Day 4 Manaʻo for Cohort Waikolu March 19, 2026

We hope that you folks enjoyed being in conversation with Dean Saranillio today! I appreciated hearing from Dean and learning more about his research through his presentation. Although we discussed difficult and heavy topics such as settler colonialism and how capitalism is (re)birthed through the death of human and non-human relations, Dean importantly emphasized the opening of alternative possibilities and other ways of being. I was particularly moved by the ways he spoke about his time as a student at UH Mānoa taking classes at Kamakūokalani and the lessons he has learned from Hawaiʻi—including the transformative power of love and aloha ʻāina. To quote him quoting his sister Candace Fujikane in the article we read for homework last night: “‘For there is joy, too, in these practices of growing ea’” (41).