Queer Textures and Digestible Futures: Theorizing Indigenous Foods through Hawaiian Poi

Hi’ilei Julia Hobart similarly considers indigenous food systems of the Pacific, here in relation to US imperialism in Hawai’i. Once a primary staple food for Kanaka Maoli, kalo products like poi and paʻi ʻai are now... [ view full abstract ]

Hi’ilei Julia Hobart similarly considers indigenous food systems of the Pacific, here in relation to US imperialism in Hawai’i. Once a primary staple food for Kanaka Maoli, kalo products like poi and paʻi ʻai are now returning to a foodscape from which they had been systematically erased during American colonization across the long nineteenth century. Through analyses of newspapers, travelogues, and Western periodicals, this paper tracks slippages and overlaps between descriptions of taste, Native bodies, and textures that reveal the epistemological relationship that colonialists drew between race and food, before turning to the ways kalo has become in recent years an increasingly visible symbol of food “localism,” sustainability, and Native rights in Hawaiʻi. Accompanying the recent symbolic revitalization has been a renewed popular interest in the health benefits of kalo foods, once reviled for their viscous texture, purple/grey/pink color, and sour(ing) flavor, and now lauded for their digestibility and probiotic qualities. This paper contextualizes these shifting parameters of palatability within a longer history of kalo consumption in order to bring the structures of settler colonialism to bear on the contemporary politics of taste in Hawai‘i.