Potent Mana: Lessons in Power and Healing

NOTES

NOTES INTRODUCTION 1. According to Nkrumah, “A colonialist country can in fact offer independence to a people, not with the intention which such an act might be thought to imply, but in the hope that the positive and progressive forces thus appeased and quietened (sic), the people might be exploited with greater serenity and comfort (1970, 102). 2. Kwame Nkrumah was a mid-twentieth-century anti-colonial and PanAfricanist movement leader, who in 1952 became the first prime minister of independent Ghana. Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for Decolonization is both a critique of Western philosophy and an extended meditation on the relevance of philosophy to African socialism and decolonization. 3. Mana was misinterpreted as a “dynamic impersonal force,” which is “tapped to produce magic” (Elbert 1957, 268), or as a “supernatural power” (Oliver 1989[1961], 72). 4. I use quotation marks around “ancient Hawai‘i” to point to the use of the term to instantiate decisive junctures between pre-haole Hawai‘i, the colonial era, and the neocolonial present. While many scholars have accepted the politics of this periodization, fieldwork in Hawai‘i made it clear to me that the past is in the present for many Hawaiians engaged in decolonizing. 5. ‘Ai signifies eating, food, consumption, and rule (see chapter 2) and forms the root of ‘āina, the Hawaiian word for ancestral land. 6. For a discussion of the meaning of mana in contemporary Fijian society, see Tomlinson (2006, 2007). 7. Critics claim that histories like the one produced by Kame‘eleihiwa celebrate “golden myths of origin” and deny the existence of oppression and inequality in Hawaiian society before the coming of Europeans. But to make an analysis of history based on Hawaiian metaphors and to grasp the centrality of serving and caring as a dominant social ethos is not to deny 173 oppression but, rather, to pose a contrast with Western meanings and metaphors centered on land as a commodity and as a source of private wealth. The work of Samuel Kamakau, a nineteenth-century Hawaiian scholar, whose historical research was published in a Hawaiian language newspaper, makes clear that this ethos of serving and caring was aspirational , a high standard that when met increased the fecundity of the land and the people. For example, Kamakau describes the celebrated chief Kalamakua -a-Kaipūhōlua who “was noted for cultivating, and . . . [for constructing ] the large pond fields,” and for traveling “about . . . to cultivate the land and [give] the produce [to] the commoners” (Kamakau 1991, 45). This reign is contrasted with the rule of Haka, who was “a bad chief and a stingy one . . . [who] did not take care of the chiefs and the people” (Kamakau 1991, 53–54). 8. “Pre-haole Hawai‘i” is Stannard’s phrase to indicate the time before the arrival of Europeans (Stannard 1989, 70). 9. “Talk-story is a relaxed, rambling, sometimes intense commentary or conversation . This form of communication most likely derives from the vast and rich oral tradition of Hawaiian culture” (Ito 1999, 12). 10. The “rope of resistance” is a phrase from Sons, a poem by Haunani-Kay Trask (1994, 55–56). CHAPTER 1. KA PO’E KAHIKO 1. Nineteenth-century Hawaiian scholar Samuel Kamakau delineated the classes of kāhuna and their responsibilities. Kāhuna read omens, understood the means of selecting appropriate sites for building, mastered knowledge of the configurations of the earth and the sky, controlled knowledge of deep sea fishing, designed and constructed implements for tapa (cloth made from bark) work, and mastered the arts of ‘anā‘anā—a “means of absolution . . . and of dispelling troubles” (Kamakau 1991, 27, 119). Specialist knowledge pertaining to healing and health was controlled by kāhuna lapa‘au. This knowledge included the treatment of pregnancy, labor, and delivery; the treatment of childhood ailments; diagnosis by a “table of pebbles” and finger tip palpitation; diagnosis by “insight” or “critical observation”; treatment with ‘anā‘anā (“to remove the grounds for offense within the victim, and so remove . . . the affliction”); treatment to counteract sorcery; and treatment “of the spirits of illness.” Kamakau noted that kāhuna ‘anā‘anā were the most powerful healers, as they controlled both the ability to use prayer to heal people and to pray people to death (Kamakau 1991, 98, 119, 122). 174 NOTES TO CHAPTER 1 2. The word ahupua‘a refers to an ahu (stone heap), which supported an image of the head of a...