I have reflected repeatedly about elements impacting the Hawaiian community throughout my lifetime and during the times of our elders. It is clear that we have struggled to find traction as an ethnic/cultural group in the midst of the tremendous changes beginning in the early 19^th century. Other ethnicities have prospered in the inclusive embrace of the host culture, but Hawaiians to this day continue to suffer from generational poverty and all of the social and physical consequences associated with it. It seems that the Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, even other Pacific Islanders such as the Samoan, Tongan, and other immigrant groups, have moved forward while Hawaiians continue to dominate the lower realms of the socio-economic-educational statistics. What drives this reality? How does true transformation take place if we can’t identify the factors that litter its path for the Hawaiian community?

It is very hard, if not impossible, to simply state the factors that lead to socio-economic structures that endure over time. Cultural/ language/ economic/ social/ religious/ military and global power alignments all play roles in the rolling definition of social structures in a cultural clash of this proportion. Despite this complexity, I will venture into a path of trying to block out what the consequences of this clash were during the past two hundred years of interaction between western and Hawaiian societies.

The introduction of western culture to the traditional Hawaiian nation in the latter eighteenth century resulted in huge economic and political changes that transformed the traditional Hawaiian reality. Western imperial interests in the Pacific drew Hawai‘i into the global political and commercial world. The traditional Hawaiian leadership was quickly overwhelmed by ideas and perspectives antithetical to the values and mores of life under the chiefs, kings, and kāhuna. Economic factors overwhelmed cultural values and Hawaiian families were faced with a perplexing decision: how do we ensure the success of our children in a world on wheels going to places we don’t understand? The use of the spoken Hawaiian language was being eroded even as it became a widely used written language. The traditional family, political, and leadership roles were being put into written documents the common people did not understand. Hawaiian agriculture was being replaced by a commercial plantation model and the traditional bond of the Hawaiian people between the land and their rulers was substituted with western land tenure codes and “representational government.”

From this toxic clash of cultures a number of important responses emerged, changing traditional Hawaiian social, economic, political relationships. The dominant economic interest of the Caucasian businessmen pressed them to mold the political system into one that would protect their investments in Hawai‘i and foster their growing interest in entering the global market through the plantation agricultural model. These goals hinged on changing both the traditional structure of ruler/subject relationships (which was basically a social compact between the chiefs and the governed with clear responsibilities to care for each other), as well as the traditional land tenure model that was predicated on the assumption of a strong personal relationship between the land and its user. In this latter relationship, the farmer assumed a “relationship of kinship” with the land and personal land tenure was superseded by the needs of the larger community, led by the chiefs. In the later part of the 19^th century, both of these traditional models were replaced with a western model that gave economic interests and monetary wealth a large say in public policy and as a result, the Hawaiian community was faced with a foreign constitutional form of government and an increasingly intrusive private land tenure system. Traditionally, the land was essentially a relative to Hawaiians; you cared for it, made it prosper, and did not exploit it. However with the change to a western perspective, the land became just another component and input to the economic health of the community. The Hawaiian community did not function well in a plantation setting, so the importation of workers from China, Japan, and later the Philippines, fueled Hawai‘i’s commercial agriculture boom. With plantations taking over, Hawaiians could no longer produce enough food to sustain themselves and the traditional small farming reality faded but managed barely to survive, just like the language, thanks to isolation and poverty.

The traditional Hawaiian language was a threat to this startling shift in the Hawaiian reality, so it was essentially banned and removed as the teaching language in the public schools in 1896. This trickled down to Hawaiian families concerned about the future success of their children and soon the language began to disappear in the home setting. A major foundation of identity and strength for the Hawaiian community was replaced and given a negative connotation in the lives of the people of Hawai‘i. Relationships and responsibilities that the language presupposed were radically “westernized” into a system that the bulk of the native population did not understand.

On top of everything, the population of the Hawaiian community continued its downward spiral from a high of 500,000 or 600,000 at contact to less than 50,000 at the turn of the 20^th century. Diseases introduced from the west ravaged the host population while radical political, economic, land tenure, and cultural changes caused a similar destruction in the culture, stability, and more importantly self-sustainability of the Hawaiian people. All of these combined left a community in search of an identity. The ruling elite of missionary offspring and imported westerners were happy to strengthen the negative portrait of the Hawaiian. Writers like racist Rev. Sereno Bishop (1827-1909), son of a missionary with ties to Lorrin Thurston (a leader in the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893), wrote “definitive” histories of Hawai‘i depicting the Hawaiian as lazy, slow, and incapable of caring for themselves. As editor of the influential Christian newspaper “The Friend” from 1887-1902, he held an effective platform in pushing for the annexation of Hawai‘i to the US and furthering racial issues against Hawaiians. As they say, to the victor belong the spoils, and this was astoundingly true when it came to the public perception regarding Hawaiians and their place in their own land. The culture of shame was planted and it quickly became reality.

 

“He ma‘i nui ka hilahila”

Shame is a great disease.  Shame and Humiliation can make one sick to the heart.

– ‘Ōlelo No‘eau #783

 

Throughout the 20^th century the culture of shame strengthened. The Hawaiian language slowly disappeared from everyday use on the streets and in most homes, Hawaiian cultural practices like healing and Hawaiian martial arts faded into practice outside of the public view, while hula became westernized and a part of the Hollywood picture of Hawai‘i and its tradition. At the school for Hawaiians, the Kamehameha Schools, standing hula was prohibited as being too provocative. Hawaiians had lost a sense of their unique roots and cultural traditions except in those areas where contact with the western economy was limited: rural, isolated communities that had limited contact with the economic/political reality of Hawai‘i between 1890 and 1960 (places like Na‘alehu, Kalapana, Miloli‘i, Moloka‘i in general and particularly the east end, Halawa valley, etc.).  These areas were subsistence economies and generally ignored by the ruling elite and therefore were able to preserve the language and some of the traditional cultural practices. In other words, the Hawaiian culture and language were being saved by those deemed in poverty and isolation. When the Hawaiian language revival began in the late fifties, the sixties, and the seventies of the last century, these rural communities were major resources for the movement.

 

(To be continued…)