Potent Mana: Lessons in Power and Healing

1. KA PO‘E KAHIKO: The People of Old

1 KA PO‘E KAHIKO The People of Old In order to understand efforts toward decolonization in the late twentieth century , it is necessary to understand what colonialism meant from the perspective and experience of the colonized. This chapter tells the story of ka po‘e kahiko—the ancestors of Native Hawaiians, or the people of old—who experienced the trauma of Western “discovery.” Anthropologist and historian Greg Dening wrote that “giving the dead a voice, letting their signatures on life be witnessed,” motivated his history writing. But it is not only the dead to whom history gives voice. Dening knew that [t]he living need history, too. Not to be made to feel guilty for a past they are not responsible for or cannot change. The living need a history disturbing enough to change the present . . . disturbing in the sense of awakening a consciousness that brings resolve to change. It is the present made by our past that we are responsible for. It is our own banality that needs to be disturbed, our presumption that we are disempowered by the very structures and systems which we make ourselves and sustain with our moral lethargy. If my history, my story and reflection, shows that things can be otherwise, then I think it fulfills a need. (Dening 1996, 87) Dening makes clear that what is at stake in different historical accounts is the production of present possibilities and alternative futures. This is a crucial insight, since throughout the twentieth century, histories of Hawai‘i were written as if American colonization were inevitable, and as if the descendants of ka po‘e kahiko had not survived. 21 The history that I present here draws heavily on recent scholarly work by Native Hawaiians. It is written from a perspective that expresses a genealogical connection with Native Hawaiians in the present and with their ancestors, ka po‘e kahiko. It is written to answer vital questions about the present struggles of Native Hawaiians that can only be understood from a perspective centered on the integrity and humanity of those who were colonized. Unlike histories centered on the experience of Europeans and Americans, which tend to justify the oppressive relations of colonialism and neocolonialism, this history suggests alternative trajectories and opens the possibilities for other futures. Walter Rodney (2005) wrote that to be colonized is to be removed from history. The removal from history follows logically from the loss of power that colonialism represented. The power to act independently is the guarantee to participate actively and consciously in history, a striking illustration of the fact that colonial Africa was a passive object, as seen in its attraction for White anthropologists, who came to study “primitive society.” Colonialism determined that Africans were no more makers of history than were beetles—objects to be looked at under a microscope and examined for unusual features (116). Hawaiians, too, were made the passive objects of anthropological and historical study. The writing of new histories centered on the experience of and resistance to colonialism is essential to the creation of decolonized futures. The historical summary that I present here provides the reader with a sense of the violence of colonization and the trauma of being rendered a passive historical/anthropological object. This summary provides a context for understanding Native Hawaiian cultural and political efforts to transcend neocolonialism in the late twentieth century. KA PAE ‘ĀINA Ka pae ‘āina (the islands of Hawai‘i) rise from the depths of the dark blue waters of the mid-Pacific, 4,000 miles west of Japan, and 2,500 miles from of the western edge of North America. These islands are the most isolated on earth. In the poetic language of the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian origin story, ka pae ‘āina emerges from the heat of the earth, the unfolding of heavens, and the eclipse of the sun by a round, bright moon. In the Kumulipo, ka po‘e kahiko (who would become known as Hawaiians after contact with Westerners) were born from a “deep darkness, darkening” (Kame‘eleihiwa 1992, 1–2). Ka po‘e kahiko, the ancestors of Native Hawaiians, were self-governing, selfsufficient , and complete. Before the British, before the sandalwood and whaling 22 POTENT MANA trades, and before the onslaught of Western settlers and the spread of Western disease, the islands overflowed with geo-theological significance. In the worldview of ka po‘e kahiko, the ‘āina was comprised of conscious...