The Seeds We Planted: Portraits of a Native Hawaiian Charter School

Chapter 4: Enlarging Hawaiian Worlds: Wa‘a Travels against Currents of Belittlement

167 167 FOUR Enlarging Hawaiian Worlds Wa‘a Travels against Currents of Belittlement The kūpuna are always trying to show us stuff, but half the time we probably never even see. . . . The canoe takes away all the barriers . . . and allows our ancestors to come in and show us and teach us. The canoe is a vehicle that takes the kids to another place so that they can also see beyond what is just in front. ■ Kumu Bonnie Kahape‘a-Tanner, December 4, 2004 Indigenous Pacific Islanders’ senses of self are created as much in travel as in continuous residence upon particular lands.1 We are both routed and rooted.2 As Native Pacific cultural studies scholars Diaz and Kauanui write,“The land and sea constitute our genealogies and, not surprisingly, they lie at the heart of the varied movements to restore native sovereignty and self-determination.Land and sea are ways by which peoplehood is fashioned.”3 Along similar lines, this chapter balances chapter 3’s focus on rootedness to ‘Aihualama by exploring the routes of HKM’s interdisciplinary wa‘a education program and the Project’s emphasis on learning through the preparation for and practice of sailing, including the genealogical mo‘olelo that guide and give those practices deep meaning. Understandings of self and community in relation to the natural world are produced in movements across the ocean. Such travel requires no less detailed an understanding of place and kuleana than that of the more rooted practice of kalo cultivation. Against knowledge regimes that cast the Pacific Islands as tiny, isolated “islands in a far sea”and Native islanders as backward and isolated from centers of economic and intellectual production, Epeli Hau‘ofa calls us to look to“our sea of islands”as an expansive source of strength: ENLARGING HAWAIIAN WORLDS 168 168 If we look at the myths, legends and oral traditions, and the cosmologies of the peoples of Oceania, it will become evident that they did not conceive of their world in such microscopic proportions . Their universe comprised not only land surfaces, but the surrounding ocean as far as they could traverse and exploit it, the underworld with its fire-controlling and earth-shaking denizens, and the heavens above with their hierarchies of powerful gods and named stars and constellations that people could count on to guide their ways across the seas. Their world was anything but tiny. They thought big and recounted their deeds in epic proportions.4 This shift toward a strengths-based perspective brings attention to the movements,tradingpatterns,andstoriesbywhichislandershaveestablished “new resource bases and expanded networks for circulation”—to the ways our people are enlarging their worlds.5 In this chapter I attend to the ways Hālau Kū Māna’s wa‘a program enables processes of world enlargement against limiting and belittling views of Indigenous cultures and peoples. By seeing the wa‘a as a living teacher herself and using the social and spiritual relations developed with and through her as opportunities for learning, HKM educators recenter Hawaiian genealogical connection to a vast oceanic network. Each time HKM students approach Kānehūnāmoku, their wa‘a, or enter their Wa‘a Project class, they offer her the following genealogical chant: ‘O Hōkūle‘a ka wahine,‘o Mau ke kāne Noho pū lāua a loa‘a mai‘o Makali‘i He keiki, he kiakahi Holo pū‘o Makali‘i i ka moananuiākea A loa‘a mai‘o Kānehūnāmoku Ka pulapula, he kiakahi Kia aku ka maka i ka‘alihilani A‘ōili mai ka moku la ‘O Kualoa ka‘aina,‘o Kānehoalani ka pali nāna e hi‘i I ke ala pono e holo aku ai a ho‘i mai Me ka‘ike o kō mua e kau mai nei E mau mai ka‘ike a mau loa e!6 ENLARGING HAWAIIAN WORLDS 169 169 Within HKM discourse the school’s twenty-nine-foot wa‘a kaulua kiakahi (double-hulled,single-mast canoe) Kānehūnāmoku is gendered feminine, as are the other wa‘a within her genealogy. At first blush this language may seem to mirror the patriarchal gendering of both Western and Satawalese maritime traditions.Such language is evident in the first line of the genealogical mele written for Kānehūnāmoku by HKM students, with the assistance of Hawaiian singer-songwriter Kainani Kahaunaele. The chant...