Two Cal Poly professors celebrated the release of a critical Indigenous surf studies book they contributed to on Tuesday, Oct. 7 in the Kennedy Library.
Ethnic studies professor Lydia Heberling is a co-editor of the book, called “Waves of Belonging: Indigeneity, Race, and Gender in the Surfing Lineup.” History lecturer Elizabeth Sine contributed a chapter to it.
A Q&A session with Heberling and Sine followed opening speeches by College of Liberal Arts Dean Kate Murphy and two members of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe.
“While this is a book that celebrates surfing and thinks about surfing, it’s also about a lot more,” Murphy said at the release. “It’s about land and water, history and culture, identity and inclusion.”
The book is a collection of 13 essays that deconstruct the colonial, white, masculine narrative around surfing through humanities and historical lenses. San Diego State University professors David Kamper and Jess Ponting co-edited the book with Heberling.
It’s the first edited collection of its kind, Heberling said. Other surf publications either have a single Indigenous perspective or multiple authors who don’t deliberately center Indigeneity, she also said.
Heberling starts the book off with an introduction about surfing as a long-time Indigenous practice. She also examines the sport as a way for people to navigate identity and power.
Heberling is not Indigenous herself, though her scholarship is in American Indian literature, specifically of Indigenous California.
“There’s hope in these different articulations of identity in the surf zone,” Heberling said.
She said her introduction connects each essay with the theme of surfing as perseverance through challenges of race and power.
Sine wrote a chapter that examines Black surfing communities using the “surf zone” to advocate for equity and belonging. She centers the Black Lives Matter movement, which happened during her writing process, but connects other social justice movements and communities of color in the piece.
“It [the chapter] sheds this light on all the alternative genealogies that surfing has had,” Sine said during the book’s release party. “How there’s always been alternative and oppositional connections to surfing that people have been forging and sustaining.”
Other chapters touch on themes of gender, queerness, language and violence that intersect with surfing.
Heberling, Kamper and Ponting began the idea for the collection after a surf studies conference at San Diego State University in 2019. The work presented by scholars there, including Sine, inspired them to form an editorial team and get published.
Heberling later roped in two Indigenous surfers to add more Indigenous voices. The most important piece of the book was to frame surfing through an Indigenous lens, she said.
“Waves of Belonging” is available for purchase online through its publisher, the University of Washington Press.