“It takes a village, and I'm at the top of yours”: intergenerational meaning-making through kin-based relations and storytelling

1 Introduction

Mo‘olelo ‘ohana (family stories) have long functioned as an everyday mechanism through which Native Hawaiians transmit ‘ike kūpuna (ancestral knowledge) within and across generations (Kawa‘a, 2022). Like family narratives, mo‘olelo ‘ohana “are not random nostalgia describing a wistful past” (Aluli Meyer, 2025, p. 137). Rather, they are “meaning-making frameworks that organize experiences, convey values, / and transmit identity” (Garner et al., 2026, p. 1–2). When shared by close relatives with healthy pilina (relationships), mo‘olelo ‘ohana can teach young people about their genealogical history, address unresolved family conflicts, and restore balance in an ‘ohana (family) (Paglinawan et al., 2020). According to Aunty Lynette Paglinawan, a teacher of ho‘oponopono (traditional practice of conflict resolution), such balance is indicative of ‘ohana relations, which can be understood through the Native Hawaiian people's wayfinding histories and village lifeways. “The canoe is a microcosm of the ‘ohana,” Aunty Lynette explains. Family members “had to learn to get along. … There could only be one leader, and you had to be in agreement, for if each of you was a selfish individual, you may not survive the voyage.” While scholars have conducted case study inquiries into the ‘ohana as canoe and explored mo‘olelo ‘ohana's role in the perpetuation of Native Hawaiian values and identity (Burgess, 2020; Kawa‘a, 1982; Kupo, 2010), few have applied a similar methodology to examine the impact that ‘ohana relations and mo‘olelo ‘ohana have upon young people's socialization into a contemporary Hawai‘i society in which settler colonialism is pervasive (Cristobal, 2018). Drawn from a community-engaged qualitative study guided by Bang et al.'s (2016) call for axiological innovations in design-based inquiries, this article thus positions ‘ohana relations and mo‘olelo ‘ohana as structures and practices “of values, ethics, and aesthetics” that shaped meaning-making for two ‘ohana (p. 28). In particular, I explicate how these families became sites for meaning-making grounded in Indigenous and non-Indigenous ideologies. In doing so, this article affirms Aunty Lynette's wisdom on family leadership in village communities by identifying parents and grandparents as contributors to the internalization of intergenerational notions of Hawaiianness that steered these two ‘ohana's “canoes” toward a shared destination.

2 Positionality and purpose

I came to this study as a Native Hawaiian woman raised in the same rural community that served as the project's main site. Unlike some of my research collaborators who learned Indigenous framings of culture, gender, sexuality, and spirituality early in life, I was socialized by close relatives into non-Indigenous understandings of womanhood, heteropatriarchal normativity, and Christian supremacy. As a result, this research hinged upon my honest, continuous engagement with Simpson's (2007) reflexive offering: “Can I do this and still come home?” (p. 78). While my insider status granted access to community spaces, it also demanded accountability to families throughout the research process, especially when co-constructing findings with real consequences for the social, emotional, and psychological development of fellow Native Hawaiians in ‘ohana settings (Kaomea, 2001).

Therefore, I aimed to illuminate the complex Indigenous and non-Indigenous realities in which contemporary Native Hawaiian young people are currently developing. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate how individuals leverage their intergenerational kin-based pilina and mo‘olelo ‘ohana to communicate socializing messages to relatives and the extent to which those messages uphold or resist intersecting social hierarchies that reinforce and reproduce settler colonial beliefs of Hawaiianness in the 21st century. Given my interest in contributing to nascent empirical literature on Native Hawaiian resistance to becoming “oppressors unto ourselves” (Poupart, 2003, p. 95), my positionality animated a firm commitment to cultivate and maintain respect, care, and trust with collaborating families. This study's small sample size is thereby a reflection of my capacity to nurture ethical researcher-collaborator pilina with two ‘ohana (families) during a yearlong inquiry into narratives that are often uncritically “swept under the rug” or “hidden behind closed doors.”

3 Identity and kin-based pilina

Despite the growing acknowledgment by ho‘oponopono practitioners and critical Native Hawaiian scholars of contemporary families' struggle with living pono (justly, righteously) in the spiritual ways of their ancestors (Osorio, 2002; Paglinawan et al., 2020), kin-based ‘ohana remain central to individual wellbeing and the foundation of identity-based pilina (Cristobal, 2018). This recognition aligns with extant research on Children and Youth of Color that contends families are “the most important proximal social context” for identity formation processes (Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014, p. 13). Native Hawaiian psychologists and historians have argued that a balanced Native Hawaiian identity is achieved through healthy pilina with ‘ohana, community, nation, and ‘āina (land) (McCubbin and Marsella, 2009; McGregor et al., 2003). At the core of this socioecological framing of Native Hawaiian identity is an Indigenous epistemological perspective that the individual, while self-determined and independent, is simultaneously interdependent and fundamentally relational with their close, kin-based relatives and wider ecological contexts (Wilson, 2008). Kūkulu Kumuhana Planning Committee (2017) adds a political dimension to this epistemic stance by naming organizations and policies as societal contexts that also shape individual understandings of Hawaiianness. To this end, Native Hawaiian identity is influenced by interactions at the interpersonal micro level as well as through circulating beliefs and rhetoric at the mezzo and macro levels.

This study extends socioecological conceptualizations of identity by applying a Native Hawaiian critical race theoretical lens to situate identity formation against the backdrop of settler colonialism's pervasiveness in Hawai‘i (Cristobal, 2018). Accordingly, variance in Native Hawaiians' perceptions of who they are can be traced to a conscious or unconscious internalization of majoritarian, settler or non-dominant, Indigenous definitions of Hawaiianness. One family, for instance, may define itself using the settler rhetoric of blood quantum (“I'm one-fourth Native Hawaiian”), while another may endorse a cultural view of Hawaiianness using Indigenous rhetoric of relationality with ‘āina (“I'm a relative of Hāloa” [the first taro]) (Aluli Meyer, 2025; Osorio, 2002). To account for these complex realities, Figure 1 visualizes the impact of kin-based pilina and wider structures upon identity formation. In this representation, the individual and ‘ohana are positioned as the central unit. This microsystem is assumed to interact frequently with institutional and systemic forces in communities, policies, the Hawaiian nation, and ‘āina along cultural, genealogical, legal, political, and social dimensions, resulting in multiple interpretations and enactments of Hawaiianness. The visualization also conceptualizes identity as sensitive to circulating beliefs about group membership and dominant ideologies like discrimination and racism, all of which may fluctuate by age and birth cohort (García Coll et al., 1996; Umaña-Taylor et al., 2014). In effect, Figure 1 and the present study make visible the simultaneity of settler colonialism and Indigenous persistence in today's context and what these macro ideologies' entanglement mean for Native Hawaiian families (Osorio, 2002; Poupart, 2003).

4 MO‘OLELO ‘ohana and intergenerational meaning-making

While mo‘olelo ‘ohana broadly refers to a story that is remembered and communicated among kin-based relatives, this study focuses on mo‘olelo ‘ohana containing cultural beliefs and values. This distinction is meant to signal family narratives and collective storytelling as culturally grounded approaches for ‘ohana to interpret their ways of knowing and self-determine which practices should persist in future generations (Garner et al., 2026; Neeganagwedgin, 2013). From a family studies perspective, mo‘olelo ‘ohana is conceptualized as a cultural transmission belt, a mode of “acquiring the cultural ‘model' or scripts” to perceive and enact Hawaiianness (Trommsdorff, 2009, p. 138). Epistemically, this study embraces ‘ike pāpālua (dual knowledge) by interrogating Indigenous and non-Indigenous understandings of religion and culture in mo‘olelo ‘ohana (Aluli Meyer, 2025). In reading mo‘olelo ‘ohana for duality, I parallel Weststrate et al.'s (2024) analysis of the relationship between uneven access to intergenerational familial stories and empowering and disempowering psychosocial development among marginalized community members. This current study's point of divergence is its attention not only to the internalization of mo‘olelo ‘ohana among kin-based relatives of varying familial generations but also to the transformation of kin-based listener to storyteller and socialized agent of contrasting ideologies.

4.1 Indigenous ideologies in contemporary mo‘olelo ‘ohana

MO‘OLELO ‘ohana rooted in Indigenous ideologies often recount past, present, and future experiences of Native Hawaiians and ‘āina while affirming values, such as reciprocity, relationality, respect, responsibility, self-determination, sovereignty, and survivance, the weaving of survival and resistance against the elimination of Native Hawaiian lifeways (Aluli Meyer, 2025; Archibald, 2011). Indigenous ideologies can be communicated in prose, poetry, metaphor, mele (song), and hula (dance), both in everyday talk and interaction and curated settings like a research study. Functionally, these ideologies “not only explain but also reproduce the lāhui” Hawai‘i (Hawaiian nation) (Goodyear-Ka‘opua, 2016, p. 8); they direct storytellers and story-listeners to reflect on “what it means to be Indigenous, to live in a good way that is connected to land, to people, to stories that refuse, resist, and deny the spread of colonial paradigms in one's life” (San Pedro, 2021, p. 192). Indigenous ideologies in contemporary mo‘olelo ‘ohana do not evade memories and feelings of pain and suffering inflicted by colonizers and the colonized (Aluli Meyer, 2025; Paglinawan et al., 2020; Wilson, 2008). Instead, these beliefs center collective struggle and re-empowerment, positioning contemporary Native Hawaiian young people and their ‘ohana as building blocks of the lāhui Hawa‘i and active contributors to a legacy of genealogically-rooted, culturally conscious, and politically engaged Indigenous Peoples (Goodyear-Ka‘opua, 2013). I argue that Indigenous ideologies are empowering for Native Hawaiians because they affirm their identity and their right to dignified, joyful lives in relation with people and place.

4.2 Non-Indigenous ideologies in contemporary mo‘olelo ‘ohana

Non-Indigenous ideologies circulating in contemporary mo‘olelo ‘ohana typically espouse settler colonial mindsets and value systems, such as capitalism, neoliberal multiculturalism, Christianity, and white supremacy (Salzman and Laenui, 2014). These ideologies are disempowering for Native Hawaiians when they carry “the seeds of confusion, doubt, and loss of a sense of personal identification with a culture” (Pukui et al., 1972, p. 298) and teach Native Hawaiians to hate themselves, their ‘āina, their language, and any reminder of their people's ways of knowing and being (Osorio, 2002; Paglinawan et al., 2020). In a public social media post, activist and educator Cruz (2021) reminisces on non-Indigenous beliefs she internalized through mo‘olelo ‘ohana communicated by her parents and older cousins. She writes, “If you teach American, children will learn to think American. And they might reject the realities of their lives as Kanaka [Native Hawaiians]” (para. 2). Characterizing this experience as a process of “cognitive dissonance,” Cruz (2021) also recounts an instance of being told Native Hawaiian boys “would never amount to anything” so “don't go out with” them (para. 2). In this narrative, non-Indigenous ideologies treat Native Hawaiian people as failures and measure their worth according to American definitions of success. Theorizing at a time when settler colonialism is ubiquitous in Hawai‘i society (Cristobal, 2018), I argue that non-Indigenous ideologies are also prevalent in Native Hawaiian families' everyday discourses and mo‘olelo ‘ohana. The consequences of this epistemic prevalence include conscious decisions not to self-identify as Native Hawaiian and support for meritocratic, individualistic policies over those that aim to transform inequitable institutions using collectivist, Indigenous solutions (Kawano, 2024).

5 Methods

5.1 Setting

This study took place on the island of O‘ahu in the coastal village of Nānākuli from Summer 2023 to Fall 2024. Although the two collaborating ‘ohana do not identify as lineal descendants of Nānākuli, they have lived in their homes for the majority of their lives and in the community for four generations. Prior to European contact, Nānākuli's borders were bounded by the widest points of Nānākuli Valley, which is a little over a mile in length. Presently, Nānākuli is a predominantly non-white residential community spanning three miles along O‘ahu's Wai‘anae Coast. Within Nānākuli, there are multiple “Homestead” neighborhoods designated as part of the Hawaiian Home Lands Program, which leases residential, agricultural, and pastoral land plots to Native Hawaiians. Some interviews and observations took place at collaborators' homes on Homestead lands.

5.2 Collaborators

This qualitative study interweaves mo‘olelo ‘ohana from two Native Hawaiian ‘ohana across three generations. Inspired by Salaam's (2019) designation of primary and secondary participants in their study on parent-child socialization, this study similarly demarcates its collaborators. The primary collaborators are two Native Hawaiian students who were purposefully recruited by the author based on their close pilina: Hau‘oli is the daughter of a former work colleague, and Maile is a relative of the author. As Kawa‘a (1982) argues in his study on intergenerational Hawaiian values between elder and younger Native Hawaiian women, his ability to obtain accurate answers to questions about family values depended on his intimate connections with his participants. Similarly, Kobashigawa (2005) contends that by examining Native Hawaiian literacies in their own family, they cultivated a safe space for vulnerable responses to emerge in ways that a non-related researcher could not replicate. This study applied the same rationale for leveraging personal pilina to analyze Indigenous and non-Indigenous ideologies circulating in mo‘olelo ‘ohana, a sensitive topic best facilitated by a familiar individual, such as a close relative (Poupart, 2003).

During the study, Hau‘oli was a high school senior at a public charter school, and Maile was a junior at a private college in California. Each student named 10 relatives as secondary collaborators based on their definitions of a close relative with whom they communicate on a daily basis. These relatives have intragenerational (e.g., siblings, cousins) and intergenerational (e.g., parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, nieces, nephews) ties to the primary collaborators. Some relatives live in the same household as the primary collaborator, and some do not. The majority of secondary collaborators are older than Hau‘oli and Maile, except for two nieces and nephews. In total, all 22 individuals are Native Hawaiian and primarily speak English.

At present, there are no kin-based pilina connecting Hau‘oli to Maile. However, given Nānākuli's small population, members of their ‘ohana know one another. Hau‘oli and Maile were raised on Homestead lands from birth, but they attended high school outside of the community. Both students developed an affinity for water because of their proximity to “the best beaches on the island,” as Maile notes. For this reason, both ‘ohana are protective of Nānākuli's beaches because they are a source of pride for Nānākuli's Native Hawaiian community.

Generationally, Maile's maternal grandparents were born one cohort earlier than Hau‘oli's maternal grandparents. Mama Laura, Maile's grandma, was born toward the end of World War II, and GG, Hau‘oli's grandma, was born in 1959. While Maile's maternal grandparents lived in Nānākuli in 1967, Hau‘oli's grandmother moved into their Nānākuli home in 1995. In essence, Maile's family has lived in Nānākuli longer than Hau‘oli's family has. In the third generation, these differences are less pronounced; for instance, Maile and Hau‘oli are only four years apart in age.

