Renee Pualani Louis Homepage

Contact Renee Pualani Louis Affiliate Researcher Institute of Policy and Social Research University of Kansas 1541 Lilac Lane 607 Blake Hall Lawrence, KS 66045-3129 pualani@ku.edu

Education 2008 Ph.D. in Geography from University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa Dissertation Title – Hawaiian Place Names: storied symbols in Hawaiian performance cartographies, 340 pages. 1998 M.A. in Geography from University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa Thesis Title – Authoritative Textualization of Hawaiian Place Names 1994 B.A. in Geography from University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa Major – Cartography, Remote Sensing, GIS, and GPS

I am a Hawaiian woman and an Indigenous cartographer passionate about Hawaiian storied place names, cross cultural ethical research standards, and advocating the integration of Indigenous spatial knowledge systems with Western geosciences. I believe Indigenous wisdom has long held steadfast in the margins of society. Our elders have watched in silence or were silenced as consumer driven economics ravaged our lands, waters, and skies. Academia and science has played an active role in ensuring the knowledge of our ancestors remained ghostly whispers. It is time to bring Indigenous voices front and center. It is time to move beyond the politics of science where recognizing those realities that lie beyond the realm of our senses is not a debate about belief systems, so much as an examination of alternative methodologies. It is time to acknowledge the multiplicity of experiences that contribute to our understanding of the world in which we live.

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