Luke Kawasaki

Qwo-Li Driskill
March 2, 2014

Lilo and Stitch: An Iteration of the Recolonization of the Hawaiian Nation

This paper will critically examine the film Lilo & Stitch through the lens that it serves as
a continuation of the on-going colonization of the Hawaiian nation by normalizing tourism, and
foreign invasion. Lilo & Stitch, a part of the Disney franchise, is a film whose key demographic
is the Euro-American family unit. This paper will be critiquing key scenes in the film Lilo &
Stitch in order to apply a Native theory critique to illuminate conversations around the
prevalence of colonized social service intervention in Native families, the economic relationship
of tourism within the Hawaiian culture, and the preserved dependence Hawaiian peoples have of
foreign nations protection found within the film.
One of the central characters to the film is Stitch, or Experiment 626. On the surface level
Stitch is characters whose designed purpose is to be destructive, but through the love and
attention garnered from Lilo, Stitch gains the capacity to love. When from from the perspective
that Stitch is still an alien that has crash landed on the island of Kauai and is trying to evade the
capture of other aliens by embedding himself in a native Hawaiian family, Stichs character is
able to be examined with a more critical lens. Stitches character tells a greater narrative that is
echoed by Michelle Erai in their article A Queer Caste. In Erais article the Pacific Islands are
referenced as a space that is able to absorb the pollution of United States and Japan and still
maintain is value as a global destination (Erai, 2011). Erai is arguing that the nation of Hawaii is
able to remain a destination in the minds of the US due to its remote location, and the out of site

out of mind euphemism. This argument that Hawaii is far enough way for US citizens to exotify
and romanticize Hawaiian culture is another way that Hollywood narrative prove to, justify
conquest and settlement over lands and indigenous peoples. (Hoomanawanui 2010). This is the
reason that in the end of the film, after all of the conflict between the aliens and native people,
Stitch remains on the island, along with various other aliens, to be claim a life on Kauai. This act
settlement on the islands within this film normalizes a colonialist notion that all land is available,
and a continuation of Manifest Destiny.
In is in this scene the Grand Councilwoman is deciding the fate of Earth, and chooses to
enlist the help of the Federations expert on Earth. In this scene, it is the expert that sways the
decision of the councilwoman not to destroy the inhabitants of Earth due to a repopulation of
mosquitos. This argument to not eradicate the population of people by an alien race has the
memories of so many Indigenous nation embedded deeply within it. As the colonization of the
Americas continues, a dominant narrative of media is that the ongoing existence of Indigenous
people is due to the mercy and compassion of the colonizers, and Lilo & Stitch is a further
reiteration of this narrative. The people of Earth are made to seem incapable of defending
themselves as the scientist who created Stitch exclaims, On what poor, pitiful, defenseless
planet has my monstrosity been unleashed? (DeBlois & Sanders, 2002). This line must be taken
in context of when we consider that this view of Native people as being incapable of defense and
is slowly dying out as a dominant narrative, it creates an act of cultural violence against
Indigenous people.
This theme of Indigenous people being in need of colonizers does not end with them
needing defense from the Federation and Stitch however. Lilo & Stitch also grapples with the
intervention of colonized social services in Native families. The Pelekai family is a family that

has experienced a great trauma, and with that trauma has come another in the form of
government sanctioned family services to monitor the care of young Lilo by her older sister
Nani. A consistent story arch within the movie is Nanis status of employment. As Stitch begins
to settle into the family dynamic of the Pelekais, he is brought with Nani and Lilo to Nanis
work at a tourist trap Luau. There, Stitch causes such a scene that Nani is fired and rendered
unemployed. When the social worker comes to learn of this loss of employment Nani is
presented three days to find employment or Lilo will be removed from her care. With Nanis
struggle to find employment being the supporting drama to the film, DeBlois and Sanders choose
to write an alien battle in the Pelekai home that ends in the houses destruction. With the
destruction of the Pelekai home, and Nanis loss of employment, the social worker finds
increased need to remove Lilo from Nanis care. This twist in the story suggests that no matter
how hard Nani were to have worked at overcoming the system placed in front of her by Child
Protective Services, she would not have been able to overcome them. As Nani tries to justify this
to the Case Worker, her plies are rendered as unintelligible by the exclaiming, Is THIS
[gesturing to the ruined home] what she needs?! (DeBlois & Sanders, 2002). This scene
reiterates the tendency of Case Workers to ignore the reasoning of Native families.
The last them that was present within Lilo & Stitch was the presence of Tourism on the
Island, and the perceived dependence the Hawaiian nation had on the tourism economy. In Lilo
& Stitch tourists play a central role as acting as a physical comic relief. With their large, fat
bodies lazily enjoying the beaches and food of the Hawaiian islands, they were meant to be a
spectacle. However, tourism is deeply problematic, and Lilo & Stitch offers some illuminations
as to why. American tourists make up 5,127,291 of the 7,174,397 tourists that arrived in the year
of 2011 according Data Hawaii Gov. (2011). In Native Hawaiian activist Professor Hauni-Kay

Trasks essay, Lovely Hula Hands an interesting assertion as to why so many US citizens decide
to visit the Hawaiian islands. Just five hours by plane from California, Hawaii is a thousand
lights years away in fantasy. Mostly a state of mind, Hawaii is the image of escape (Trask,
136). This escape for many US citizens places a tremendous stress on the native people of the
islands. Nanis job is at an imitation luau shows one of the ways in which the Hawaiian people
are forced to create jobs to capitalize on the economy of tourism. As Nani is frantically searching
for a job to maintain custody of Lilo she applies at Kikis Coffee. Here you here the conversation
between Nani and the store owner that there are no jobs available due to a recent hire and that
tourism season is soon ending. With this seasonal job dependency on tourism, it forces native
people to adapt to the tourists season, or suffer in the case of Nani as she struggles to find
employment. As it is, the state of Hawaii devotes a large portion of the government to working
with, and utilizing tourism to work best for their peoples common good. In the Hawaii Tourism
Authority 2011 Annual Report to the Hawaii State Legislature, marketing strategies show the
ways in which the cultural appropriation of Hawaii is a marketable strategy for cultural survival.
(HTA 2011). This cultural survival through the appropriation of Hawaiian culture can account
for the multiple instances of appropriated Luua scenes presented in the film, as well as the
appropriation of the Hawaiian language in many of the songs in Lilo & Stitchs sound track. As
Luna Maia says in her story, Authentically Ethnic, The history of my ancestors is about
survival, not authenticity (2011).
My critique to the tourism is also presented within the film however. This critique of the
cultural gluttony of tourism occurs with the inclusion of Lilos photography hobby. Lilo is
shown at the beginning of the film to take the photograph of a large, badly sunburnt, white
tourist before quickly running off. Lilo does not ask the tourist if she is able to take his picture,

nor does she care about the way he would have chosen to be represented in the picture. Later in
the film you are brought into Lilos room and shown her collection of photos she has taken of
various tourists. All of them are large, eating and or lounging, and white. By allowing Lilo to be
the person in control of the camera, the audience is presented with a chance to see a counter
narrative to the Hollywood images of Native Hawaiians in the form of the Haole tourist.
Film has the power to inform, persuade, and challenge peoples perceptions of the world.
Disneys Lilo & Stitch is a fine example of a way in which film has been used to normalize the
continued colonization of native lands by providing a narrative where the invasion in multiple
aspects of the native nation of Hawaii. By allowing for aliens to invade and inhabit, tourists to
dominate the economy, and previously established colonized nations to disband native families,
Disney has provided a narrative that facilitates the ongoing colonization of the Hawaiian Nation.

References

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