5.3 Data collection

The author received institutional approval (IRB-23-1318) to conduct this study in September 2023. Following Seidman's (2019) interview series for qualitative research, Hau‘oli and Maile each completed three structured individual interviews about their identities, educational experiences, and family pilina. During these interviews, the author asked the students to bring family photographs, artwork, and genealogical records and explain how these documents might inform their perceptions of Hawaiianness, close family relatives, and family-school connections. By the end of data collection, the two student collaborators shared about 150 family documents in total. Next, the author conducted six semi-structured group interviews, three with each primary collaborator and one to two secondary collaborators (e.g., student-parent, student-sibling-cousin, student-cousin-nephew). Through questions about Hawaiianness in the past and present, the impact of religion, gender, and sexuality on Native Hawaiian identity, and interethnic relations in Hawai‘i, these group interviews provided a window into how these ‘ohana negotiate identities, narrate past and present events, and construct ideologies through communication styles and socializing messages in real time (Tomlins Jahnke and Gillies, 2012).

To witness everyday talk and interaction, I conducted 10 observations with each ‘ohana in their homes and public spaces (e.g., public beaches, libraries, restaurants). These observations lasted between three and five hours, usually occurred on a Saturday or Sunday, and invited collaborators to complete a social practice together (e.g., cooking, eating). This design mirrored the proverb “Ke ho‘ole mai nei o Hāloa” (Hāloa will nullify it), which characterizes the reflective conversations that pre-colonial Native Hawaiians had while sitting around a poi (pounded kalo) bowl (Handy and Pukui, 1958, p. 195). To enact a reciprocal form of research that honors collaboration as a gift rather than a right, the author provided meals to families during these observations and $100 to students at the end of data collection (Goodyear-Ka‘opua, 2016).

5.4 Data analysis and re-presentation

Data analysis followed an iterative process of transcribing interviews, observations, and researcher memos; coding the transcripts and family documents; organizing the data using Indigenous analytic principles; and reflecting on my responsibility as an ethical story-listener and storyteller (Benally et al., 2020). I spent two months manually transcribing each ‘ohana's words to capture each speaker's movement between English, Hawaiian language, and Hawai‘i Pidgin English (e.g., place-based colloquial terms and phrases) accurately. This period of listening and re-listening to collaborators' voices helped me identify mo‘olelo ‘ohana for analysis and better understand “the interrelatedness and synergy among the storyteller, the story, the listener, and the context” in which each mo‘olelo ‘ohana was shared (Archibald, 2011, p. 161). In vivo and descriptive coding strategies were then applied to examine collaborators' specific words and phrasing and isolate recurrent topics of conversation (Saldaña, 2021). Then, I used causation coding to identify sources of mo‘olelo ‘ohana that communicated perceptions of religion, culture, and Hawaiianness within each family.

After this round of qualitative data coding, Indigenous narrative analytic principles of reciprocity, relationality, respect, and responsibility were used to organize the first-round codes into deductive categories (Archibald, 2011). For instance, the “respect” category includes data that explicitly mentions the term (“I respect my parents so much”) or implicitly animates this principle (“I look up to Hāloa as an ancestor”). These excerpts' broader contexts were also closely read to make visible the underlying Indigenous and non-Indigenous beliefs conveyed in the stories. This meant attending to verbal (e.g., speech, laughing) and non-verbal (e.g., nods, eye rolls, shrugs) responses to storytelling and story-listening about reciprocity, relationality, respect, and responsibility, and theorizing how these actions simultaneously maintain or challenge settler colonial ideologies.

Writing from both an epistemic stance that stories contain the building blocks of theory (Brayboy, 2005) and a methodological sensibility that data re-presentation in the form of co-constructed stories maintains scientific rigor in a narrative analytic study (Bhattacharya, 2017), I drafted four mo‘olelo ‘ohana that interweave the Indigenous principles and theorize how ‘ohana relations and narratives contribute to the perpetuation of Indigenous and non-Indigenous beliefs within and across familial generations. I shared these qualitative forms of data re-presentation with Hau‘oli and Maile for feedback on accuracy and beneficence. Specifically, we engaged in a dialogue about our purpose in telling these stories and who might benefit from them (Simpson, 2007). Excerpts that might have been interpreted through a deficit-oriented perspective were revised or removed to honor families' collaboration in the design and dissemination of a project that we believe is good, true, and consequential (Benally et al., 2020; San Pedro, 2021).

6 Findings

This article identifies Indigenous and non-Indigenous ideologies found in mo‘olelo ‘ohana and theorizes their impact on the complexity of contemporary Hawaiianness for Native Hawaiian ‘ohana. In this study, family leaders (e.g., parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles) were significant socializing agents for Hau‘oli, Maile, and their close relatives. Because of these family leaders' respected status, their perspectives on religion, gender, sex, and nationality were accepted and taken up by younger generations. Across the data, 28 instances of kin-based transmission of non-Indigenous beliefs were identified. About half of these occurrences were coded as the transmission of an elite Christian identity, and the other half were coded as the transmission of merit-based thinking. In contrast, 58 instances of kin-based transmission of Indigenous beliefs were identified, 27 of which involved moments when collaborators challenged settler colonialism using ‘ike kūpuna of Hawaiian history, language, and culture. The remaining 31 instances reflected a sense of pride in Indigeneity.

The four mo‘olelo ‘ohana re-presented in this section thus focus on families' meaning-making of Hawaiianness and Christianity, meritocracy, ‘ike kūpuna, and sense of pride. Layered within these narratives are discursive moves that collaborators engaged to communicate respect for family leaders, an intimate love for and relationality with caregivers, a responsibility to perpetuate family teachings to the next generation, and a motivation to reciprocate care to close relatives. Hau‘oli and Maile's perspectives are also interwoven to illustrate their meaning-making of the persistence of Indigenous and non-Indigenous ideologies as an intergenerational strategy to keep their respective ‘ohana's canoe afloat and on course.

6.1 Hawaiianness and Christianity

Although critical scholars argue Christianity is a non-Indigenous belief system that severs Natives from their ancestral lifeways (Poupart, 2003; Salzman and Laenui, 2014), Native Hawaiians continue to interpret their Hawaiianness in conjunction with their Christian identity (Deenik, 2020; Osorio, 2002). Within Maile's ‘ohana, it is a truth universally acknowledged that “Mama Laura loved the Lord 1,000 percent,” according to Pōmaika‘i, one of Maile's older cousins. “All of us know that, and if God was so important in her life, then that's something that I want to do and I want to know more about. All the things I do now for church, leading worship, being part of ministries, is to be close to her.” Indeed, Pōmaika‘i's explicit love and reverence for her grandmother exemplify how Indigenous principles of reciprocity and respect might influence individual beliefs and decisions among kin-based relatives.

Three mo‘olelo ‘ohana demonstrate how ‘ohana relations rooted in relationality and responsibility contributed to the development of Hawaiian-Christian identities and a non-Indigenous belief in a supreme Christian God within this family. During a group conversation among Mama Laura, Maile's mother Hi‘ilawe, and Maile, Mama Laura reminisced on her childhood in the early 1950s. She recounted a mo‘olelo ‘ohana about when she cut her foot while fishing in a nearby stream. Mama Laura cried out for her grandmother, “Aue! [Oh!] Tutu Mikahala!” When Tutu Mikahala found Mama Laura, she prayed out loud, calling upon God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and Mama Laura's Hawaiian name “Kauakahekili.” Mama Laura's foot started to tingle, and at first, she thought it was magic. “I felt something like a force of energy as Tutu Mikahala prayed,” Mama Laura recalled. In three days, her foot was completely healed, and she had no scar.

