pacific Worlds by Derek Taira Hardcover

About the Book

Derek Taira argues that during the territorial period many Hawaiians neither subscribed nor succumbed to public schools' aggressive efforts to assimilate and Americanize but instead engaged with American education to envision and support an alternate future.

Book Synopsis

During Hawai'i's territorial period (1900-1959), Native Hawaiians resisted assimilation by refusing to replace Native culture, identity, and history with those of the United States. By actively participating in U.S. public schools, Hawaiians resisted the suppression of their language and culture, subjection to a foreign curriculum, and denial of their cultural heritage and history, which was critical for Hawai'i's political evolution within the manifest destiny of the United States.

In Forward without Fear Derek Taira reveals that many Native Hawaiians in the first forty years of the territorial period neither subscribed nor succumbed to public schools' aggressive efforts to assimilate and Americanize them but instead engaged with American education to envision and support an alternate future, one in which they could exclude themselves from settler society to maintain their cultural distinctiveness and protect their Indigenous identity. Taira thus places great emphasis on how they would have understood their actions--as flexible and productive steps for securing their cultural sovereignty and safeguarding their future as Native Hawaiians--and reshapes historical understanding of this era as one solely focused on settler colonial domination, oppression, and elimination to a more balanced and optimistic narrative that identifies and highlights Indigenous endurance, resistance, and hopefulness.

Review Quotes

"Forward without Fear provides a critical bridge of Native Hawaiian cultural persistence across the territorial period, and Taira's skillful and nuanced work has revealed a rich body of sources. Scholars of Hawaiian and Pacific history, American empire, and educational history will all find Forward without Fear an important addition to their shelves."--Michelle M. K. Morgan, American Historical Review

"Forward without Fear offers new insights on the multiple ways populations receive, resist, and reimagine schools and schooling as sites of both liberation and oppression. By centering an intricate and much-needed conversation on settler colonialism within a discussion on education, this book is well positioned to be a must-read across fields."--Mirelsie Velázquez, author of Puerto Rican Chicago: Schooling the City, 1940-1977

"Forward without Fear provides a critical examination of the role of public education in Hawaiʻi's territorial period. By showing how settler-colonial ideologies were enacted through education policy, Taira also shows how Native Hawaiians were never mere victims of public education but actively engaged, challenged, or used settler forms of education for their own visions of the future. This book will be required reading in Hawaiian history, history of education, and Indigenous studies, among other fields."--Maile Arvin, author of Possessing Polynesians: The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai'i and Oceania

About the Author

Derek Taira is an associate professor of educational administration at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa.