Ancestry of Experience: A Journey into Hawaiian Ways of Knowing

5. Place of Confluence Tutu 'Ohi`a and the Ka'ai

135 5  Place of Confluence Tūtū 'Ōhi'a and the Kā'ai Another kupuna who shared her knowledge with Kalo in a spirit of complete, unconditional acceptance was Tūtū 'Ōhi'a. Kalo interviewed Tūtū 'Ōhi'a (tūtū means grandparent) in the front room of her home, where she was surrounded by Hawaiian books and Hawaiian artifacts. Kalo’s mom, Kalo, and I brought her a fruit basket and talked story, without mentioning the “purpose” of our visit: After about 45 minutes of talking story, there is a pause and Kalo says, “So, Tūtū, we want to ask you some questions about Hawaiian culture.” Tūtū, unsurprised, shifts in her seat and says gently, “Yes.” Kalo says that I am going to school on the mainland and I am interviewing kupuna about their experiences and feelings. She describes to her everything on my release form, saying, “So, is that OK, Tūtū?” Tūtū says yes; and we give her a pen, and she signs the sheet. (Mana'o: 1999–2012) Excerpts from her interview follow: 136 Ancestry of Experience Tūtū 'Ōhi'a Hawaiian family is a, is a family that is shall I say, closed. Father, mother, children, aunts, uncles, there is a strong connection and they have support of the 'ohana. More during our times than these times I think. I don’t know. But during our time, if one kupuna was sick or gone the others would come and take care. And we lived like one family in those old days. And, And in that way we were able to survive. As I have said we were poor in money. Grampa didn’t work. He raised taro, potatoes, cane, chickens, pigs for us to eat. And we always had plenty to eat! But when it came to money we didn’t have any unless one other gave us some money. [Laughter] Do you think I’m heading up on our strengths? [Yes! Yes!] (Tūtū 'Ōhi'a: 35–60) More support, and put the welfare of the child first. Some parents I think, my thoughts Talking about “our times” as compared to “these times” seemed to pull me more into Tūtū 'Ōhi'a’s memories than another sort of construction might. Survival is connected to family, to taking care of others. Tūtū 'Ōhi'a qualifies poor as attached to the idea only of not having money. Tūtū 'Ōhi'a names the things her grandfather grew rather than saying (for instance) that he grew vegetables and raised livestock. Tūtū 'Ōhi'a’s response to a question about the dangers facing Hawaiians and their strengths sequences from traditional family, to getting food (or “subsistence activities ”), to abundance. The idea of food and cultivation shifts into the idea of plenty, and the idea that money was not needed. She talks about living on the land, the abundance that ensues, and the peripheral nature of money within that abundance.1 Place of Confluence 137 some of our Hawaiian people they spend all of their money foolishly. I don’t know if they still do it. But in the days when I was growing up there were families like that. They always looked poor. They looked as though they didn’t have enough of anything. Because that’s the way they spent their money. But my grandmother and grandfather always had everything we wanted to do. And we lived the Hawaiian way. We . . . we cooked outside, you know. Everything was cooked outside. But in spite of that the food was good and simple food like taro tops, taro stalks, the taro in the poi, the sugar cane for us to chew and EVERY māhealani, māhealani is the full moon, we’d all plant. Yeah. Our bananas. But, you know, my brother and sisters and my sisters and I would go up there and mine would just grow up like a puny tree! [Laughter] And nothing would come out of there. My sister had a good hand! When Tūtū uses the phrase “our Hawaiian people,” I am pulled into her talk not as a researcher, collecting her stories , but as a person younger than she, listening to and learning from her assessment of “us.” Tūtū 'Ōhi'a moves quickly from the idea of abundance into Hawaiian practices by saying “we wanted to do” and “cooking outside.” Then she...