This experience was formative to Mama Laura's belief in the power of a supreme Christian God over Native Hawaiian gods. “Our Hawaiian people, they was something, you know? Their spiritual side was tough. Unless you folks see the power, how powerful they were when they prayed to akua (God), not to the other, to akua.” As she emphasized this single akua, Mama Laura raised her right hand and firmly pointed her index finger up toward the sky. “Fire came,” she said. “I saw.”

As the youngest child who went everywhere with Mama Laura, Hi‘ilawe developed close pilina with her mother and came to view her as a family leader. “I realized how important it is for young ones to pay close attention to our parents when they are trying to help us,” Hi‘ilawe shared. Consequently, Hi‘ilawe was frequently exposed to Mama Laura's mo‘olelo ‘ohana about God's healing power. In an autobiography she wrote for a family scrapbook, Hi‘ilawe notes, “My mom reminded me how important Jesus is and that I needed to commit to him permanently.”

As parents, Hi‘ilawe and her husband Ikaika transmitted this ideology to Maile, relying on their kin-based pilina and their roles as household leaders to ensure that Maile and her brother Kaleo internalized the belief in a supreme Christian God. “We did our best to share scripture so that both of our children understood there is only one God,” Hi‘ilawe said. “These other gods that people claim are gods were never raised from the dead. They're still in their grave. So we do not idolize, we do not worship anything else other than God.” The firm stance on the existence of a supreme Christian God across three generations reflects stability within this ‘ohana. During childhood, Mama Laura and Hi‘ilawe followed the lead of their elders and parents toward a shared goal. When they became parents, they passed on this intergenerational knowledge to their children, and in Mama Laura's case, grandchildren.

Today, Maile speaks with her parents on an everyday basis and looks up to them as model Hawaiian-Christian leaders. “I learned from watching them be pastors and godparents,” she said. “My parents always taught me that godparents help their godchildren grow up spiritually and raise them the way that they should be in God's eyes.” Now that she is a godparent to a niece and nephew, Maile is putting these intergenerational lessons into action by following her parents' lead in raising them to be Hawaiian-Christians. “[Being a godparent] is a role that I've been looking forward to after seeing the way my parents take care of their godchildren, and even having my own godparents who take care of me,” she reasoned.

For Maile, one of the youngest cousins in her ‘ohana, she also came to a Hawaiian-Christian identity through mo‘olelo ‘ohana about Mama Laura shared by her brother Kaleo and older cousins like Pōmaika‘i. “I'm the baby of the family,” Maile explained. “So I never saw the hard version of Mama [Laura] that everyone else saw. I just live through the stories that I heard from my brother and cousins and, like Pōmaika‘i said, Mama Laura loved the Lord... so that motivated me to learn about God, too.”

To be clear, personal choices to form a Christian identity out of love, respect, and care for a beloved relative and family leader do not necessarily lead one to internalize non-Indigenous ideologies. Instead, it is when this agency is removed by discourses and behaviors that project Christianity as the only path to a meaningful life that particular thoughts, attitudes, and practices associated with non-Indigenous beliefs may emerge (Deenik, 2020; Neeganagwedgin, 2013). This stance is evident in Hau‘oli's ‘ohana's discourse, which featured several refusals of Christian supremacy in their everyday lives. Widely considered a “day of rest” by practicing Christians, Sundays are viewed as workdays to prepare for the week ahead for Hau‘oli and her mother Hoku. The majority of family observations with their ‘ohana were held on Sundays after Hau‘oli and Hoku shopped for groceries and “meal prepped” for school. This refusal extended to celebrations during Christian holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, which were reframed as an opportunity to gather with family and friends.

While Maile's ‘ohana views godparenting through a Christian lens, Hau‘oli's ‘ohana transmitted an Indigenous, cultural understanding of the familial role. In the latter's experience, the term “godparent” is somewhat of a misnomer. They do not explicitly communicate socializing messages according to religion in their ‘ohana. For Hoku, godparents represent a family leader to care for children during times of need. Rather than looking to a settler social services system that may not respect cultural considerations of working with Indigenous families, this contemporary practice of naming “godparents” for children functions as a community-based and culturally informed solution to ho‘oponopono (Paglinawan et al., 2020). Hoku recalled, “When I was having trouble with Hoku, I called her godparents, and I was like, ‘come get your girl.' She went go spend a week with one and another week with another one, so we could get it together.” Accordingly, in their ‘ohana's perspective, a godparent agrees to assist in raising a young person. “If anything happens to their parents, you're agreeing to take them,” Hoku said. As a result, Hau‘oli became familiar with this understanding during her childhood and viewed her godparents as role models and family leaders she could talk to. “It's more so about support. Like working through stuff or talking about things that we don't really wanna talk to our parents about,” Hau‘oli noted.

When Hoku's goddaughter Kapua had to move to the U.S. continent with her family, Hoku provided her with a home during the summer months. “[Kapua would] always cry and say ‘I wanna go home, I wanna go home,”' Hoku said. “So when she was old enough, she would come spend the whole summer with us, so she always had a place.” Now, Kapua lives with Hoku and Hau‘oli with her son and partner, and they contribute to the household by helping Hoku care for GG, who moved into their Nānākuli home in 2025. “It's important that Hawaiians stay in Hawai‘i,” Hoku stated. “We seen too many families move out, so if we need to work together so we can stay here, that's what we'll do.”

As this ‘ohana prepares for another addition to their household—Kapua was pregnant with her second child during data analysis—collaborators are confident that their ‘ohana's canoe will stay on course through a continuation of their godparent practice. Hau‘oli is currently a godparent to Kapua's first son Koa, and she has already taken on her perceived responsibility to support Kapua in raising him. Though Hau‘oli and Hoku are aware that their social practice is not the same as that of other ‘ohana, they attribute this difference to ideology and upbringing. “We don't really think of godparents or godsiblings like God,” Hoku explained. “But it's not like we're against that either. Some Hawaiians are raised that way in church or even with, like haole [white] parents, so they'll say that our way is wrong.”

“I don't listen to that ‘cause they were raised differently,” Hau‘oli said. “Yeah, and a different kind of home life for sure,” Hoku concluded.

These two ‘ohana's social practice of building and sustaining kin-based pilina represents a contemporary version of hānai, a traditional custom in which multiple adults “adopt,” protect, and care for a child's wellbeing. Despite their epistemically distinct meanings of godparenting, each ‘ohana's enactment of this family role reflected an extended safety net that provided access to emotional, educational, and economic resources from close relatives (Schachter, 2013). In both families, godparenting is perceived as a natural and normal practice for Native Hawaiians that was passed down from elders (Gallimore and Howard, 1968; Schachter, 2013). Therefore, modern kin-based pilina and principles of responsibility, respect, and reciprocity are leveraged to transmit intergenerational meaning-making of Hawaiianness that aligns and disaligns with Christianity.

6.2 Hawaiianness and “hard work”

Like many Communities of Color socialized into a society in which settler colonialism is pervasive, Native Hawaiians are exposed to majoritarian, pro-U.S. discourses that insist there is “equal opportunity for all” to succeed through sheer will and hard work (Kohli et al., 2017; Solórzano and Pérez Huber, 2020). Such discourses also insist that contemporary Native Hawaiians must abandon their identity in order to survive in today's world (Kivalahula-Uddin, 2018). In turn, mo‘olelo ‘ohana collected in this study reflected perceptions of collaborators' Hawaiian-American identities as deeply entangled with U.S. empire and meritocracy.

