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

5. Local Style

67 I WANTED TO LEARN HOW people in North Kohala conceive of their community, including how individuals define groups and how they think about participation privileges. This was directly relevant to the questions of how to conserve the sculpture and whose opinions should count in determining its conservation. The historic migrations, economic developments , and cultural shifts that have occurred over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provide for a rich array of potential identities and cultural affiliations that could well be in play. People do indeed struggle to define what it means to be “authentic” in today’s North Kohala. I found that people take different positions as to who should count in defining the community and participating in its public life. Native Hawaiians, and particularly descendants of Kamehameha, occupy a unique position in the social landscape. There are numerous Kamehameha descendants in the region, and people speak with intense pride about their connection to the “Native Son” who united the Hawaiian Islands. Each year in the Kamehameha Day parade, a special float carries Kamehameha descendants. I learned that this pride in family connections extends to any link with the Hawaiian ali‘i and signifies a cultural system of identity in Hawai‘i that places central importance on genealogy. People talk about their 5 Local Style 68 the painted king family coming from one area or another and the connections their families have to other families that have been in the region for a long time. This respect for lineage, hierarchy, and connection to land persists from precontact times and came up in conversations about local kūpuna (elders). For instance, many in the community pointed to Marie Solomon as the most respected kupuna, not only because she was a descendant of Kamehameha, but because her family came from and is buried in the area where Kamehameha lived for much of his young life. Reference to land was a theme that surfaced constantly in my discussions about Native Hawaiian status. Although people everywhere attach symbolic meaning to the local landscape, the Hawaiian version is especially strong. The phrase aloha ‘āina (love of the land) came up repeatedly. All the people I spoke with, across race and social location, refer to the land and the local region in Eden-like terms, as unique and distinct. Indigenous people also know it as bound up with spiritual forces, as seen in Kamehameha’s biography. A key issue I learned is the spiritual connection held to the ‘āina and the deep loss still felt from the mid-nineteenth-century māhele land transfer from indigenous populations. The Department of Hawaiian Home Lands now oversees a painfully slow and cumbersome program to provide dispossessed Native Hawaiians with homesteading land grants, just as developers increasingly challenge these land rights in the courts. The bulk of the land to be distributed was originally given to the state by Kamehameha. As part of its mission, the department provides homestead leases to Native Hawaiians with a Native blood quantum level of 50 percent. Despite legal rights to occupation, access to this “crown” land remains out of reach of most Hawaiian descendants and is at the center of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement. Although the sovereignty movement is stronger and more strident on O‘ahu, it does have advocates in North Kohala. In addition to Hawaiian lineage and connection to the land, I learned about other criteria in North Kohala for determining who counts. Among them are possessing an aloha spirit, being local, and age status: kūpuna and keiki (children). These categories all came up in conversation while discussing who should participate in the conservation project and who in the community should make conservation decisions. Closely related to the value placed on Native Hawaiian ancestry and connections to the land is an embrace of “Hawaiian values.”1 Possessing these values,oftenexpressedasthespiritofaloha,cantrumpotherdistinctionssuch as ethnicity. In a broad sense, having aloha includes knowledge of Hawaiian 69 Local Style cultural ways and practicing them through welcoming others, giving to the community, and respecting the local ecology as well as nature’s symbolic meanings. Having this spirit matters and is valued above other criteria in the minds of many. Raylene describes herself as a hapa Hawaiian, 50 percent Hawaiian. She plays a central role in North Kohala Native Hawaiian cultural matters. In addition to being custodian of Kamehameha’s family stone temple, she runs an esteemed hula school that welcomes both newcomer...