Michael Kaulana Ing: "E Hana I Kanaka (Let’s Make Humanity): Hawaiian Syncretisms of the Biblical Creation"

Michael Kaulana Ing, Professor of Religion at Indiana University, will trace on the ways that nineteenth-century Kanaka Hawaiʻi (Native Hawaiian people) used Christianity as a tool to galvanize Kanaka political consciousness in the face of colonialism. By creating syncretic narratives of creation that transformed Biblical narratives, they spoke back to colonialism by centering Kanaka Hawaiʻi in the story of the world and its origins. 

Presented by the Department of American Indian Studies. Co-sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study, the Religious Studies Program, the Department of History, the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the Center for Premodern Studies.