One socializing message that was consistently shared from Hi‘ilawe to Maile was to work hard because “nothing is just going to be handed to you.” Growing up in a large family in Nānākuli, Hi‘ilawe articulated this discourse, believing her hard work for “every penny” helped her escape the financial instability of her childhood. She reminisced on her modest upbringing and feelings of embarrassment toward her family's home. “I can remember this as if it was yesterday,” she shared. “Catching the bus in high school, driving around the block in the neighborhood and seeing the canvas on top of our roof because we had terrible leaks in our home. I was very ashamed and embarrassed by what everyone in my neighborhood could see.” When asked about her journey to a stable upper-class lifestyle, Hi‘ilawe characterizes it as a mo‘olelo ‘ohana of “humble beginnings.”

Maile's dad Ikaika offered a similar view of his childhood, growing up in Nānākuli in the late 1970s. “I was raised by a single mom, and we were on welfare,” he said. “There were days when our cupboards were empty, and all of a sudden they're full because it was that time of the month when she received her welfare check.” His mo‘olelo ‘ohana paints a picture of a difficult life that was overcome through his mother's encouragement and “investment” in his dreams. “Even though we didn't have much growing up, she had high expectations for me,” Ikaika maintained. “She wanted me and my siblings to be successful at whatever we decided to do through hard work.” Shortly after high school, Ikaika and Hi‘ilawe married and began a business together, teaching themselves how to maximize profits and acquire wealth. Through this “real world” experience, they raised Maile and Kaleo to view hard work as their ticket to a “better future.”

Although neither Ikaika nor Hi‘ilawe pursued higher education, they came to associate college with job opportunities and encouraged their children to further their formal education after high school. “To me, in this world that we live in, jobs are scarce, and with higher education, it's easier for Maile to get a job in the workforce,” Hi‘ilawe reasoned. “When employers see your application, and they see that you have school, they notice that you have commitment because you've accomplished going to school all these years.” Due to her close pilina with her parents, who she describes as “the smartest people” she knows, Maile listened to their advice and will enroll in a graduate program in business after she receives her bachelor's degree.

Implicit within this positive view of hard work and career success is an unspoken notion that people “get what they earn.” Across both ‘ohana in this study, it was assumed that Native Hawaiians have sufficient opportunities and institutionalized resources to move from a lower socioeconomic class and “make something of themselves,” as Hoku put it (Kivalahula-Uddin, 2018; Kupo, 2010). However, only members of Maile's ‘ohana expressed the belief that marginalized people have equal access to those opportunities. Both Hi‘ilawe and Ikaika contend that Native Hawaiians can be “whoever they want to be,” and it is up to them to move past societal roadblocks that disproportionately benefit wealthy, white, and East Asian individuals (Solórzano and Pérez Huber, 2020; Trask, 1999). They also believe it is their responsibility as parents to “invest in their children” and to do “everything possible to give your child a great starting point.” For this reason, Hi‘ilawe and Ikaika expressed support for generational advantages at birth, contradicting their stance that wealthy or high-achieving people had earned what they had. On the other hand, Hoku and Hau‘oli think less about merit-based advantages and more about disrupting an unequal system. Even though Hau‘oli internalized a belief that working hard is essential to “earn” money, she does not view college as the path to a fulfilling life. She values hands-on work in taro patches and attributes this value to her mother's teachings on Hāloa's cultural significance.

Although hard work helped Maile's ‘ohana enact a shared vision for their family's canoe, their subsequent meaning-making of their Hawaiianness using U.S. meritocratic, capitalist values also contributed to a negative view of Native Hawaiians and immigrants unable to escape poverty. Under such a colonial perspective, immigrants are viewed as competition for resources and demonized as a burden on “hard-working” citizens rather than as contributors to the local and national economy (Solórzano and Pérez Huber, 2020). During a family observation of Maile and four close relatives in Summer 2024, Maile's Aunty Kaumakaokalani verbalized a nativist attitude toward immigrants for “taking American jobs from our people.” Likewise, when presented with stories of anti-Black and anti-Micronesian racism in Hawai‘i's K−12 schools and criminal justice system by the lead researcher, Maile, and Pōmaika‘i (Tagami, 2025), Hi‘ilawe, Kaumakaokalani, and Pōmaika‘i's mother U‘ilani rejected these stories' indication of an inequitable society for Indigenous and immigrant communities. Instead, they articulated a belief that Pacific Islander “kids don't want to work and don't want to go to school,” and they blame their parents for setting “bad examples” for their children, as Hi‘ilawe expressed.

While collaborators in Maile's ‘ohana lauded hard work for money and perseverance in school, hard work for Indigenous nationhood was perceived as foolish. During a family observation at Maile's home, Hi‘ilawe and Ikaika spoke fondly of their Hawaiian identities and their gratitude to have “enough Hawaiian blood” to live in Nānākuli on the Homestead. Considering the history of Native Hawaiian advocacy for Native Hawaiian rights among Nānākuli Homestead families (Wai‘anae Coast Culture Arts Society, 1986), I asked about their feelings toward sovereignty activists who work hard to achieve better living and working conditions for the lāhui Hawai‘i. Hi‘ilawe replied:

My honest opinion is I was very embarrassed by the Hawaiian behavior, because—my reason for it is because the Hawaiian people are claiming to be Hawaiian, and yet they still use white man's things that they made through hard work. They still live in a white man's house. It was built by a white man on Hawaiian property, land, so it makes no sense. They're wearing jewelry and because it says it's a Hawaiian bracelet, it's made by a white man. They're wearing clothes that they buy in clothes that is not made off of the land. So in my opinion, it's foolish of their behavior, and it's an embarrassment to me as a Hawaiian. If you claim all of the things that they're saying, that they're Hawaiian and they need to protect this, they need to protect that, why don't you go and live as a Hawaiian off of the land, which is what they're saying, but they're not. They're driving a car. They're not walking. That's man-made.

During recorded feedback sessions of the drafted mo‘olelo ‘ohana with each primary collaborator, Maile reviewed the preceding excerpt, occasionally shaking her head before saying, “That's a wild statement.” While Hau‘oli agreed with the sentiment of how challenging it is to be a Native Hawaiian born into a colonized Hawai‘i, she clarified that she does not agree with feeling “embarrassed” by sovereignty activists. Maile and Hau‘oli agree that the excerpt exemplifies confusion over Hawaiianness because the statements follow Hi‘ilawe's self-reported pride in being Hawaiian and having “Hawaiian blood.” Maile added, “I don't see any wrongdoings in what Hawaiian advocates are doing, so I don't see why she wouldn't be supporting them.”

Within her household, Maile is the only family member who is critical of Hi‘ilawe's opinion. Her father Ikaika admitted, “I didn't care [about the activists' cause]. You have to choose your battles.” Kaleo agreed with their father, saying, “I'd say a lot of those protests were honestly pretty dumb. Yeah the [Native Hawaiian activists] were together in everything that they're trying to fight up against, but I feel like the fight should have been in the court system, not really out in the public.” For Maile's parents and her brother, public activism and advocacy were battles that were not worth fighting. For this reason, Maile admitted, “we're similar in a lot of ways, like this is my parents. But I still think differently from them.” In other words, Maile did not take up and internalize all ideologies in mo‘olelo ‘ohana communicated by her close relatives.

