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4 Talking Back to Law and Empire Hula in Hawaiian-Language Literature in 1861
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This chapter is about the first publication of the mo‘olelo of the goddesses of hula. A mo‘olelo is a story, history, literature, or any kind of narrative. Because I am about to share details of a mo‘olelo that few people in the world have the ability to read, I must begin by stating my relationship to this mo‘olelo and to the knowledge of the native people of Hawai‘i. Before proceeding, I will explain why so few people in the world have access to this literature and what that has to do with law and empire in the Pacific. I am the granddaughter of Kathleen Kauhili‘ili‘i Jay Decker, who was born in Kala\pana, Puna, Moku o Keawe (Island of Hawai‘i). She was the daughter of Mary Kauila, who was the daughter of La\hapa Lehuloa, who was the daughter of Kauhi. All of them (and their ku\puna) were born in the Kala\pana area, near Pele’s home, Halema‘uma‘u, Ki\lauea. Hula in literature is mainly connected with the mo‘olelo of Pele. My grandmother was of the first generation purposely raised to be ignorant of the language and literature of their mothers and grandmothers . She was raised to speak Chinese and English, but despite her parents’ efforts, she understood spoken Hawaiian and knew hundreds of songs in the Hawaiian language. Her daughter, my mother, also 101 4 Talking Back to Law and Empire Hula in Hawaiian-Language Literature in 1861 Noenoe K. Silva 101 knew many songs, but much less Hawaiian. I grew up knowing even less. As an adult, I returned home to Hawai‘i nei and began to learn my greatgrandmothers ’ language at the university. As I became fluent, my teachers impressed upon me that this language I had fallen in love with was nearly extinct.1 Those of us who have managed by our various means to learn it are privileged in our community because most Ka\naka ‘O iwi still face serious barriers to learning the language and to higher education. We therefore bear a “merciless weight of responsibility” when we decide to reveal, interpret, and analyze the writing of our ku\puna (Benton 1987). To do so puts “scholars and authors into the role of brokering knowledge,” as Amy Ku‘uleialoha Stillman (2002:131) has put it. Furthermore, the texts of hula have come down to us in two ways. One is through the oral tradition, passed down from kumu hula (hula master) to kumu hula over the generations. As we will see, hula was often disparaged and at times virtually banned, so the knowledge had to be passed along in secret. Because of mass death from epidemics, land dispossession, and other reasons, some of the knowledge did not survive. I am not a dancer and have not earned the right to the body of knowledge that did survive in ha\lau hula (hula schools). In an unevenly parallel stream, some of this knowledge was recorded in writing, in manuscripts, and, starting with the mo‘olelo I will share, in literature published in Hawaiian-language newspapers. That written knowledge has been difficult to access for many kumu hula, especially for those not fluent in written Hawaiian. To complicate matters further, institutions whose archives contain such manuscripts have sometimes blocked access to the written mele (songs and chants) associated with hula (Stillman 2002:141, 2001:193–194). In the twentieth century, when most kumu were unable to access the Hawaiian-language literature, some used the two books written by Orientalist Nathaniel B. Emerson as primary sources. However, Dr. Emerson (1965), despite the title of his work, Unwritten Literature of Hawaii, obtained much of that knowledge from the written literature in Hawaiian newspapers. It is obvious, for example, that Emerson (1978) took much of his book Pele and Hiiaka from the text we will examine. He did not credit the author, even though the mo‘olelo was published under the author’s name, M. J. Kapihenui (see Charlot 1998).2 My relationship to the mo‘olelo is therefore multilayered. In a culNoenoe K. Silva 102 [54.84.65.73] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:45 GMT) ture that greatly values genealogy, I am a descendant of the people who live(d) close to the akua wahine (deities) that the mo‘olelo is about. I am also the recipient of the gifts of prescient ancestors who wrote the mo‘olelo, foreseeing that today...