Stitch wasn’t meant to be your mascot
for colonized kitsch.

That’s it. That’s the post.
Mahalo for listening.
💔🌺

Stitch once stood for found family.
Now he sells fruit grown on stolen land.

Hawaiʻi is not a brand.
It is not a punchline.
It is not your tropical marketing palette.

What are we really looking at?

A Dole pineapple.
A Stitch tag.
A collectible novelty.

But also:
🩸 The fruit of a coup
🧹 A sanitized story
📦 A character who once meant something
Now reduced to shelf-friendly whimsy

When IP becomes more important than place, you get nostalgia with no roots.

Commodify.
Reboot.
Erase.
Rebrand.
Repeat.

Even Stitch has been looped into the machine.

The new live-action reboot?

Erased core characters

Made Nani move to California to study marine biology (even though Hawaiʻi is literally one of the best places on Earth for it)

Scrubbed the rawness

But kept the sunburned ice cream guy 🙃

Even Stitch deserved better.

The original 2002 film tried to honor Hawaiʻi.
🗣️ Cast Native Hawaiian actors
🤝 Integrated local language & culture
🌺 Showed grief, poverty, ʻohana—and made space for real place-based love

🍍 2. This Is What Cultural Erasure Looks Like.
Stitch in a pineapple hat isn't just cute—it’s a mascot pasted over a history that’s been actively erased.

Land taken from Kānaka Maoli.
Pain repackaged as “tropical fun.”
And now sold back to you.

The Dole name?
It’s not just fruit.
It’s colonial power turned into branding.
It’s the coup you were never taught about…
with a smiley sticker slapped on top.

🥭 1. Pineapples Aren’t Native to Hawaiʻi.
They were brought in for export. Not for locals. Not for sustenance.

James Dole built his fruit empire on stolen land—land made available by the 1893 overthrow of Queen Liliʻuokalani, led by his cousin, Sanford B. Dole.

One last thought...

It's Hawaiʻi

It's not Hawaii...

www.businessinsider.com/visiting-lar...

"This is, in part, because James Dole — who founded the Hawaiian Pineapple Company, which later became the Dole Food Company — was related to Sanford B. Dole, who organized the 1893 coup against Queen Lili`uokalani."

"Though pineapples are an iconic symbol of Hawaii, some may be surprised to learn that the fruits aren't native to the islands. Some locals see them as a reminder of colonialism, labor exploitation, and the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom."

I can't help feeling, especially looking at older pictures, that it isn't really ME that I'm looking at. The memories exist, I know that those things happened, but it feels almost like I'm looking at a different (though clearly recognizable as the same) person.

Something that keeps popping up in my head as I think about my younger self is the phrase "I am not the Biologist." From @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social 's Authority.

I've also thought it would be interesting to see some of the Seance & Science Brigade's self-published materials.