Rhetorical discourses that identify parents' and children's responsibilities to work hard and reciprocate familial provisions emerged in both ‘ohana's data. Some of these discourses, while indicative of Indigenous principles of cooperation and giving back, also contained definitions of “hard work” that do not recognize the socioeconomic struggles of Indigenous and immigrant communities (Solórzano and Pérez Huber, 2020), the battle for sovereignty as a valued form of nation building (Goodyear-Ka‘opua, 2013), or the innovative contributions to architecture, body ornamentation, clothing, and transportation made by Native Hawaiians (Case, 2021). Maile and Hau‘oli's reactions to an older generation's perspective of Hawaiianness align with the concerns Cruz (2021) raises that learning to “think American” might result in a rejection of the “realities” of complex, contemporary Native Hawaiian lives (para. 2). This co-constructed mo‘olelo ‘ohana thus illuminates the dissonance within the lāhui Hawai‘i over what constitutes “hard work” and the circulating value systems (i.e., U.S. meritocracy, Native Hawaiian sovereignty) stemming from non-Indigenous and Indigenous ideologies that collaborators use to make meaning of Hawaiianness in a broader context of U.S. empire and occupation.

6.3 Hawaiianness and ‘ike kupuna

Additionally, Maile and Hau‘oli's families' mo‘olelo ‘ohana contained layered socializing messages about the significance of ‘ike kūpuna in Native Hawaiian history, language, and culture and the role of respected family leaders in transmitting ‘ike kūpuna to their close relatives. During interviews and family observations with Maile's ‘ohana, Mama Laura often spoke about learning “amazing” histories about Native Hawaiians from her grandmother. Mama Laura recalled mo‘olelo ‘ohana about the close bond she formed with her grandmother because she was the only grandchild who could communicate fluently in Hawaiian language with her. Similarly, Maile grew up appreciating her connection with Mama Laura and learning mo‘olelo ‘ohana about Nānākuli from her. Accordingly, Maile believes “if [young people] took the time to be with their family, or learned stories from their [elders], they would be able to gain the knowledge of what it means to be Hawaiian.” Now that Mama Laura has transitioned into the spiritual realm, Maile's perspective validates the importance of being physically present with elders while they are still in the physical realm (Handy and Pukui, 1958).

One contemporary practice that Maile cited as a contributing factor to her positive view of Hawaiianness is the creation and gifting of family scrapbooks from elder to parent to child. During an observation, Maile and Pōmaika‘i listened while Hi‘ilawe, Kaumakaokalani, and U‘ilani reminisced about the interactions and events captured in the photographs, family trees, and newspaper clippings included in the family scrapbooks Mama Laura created for them. The three mothers laughed when they looked at their elementary yearbook pictures, recounting how “Native” they looked with their brown skin and Hawaiian-print dresses. They teared up when they saw photographs of their parents and their dogs Bruno and Ipo.

According to Hi‘ilawe, the act of printing and organizing family pictures and creating a physical keepsake is a manifestation of a mother's love for her children and their descendants. In the family scrapbook that she created for Maile, ‘ike kūpuna and love are similarly centered. Maile's birth story, which opens the scrapbook, explains that Mama Laura chose her Hawaiian name, which means “voice from above,” to honor an ancestor who bore the same name. We also learn that a song was written for Maile, uplifting her significance to her family in its lyrics. The song poetically describes Maile as “a voice of aloha to all nations” found in the moon, stars, rain, wind, and flowers. By documenting the mo‘olelo ‘ohana behind Maile's name and an honorary song, Hi‘ilawe preserved ‘ike kūpuna on the sacred, poetic, and metaphorical art of naming children.

During multiple interviews and family observations, Hau‘oli and Hoku embodied ‘ike kūpuna in the Native Hawaiian motto “E onipa‘a kākou” (Let us all be steadfast, immovable, resolute) by refusing settler moves to encroach on ‘āina and displace Native Hawaiians from their homes (Osorio, 2002; Trask, 1999). This mother-daughter dyad became especially animated while recounting an interaction with white hikers in Nānākuli. Hoku explained, “white settlers and tourists are so used to [Natives] bending at their whim or doing whatever they want, and some [Native Hawaiians] have learned to accept that.” As she spoke, Hau‘oli shook her head and rolled her eyes. “So annoying,” she added.

“When we hike, [settlers and tourists] always expect you to move on the side,” Hoku noted. “I tell Hau‘oli, ‘No, you keep walking. This is your place. You make them stop. And you don't have to say thank you. You don't have to say nothing. You just keep walking.”

“She really does,” Hau‘oli said, smiling.

“I'll speak up and say, ‘This is our place,” Hoku asserted. “We were here first. We have right of way.”

In another mo‘olelo ‘ohana, Hau‘oli and Hoku described their interactions at weekly high school football games they attend to support relatives and friends in Nānākuli, focusing on reactions from other fans when they sit during the U.S. national anthem and the raising of the U.S. flag. “As [Native Hawaiians], we don't honor or observe those ceremonies,” Hoku explained. “So we don't believe in standing for them.” Hau‘oli added, “We get called disrespectful by others, which pisses me off.”

“Yeah, she gets really upset by it,” Hoku agreed. “So I have to remind her that what you feel in your heart for the [Hawaiian nation] is how those other people feel about the U.S. or whatever.”

Their ideological alignment is indicative of an intergenerational transmission of steadfastness from mother to daughter. “Most times, [critics] just want a reaction out of us,” Hoku reasoned. “But we know our belief, and we stand by it.” While Hoku and Hau‘oli do not physically stand for pro-U.S. sports traditions, they stand “by” and “with” their belief in their right to support the lāhui Hawai‘i. Still, it is not lost on either of them that their critics at these football games are fellow Native Hawaiians and Nānākuli residents. While Hoku and Hau‘oli willingly speak up against settlers or tourists they encounter in public settings, they do not always engage with Native Hawaiian critics. “Sometimes, you gotta let other [Hawaiians] find out—‘cause I mean, it's a journey once you know about what really happened to Natives by America,” Hoku asserted.

These mo‘olelo ‘ohana suggest a perception of Hawaiianness rooted in ‘ike kūpuna of Hawaiian history, language, and culture can be both a collective and individual journey. Though she guided Hau‘oli's development of an embodied steadfastness, Hoku also recognizes the importance for Native Hawaiians to learn about the lāhui Hawai‘i's history with America. Across both ‘ohana, close parent-child pilina nurtured the continuation of ancestral practices, including the naming of children and the maintenance of one's epistemic stances despite external pressures from occupying forces. Now that both Maile and Hau‘oli are aunties and godmothers, their familial pilina are likely to persist through the socializing messages they communicate to the next generation.

6.4 Hawaiianness and a deep sense of pride

Unlike their elders, Maile and Hau‘oli grew up during a period of revitalization, both of the Native Hawaiian population and the number of fluent Hawaiian language speakers in Hawai‘i (Kawano, 2024). Neither student experienced physical punishments for speaking Hawaiian or embracing Indigenous cultural practices in homes, schools, or communities; the same cannot be said for their grandparents and great-grandparents (Trask, 1999). While Maile and Hau‘oli's parents never explicitly advised them to hide their Hawaiianness, close pilina with elders and familial story-listening practices led each student to learn about the lāhui Hawai‘i's perseverance against assimilationist policies in public and private educational, social, and political settings (Gushiken, 2019; Osorio, 2002). Consequently, a sense of pride associated with their people's continuance emerged as a fourth mo‘olelo ‘ohana of intergenerational meaning-making.

