The Painted King: Art, Activism, and Authenticity in Hawaii

6. How People Think about Their Sculpture

76 AS I CAME TO KNOW people in North Kohala and understand the history that brought so many different people together from distant places, I also learned of the sculpture’s place in their lives. Listening to old-timers and newcomers talk about the sculpture gave me a picture of how people think about themselves in relation to the past, and to Native Hawaiian culture. I learned that the powerful figure of Kamehameha not only carries meaning but also performs an active role in the spiritual, political, and economic life of the region. Having some sense of the relationships between the sculpture and the people who surround it helped me understand their opinions about how to conserve it. Myinitialconversationswerethefirsttimemanypeoplehadreasontovoice any thoughts one way or the other about the sculpture’s appearance. As the coowner of Kohala Book Shop across the street from the sculpture told me after a longdiscussion,“Idon’tthinkanyonereallygaveitmuchthoughtuntilthiscame along.” The conservation project gave people a concrete reason to think through their relationship with the sculpture. Project activities, including public meetings and public art projects, provided a platform for new and sometimes revised reflections. Similarly, new information from my material and archival analysis challenged preconceived notions about the physical history of the sculpture. 6 How People Think about Their Sculpture 77 How PeopleThink aboutTheir Sculpture With or without my intervention, community residents differed in the intensity of their views about their heritage and community issues. The fate of the sculpture was no different. There was wide variation, ranging from anger to apathy. Perhaps most crucially, there was variation in the way people categorized the sculpture in terms of its function in the community. They spoke of it as a spiritual embodiment, a political resource, a cultural marker, an economic resource, and, increasingly, as an object needing care. o o o Many Native Hawaiians and other residents of North Kohala describe the sculpture in spiritual terms. Kaona in Hawaiian means hidden, subsurface meanings. In our conversations, it did not take long for many to move beyond the sculpture’s materiality to these subsurface meanings and to the concept of mana. Mana translates to “supernatural or divine power”;1 it connotes the complex cultural system of kapu and its strict ordering of the world, with privileged access to knowledge and power. The Kamehameha sculpture as a receptacle of mana emerged both in private conversations and in public forums. People also referred to “precontact” ki‘i (figurative sculptures) made prior to Cook’s arrival on the islands in Hawai‘i. Although scholars debate their specific functions and the rituals associated with them,2 some Native Hawaiians I spoke with conveyed oral traditions that descend through generations about their meaning and use. These sculptures were images of akua(spirits,divinities)andmanifestationsofnaturalphenomena.Somewere freestanding monumental temple sculptures, some were akua kā‘ai (mounted on top of supports), and some were āumakua sculptures (family or personal gods, deified ancestors). Their mana reportedly accumulated through prayers and offerings that followed carefully scripted kapu.3 I spoke on several occasions with Edward Halealoha Ayau, a Honolulu burial rights activist and descendant of Kamehameha. He is a strong advocate of repatriating all human remains in museums and archives for reburial following strict Hawaiian protocols. He was both criticized and praised in the media during the period of our project for borrowing several ki‘i from the Bishop Museum’s collection and, against the museum’s wishes, reburying them in an undisclosed location. I asked him how mana came to inhabit early Hawaiian carved images. He responded, “The question is—how do you invite the spirit into it? The elaborate carving of ki‘i and prayer grabs spirits’ 78 the painted king attention to inhabit. That’s why there’s a protocol. That’s why chiefs had feathered kāhilis [feathered standards] and took their gods to war. You are attracting the mana of the spirits.” Precontact ki‘i had abstract human features but never represented portraitsofindividualchiefs .JohnKeolaLaketoldmethatintraditionalHawaiian culture it wasn’t considered man’s design to capture the likeness of other men. To capture a human image in a sculpture would be stealing its mana, or power. Kālai ki‘i, specially trained image carvers, created ki‘i under prescribed circumstances . The strict protocol for cutting down a tree for a new ki‘i included chanting and at times even human sacrifice.4 The images themselves were only exposed at certain times of the year...