Haoles in Hawaii

Chapter 1 - "Haole Go Home": Isn't Hawai`i Part of the U.S.?

11 chapter 1 “Haole Go Home” Isn’t Hawai‘i Part of the U.S.? “Haole go home” was a popular slogan in the 1970s for a number of reasons . The native Hawaiian cultural and political revival was emerging and gaining strength, there was a strong antidevelopment movement in the islands, and local culture was finding new artistic expression, especially in literature, comedy, and music. It is not articulated as much these days, but the sentiment remains, clearly marking haole as not at home in Hawai‘i. In contrast, white American visitors and newcomers to the islands are often surprised when they are called “haole” and when they encounter this sentiment. From their point of view, Hawai‘i is the fiftieth state and they have just as much right to be here as any other U.S. citizen. They believe they can even move to Hawai‘i and call it “home” if they want. The United States is, after all, “a free country.” It is this misunderstanding of Hawai‘i and haole’s relation to it that I want to challenge. This chapter asserts that there is no way to understand haole without understanding the colonization of Hawai‘i. It is like trying to understand fish without studying the ocean. Haole makes no sense outside of Hawai‘i, and contemporary Hawai‘i makes no sense outside its colonial and, we could argue, now neocolonial history. And yet understanding Hawai‘i’s history is not a simple task precisely because the last two centuries of that history have been dominated by colonialism, which relies on its ability to “spin” its own story. Until the early 1990s official Hawai‘i history was based on scholarship done by haole historians who strung together a linear narrative of Western progress starting with Captain Cook’s 1778 “discovery” and marching through the “civilizing” campaign of the missionaries, the “success” of plantation agriculture, the “unfortunate” demise of native people and power, and the “inevitable” Americanization of the 12 chapter 1 government, which continued until the government was American with the culminating act of statehood in 1959. Native Hawaiian scholar Haunani-Kay Trask describes her epiphany about the dominant Hawai‘i historiography taught her in school: Suddenly the entire sweep of our written history was clear to me. I was reading the West’s view of itself through the degradation of my own past. . . . And when they said that our chiefs were despotic, they were telling of their own society, where hierarchy always results in domination. . . . And when they wrote Hawaiians were lazy, they meant that work must be continuous and ever a burden. . . . And when they wrote that we were superstitious, believing in the mana of nature and people, they meant that the West had long since lost a deep spiritual and cultural relationship to the earth. . . . For so long, more than half my life, I had misunderstood this written record, thinking it described my own people. (Trask 1993, 153–154) New Hawai‘i scholarship, especially that conducted by Kanaka Maoli scholars, is rewriting this dominant history by researching previously unknown or ignored historical documents, particularly those written in the Hawaiian language.1 The importance of this scholarship cannot be overemphasized as it has caused a sea change in what story gets told about the last two centuries in Hawai‘i. This chapter draws significantly on that new research and attempts to counter some of the most pernicious misrepresentations established and perpetuated by the dominant history. My goal is to give a brief overview of the processes of colonization that wrested power from native Hawaiians and transferred it to haoles. These processes worked through the Western institutions of science, religion, law and politics, capitalism, and language and communication . Those who are familiar with other colonial struggles will see commonalities with other colonial histories. More scholarship needs to be done drawing Hawai‘i into broader discussions of colonialism and neocolonialism . Significantly, I am looking at specific processes of colonization in the islands, focusing on the hundred-plus years between Cook’s arrival and annexation. “haole go home” 13 Often colonization is conceived of as one thing (takeover of territory for resource extraction and empire building), accomplished through one mode (the use of force), and occurring uni-directionally (from colonizer onto colonized). Actually, colonization is many things (occupation of territory, yes, but also political, economic, religious, and cultural usurpation ), accomplished as much by strategic accumulation of...