While discussing cultural practices she transmitted to Hau‘oli, Hoku conveyed the importance she placed on Hau‘oli being independent. “It was important for me to raise her to be better than I was when I was her age,” Hoku explained during a family observation. As she and Hau‘oli made corn chowder, she smiled, adding, “I wanted her to be better and more knowledgeable than I am. Every generation, you're supposed to be getting better and better.” When I asked Hau‘oli to reflect on her mom's comments, she recounted a mo‘olelo ‘ohana that featured her great-grandmother Puna, Hoku, and Hau‘oli. A few years ago, Hoku bought Hau‘oli a t-shirt that reads, “Hawaiian by birth, American by force.” According to Hau‘oli, by this point in her life, she had already learned about Hawaiian resistance against to colonialism and U.S. occupation, so she took pride in wearing the shirt in public, both on O‘ahu and the U.S. continent.

“It got my grandma so mad,” Hoku interjected.

“Yeah, she wanted us to take off the shirts,” Hau‘oli remembered. “Like grandma, come on?”

“Her whole point was, why are you putting a target on your backs?,” Hoku asserted. “I tried to explain that this is our history. This truth is known now. You don't have to hide who you are anymore.”

“Well, Puna grew up in the era where bad stuff happened if you went against America,” Hau‘oli reasoned. “We weren't trying to disrespect our elders, but we needed to stand up for ourselves and take pride ‘cause this is what happened. We're Hawaiian by birth and American by force.”

Through this mother-daughter interaction, Hau‘oli exemplified Hoku's desire for a younger generation “to be better and more knowledgeable” of Native Hawaiian history. Simultaneously, this mo‘olelo ‘ohana reveals an intergenerational valuing of respect for close relatives and another example of epistemic divergence between elders and young people. As Hau‘oli cut bacon and spam for the corn chowder, Hoku leaned against the kitchen counter and told her, “I pushed you into ‘āina-based spaces and Hawaiian knowledge stuff [like taro farming] because I didn't do these things when I was younger, and I wanted you to have better experiences than I did.”

One of these experiences included participating in the 2019 Protect Mauna Kea movement to prevent the construction of a thirty-meter telescope atop the sacred mountain on Hawai‘i Island. Thousands of Native Hawaiians, Indigenous relatives, and non-Native allies gathered at Mauna Kea to prevent the State of Hawai‘i, private corporations, the U.S. military, and higher education institutions from deepening their coordinated assault on ‘āina and Native Hawaiians to advance imperial conquests via weapons manufacturing and testing, surveillance, and environmental pollution (Case, 2021; Trask, 1999). Being physically present on Mauna Kea shortly after the State of Hawai‘i arrested 38 Native Hawaiian elders in July 2019 for using their bodies to block construction workers' access to Mauna Kea's summit left Hau‘oli and Hoku “heavy-hearted” and “emotional.” Both women were proud of their decision to join community members in showing state officials, law enforcement officers, land developers, academics, and military occupiers that Hawai‘i and Mauna Kea are not for sale.

Moreover, Hau‘oli expressed pride and gratitude for Hoku's mothering and her insistence on being knowledgeable about Native Hawaiian ways of knowing and being. “I know kids who never learn any of this, and I'm like, you really should've learned these things when you're younger. I'll tell some of my friends, ‘you should come to my house and learn from my mother.”' In the context of the Protect Mauna Kea movement, “this” refers to a Native Hawaiian epistemological view of Mauna Kea as a sacred, ancestral relative like Hāloa, which informs activists' reasons for persisting in their protection of the mountain. Contrary to western academic and political thought (Case, 2021), as Hau‘oli contends, such an epistemic stance is an impactful form of meaning-making because it demonstrates that “Hawaiians are not anti-science, just anti-development on stolen ‘āina.”

While Hoku jokingly accepted Hau‘oli's gratitude for her teachings, she interjected, “Yeah, but it's not just me,” turning back to the stove and stirring the onions in the pot of corn chowder. “I mean, yes, it's a good thing I taught you to be independent … but that's also from GG and Puna and your aunties and uncles.”

“True,” Hau‘oli replied. “It takes a village.”

“It does. It takes a village,” Hoku agreed. “And I'm at the top of your village.”

This village mentality and the naming of mother-daughter, parent-child, and elder-child pilina paralleled interactions in Maile's ‘ohana. For Mama Laura, Tutu Mikahala was positioned at the top of her village, and she took pride in claiming that relationship when she shared mo‘olelo ‘ohana about her childhood. “First thing, automatic, for me was Tutu Mikahala,” she concluded, remembering who she looked to for insight and support. For Maile, her parents represent the top of her village, and at one point in Hi‘ilawe's life, Mama Laura held that role for her.

These findings align with previous research on intergenerational values among Native Hawaiians. In Kawa‘a's (1982) study of 72 women, 97 percent of elders and 90 percent of children agreed with the statement: “I expect the family to be the most important people in my children's life even when they are grown” (p. 19). In essence, maintaining respectful and reciprocal ‘ohana relations is central and valued across the lifespan for Native Hawaiians. These relations and their subsequent influence on individual and shared meaning-making of Hawaiianness are a source of pride in Maile and Hau‘oli's ‘ohana. By nurturing intergenerational pilina, elders and parents are revered for their knowledge and recognized as trustworthy socializing agents. However, older and younger generations are also interdependent. Children depend on adults to meet their needs, and parents and elders rely on children to preserve mo‘olelo ‘ohana.

7 Discussion

The findings presented in this article highlight the significance of family pilina and mo‘olelo ‘ohana for intergenerational meaning-making of Hawaiianness in a contemporary context. Specifically, the co-constructed stories qualitatively recount moments of storytelling, story-listening, and the layered ideologies with which—and the family leaders with whom—individuals consciously choose to align or disalign themselves. In considering how Native Hawaiians navigate ideological disalignment with family members across generations, I argue that the narratives also draw attention to the Indigenous values of reciprocity, relationality, respect, and responsibility embedded in collaborators' discourses and to these values' contribution to family stability and cooperation. At a time when personal, family, and community stories circulating on the Internet contribute to sociopolitical polarization within the lāhui Hawai‘i (Aluli Meyer, 2025; Jachowski and Riker, 2025), these narratives matter because they provide a microsystem analysis of family dialogue on politically charged topics pertaining to religion, culture, meritocracy, and Indigeneity. Four mo‘olelo ‘ohana on Hawaiianness and Christianity, hard work, ‘ike kūpuna, and pride emerged as key discourses that invoked joint meaning-making and ideological convergence for the sake of cultural continuity and keeping one's intergenerational canoe or village intact. Although these findings are specific to two ‘ohana's engagement in this study, their experiences and perspectives parallel analytic assertions in existing literature on Native Hawaiian families, identity formation, and ideology, thereby signaling these mo‘olelo ‘ohana's insights into the complexity of negotiating Hawaiianness while embedded in a settler colonial reality.

7.1 Hawaiianness according to “village” leaders

Collaborators in this study attributed their religious and cultural understandings of Hawaiianness to trusted family leaders, such as parents and elders. A desire to maintain tight-knit bonds with family leaders who contributed to their upbringing was a salient belief, especially among grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. Such desires proved consequential when collaborators engaged with mo‘olelo ‘ohana that aligned or disaligned with their personal ideologies. During moments of ideological alignment between a family leader and a close relative (i.e., parent and child agree upon their ‘ohana's understanding of a godparent's role), the close relative engages openly in dialogue, sharing their personal thoughts and opinions. When there is ideological disalignment (i.e., elder and child hold divergent beliefs about Native Hawaiian sovereignty and public protest), the close relative might avoid open dialogue out of respect for their family leader's views.

This finding reflects cultural and academic literature on the centrality of kin-based ‘ohana relationships for Native Hawaiians. The well-known proverb “I ulu no ka lālā i ke kumu (the branches grow because of the trunk), commonly interpreted as “without our ancestors, we would not be here,” clues us into the reverence that young people are socialized to have for elders and parents (Handy and Pukui, 1958, p. 179). As evidenced by Maile and Hau‘oli's love and care for their ancestors, it is possible that collaborators have internalized this proverb's sentiment and animated its layered message by preventing relational ruptures due to ideological disalignment. This possibility, too, exemplifies an Indigenous practice of paying close attention to elders to the point where close relatives “know all about [their] own family” and can predict how family leaders might react to verbalized disagreements (Handy and Pukui, 1958, p. 174). For some ‘ohana, the potential for relational harm might outweigh the perceived benefit of expressing one's personal belief, thereby disincentivizing divergent stances while storytelling and story-listening in group settings (Vakalahi and Ihara, 2011).

Consistent with previous studies of Native Hawaiian families living in Nānākuli, this study found evidence of interdependence and shared responsibility among two contemporary ‘ohana. Gallimore and Howard's (1968) contention that Native Hawaiian households rely on an extensive network of caretakers (i.e., elders, parents, siblings, cousins, neighbors) to raise and socialize children in Nānākuli parallels Hau‘oli and Hoku's inclusion of godparents in their definition of kin-based ‘ohana and their understanding of the godparent's role to intervene and assist parents in their godchildren's upbringing. This consistency over time suggests that a continued valuing of extended ‘ohana relations exists in this community. While Gallimore et al. (1974) found that social influence among Nānākuli ‘ohana is widely distributed across multiple caretakers of differing ages “rather than one or two powerful adults,” this study did gather evidence of the contrary (p. 223). Although collaborators in Maile and Hau‘oli's ‘ohana used a village metaphor to acknowledge the multiple individuals who raise a child, they also explicitly recognized the influential power of one or two close relatives upon their understandings of Hawaiianness. In Hau‘oli's case, Hoku is her village chief; much of the ‘ike kūpuna Hau‘oli knows today is an outcome of Hoku's mothering. This finding matters for the design and implementation of culturally responsive counseling, social work, and therapy approaches that take up the importance of collaboration with family leaders to achieve wider change in homes and communities (Kūkulu Kumuhana Planning Committee, 2017; Paglinawan et al., 2020).

7.2 MO‘OLELO ‘ohana and identity formation

Across the data, collaborators positioned storytelling, story-listening, and mo‘olelo ‘ohana as significant cultural and social practices through which beliefs about Native Hawaiian identity are communicated and taken up by relatives. mo‘olelo ‘ohana not only expressed Maile and Hau‘oli's ‘ohana's understanding about how their families learn to cooperate with each new generation but also provided space to reflect on their family's past, present, and future relations in Nānākuli and the broader lāhui Hawai‘i. Even in the aftermath of a beloved relative's passing, mo‘olelo ‘ohana about Mama Laura and Puna animated memories for Maile and Hau‘oli, respectively, shaping their intergenerational understanding of who they are today in relation to who their grandmothers and great-grandmothers were “back then.” MO‘OLELO ‘ohana about religion and culture, when associated with a family leader, were found to be effective socialization scripts for teaching young people to be relational, reciprocal, responsible, and respectful Native Hawaiians (Trommsdorff, 2009). In particular, the intergenerational formation of Hawaiian-Christian and Hawaiian-American identities was directly connected to mo‘olelo ‘ohana communicated by family leaders. This finding affirms the weight and “sticking power” of family narratives among close kin-based pilina (Brayboy, 2005; Burgess, 2020). It also signals mo‘olelo ‘ohana's capacity to transform individual family members from story-listener to storyteller on a continuous basis (Archibald, 2011; Benally et al., 2020).

7.3 MO‘OLELO ‘ohana and ideology

Through recursive reflections on the question, “Can I do this and still come home?” (Simpson, 2007, p. 78) and a co-analytic process involving collaborators' feedback on the study's data re-presentation, I take a cautionary stance against binary interpretations of the two ‘ohana's ideologies and experiences. As anticipated, an inquiry into ‘ohana relations and mo‘olelo ‘ohana in an age of settler colonialism is messy work, even for the “ingroup” researcher (Gushiken, 2019; Kaomea, 2001). Many conversations not featured in this article bear the psychological and physiological toll of historical trauma stemming from colonization (Brave Heart, 1998; Kivalahula-Uddin, 2018; Paglinawan et al., 2020; Poupart, 2003). Hau‘oli and Maile's ‘ohana's embeddedness within wider communities, nations, policies, and ‘āina, many of which are structurally dictated by settler colonialism (Cristobal, 2018), push us to consider why and how Native Hawaiians' thoughts, feelings, and actions might align with those of their colonizers at times. Wolfe's (2006) proposition that settler colonialism is a structure as opposed to an event reminds us that Indigeneity is threatened on an everyday basis. Thus, aligning oneself with non-Indigenous beliefs continues to be a survival strategy that has helped Native Hawaiians deal with settler colonialism's attempt to eliminate Indigenous lifeways (Brave Heart, 1998).

Study collaborators demonstrate mo‘olelo ‘ohana's capacity to foster positive psychosocial development among young people, even when rooted in non-Indigenous ideologies. Take, for example, collaborators' endorsement of a “hard work” mindset, which communicates an underlying message of Native Hawaiian exceptionalism: “If I can do it, so can you.” On one hand, this mentality supported families' pride in their relatives' individual achievements. On the other hand, successes according to non-Indigenous standards mean little for Native Hawaiians who believe hard work and discipline alone will not dismantle a settler colonial society (Lorde, 1983; Trask, 1999). This complex reality urges counselors, educators, and social workers to tread respectfully through each village and to story-listen before storytelling. Such an approach can help practitioners serving Native Hawaiian ‘ohana address the ideological causes of family concerns without judging them for decisions made with their village in mind.

7.4 Limitations and future research

This study brings together mo‘olelo ‘ohana of two kin-based families from one community on the island of O‘ahu. Consequently, the findings are neither applicable to all contemporary kin-based ‘ohana nor inherently relevant to school-based or activity-based families (Tomlins Jahnke and Gillies, 2012). Comparative or relational analyses of kin-based ‘ohana on the east side of O‘ahu, other Hawaiian islands, and in diaspora should be engaged to consider additional factors that influence how mo‘olelo ‘ohana, ‘ohana relations, and cultural communities are animated in diverse community settings (Jachowski and Riker, 2025). Longitudinal studies may provide further insight into the long-term effects of internalizing Indigenous and non-Indigenous beliefs from mo‘olelo ‘ohana on children's educational and life pursuits and the process of moving from close relative to family leader for young people who become parents and elders.

8 Conclusion

At this particular moment of polycrisis in which, yet again, decisions made by a few hold devastating ramifications for many, the collaborators' mo‘olelo ‘ohana implore us to keep storytelling and story-listening with our relatives. The pedagogical lessons on kin-based ‘ohana relations and mo‘olelo ‘ohana shared in this article matter for the generations of young people who will look to family narratives and leaders to make meaning of their identities and circulating ideologies during turbulent times. Therefore, this article is an urgent call for Native Hawaiians to interrogate and deconstruct mo‘olelo ‘ohana that might be preventing us from self-determined and sovereign futures.

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Footnotes

Edited by: Jordan Ashton Booker, University of Missouri, United States

Reviewed by: Donna-Marie Palakiko, University of Hawaii at Manoa, United States

Halena Kapuni-Reynolds, National Museum of the American Indian (SI), United States