The Most Underrated Books on Hawaiʻi

Because the Hawaiʻi publishing industry is dominated by a few presses, many books on Hawaiʻi fall through the cracks. Hereʻs a biased and unscientific list of some of them from a self-described “book Hawaiian” – me. This is quite different from the list of the “greatest” Hawaiian books, as many are written by non-Hawaiians and published outside of Hawaiʻi.

Moolelo no Kamehameha, Joseph Poepoe

As I said previously: So apparently Desha plagiarized (if such a concept exists in Hawaiian thought) from Poepoe, whose work is yet to appear in published form. It is still a valuable supplement to Kamakauʻs account of Kamehamehaʻs conquests. The Kamehameha Schools Press English translation is called Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo.

Turning Tide: The Ebb and Flow of Hawaiian Nationality, Niklaus Schweitzer

This is one of the most underrated, and hard-to-find gems on Hawaiian history and contemporary politics. Mainly because it was published in Switzerland, it didnʻt get anything like the circulation it deserved.

Schweitzer writes what many think, or wish they had thought: about the state of suspension that the Hawaiian Kingdom finds itself in. I still quote one of his phrases in my writing: “The Hawaiian movement is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary” – that is, it is building the infrastructure of a nation within the current paradigm, rather than trying to topple it.

Inventing Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Yuri Mykkannen

Mykkannen was, like me, a PhD student in Political Science at UH Mānoa. Unlike me, he was a complete outsider, who quietly dug through archival documents, summarizing what seems like thousands of pages, and synthesizing them into some of the more cogent thoughts on the Kingdomʻs legal and intellectual infrastructure in the nineteenth century.

No ke Kalaiaina, William Richards

This is not exactly underrated among scholars, but I have yet to find a complete copy in the UH system. This was more than a translation of Francis Wayland’s Elements of Political Economy; it was a conceptual translation of the system of capitalism for the chiefs in the 1830s.

Change we Must, Nana Veary

One of the most unlikely books to appear in print, Veary, a full-blooded Hawaiian who looks like my grandmother, shows the insights of, and connections between Hawaiian culture and Zen Buddhism. This unusual synthesis of East and Pacific offers an alternative to Christian syncretic efforts.

The Water of Life: a Jungian Journey through Hawaiian Myth, Rita Knipe

Knipe compares two of the traditions Iʻm most interested in: Hawaiian culture and the  psychological work of Carl Jung. (My post on Jung is consistently one of the most read on the umiverse). Like Joseph Campbell, Jung showed the deeper psychic meanings of mythologies – and psyche, everyone seems to have forgotten, means soul.

 Pacific Gibraltar, William Morgan

Makana Chai reviewed the book, saying:

Although there are problems with the book, beginning with the title, sub-title, and cover, the strength of this book is as a compendium of primary source documents particularly on the movements of the USS Boston and its troops, the correspondence of U. S. minister John Stevens, the Blount and Morgan reports, and the Congressional debates about annexation. Written by a professor at the U. S. Marine War College, this book changed my understanding of history.

2015 in review – the umiverse

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 35,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 13 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Prison of Thought

This is an expanded version of a post I wrote on medium.com, a shared platform for bloggers.

I came to realize, as I began to understand capitalism, that money is a kind of prison. You’re only free when you can afford to break the rules. But as you build wealth, it is imperative that one follow the rules; be a miser, a Scrooge, sometimes in the extreme. Then it dawned on me that thought can be its own kind of prison. I used to think that even prison would not be such a bad fate as long as I had my thoughts. I realized as I spent more and more time at work, and less at school, that one of the insidious things about mental work (even of a menial variety), as opposed to physical work, is that it monopolizes one’s ability to mull things over, in short, to think.But then even “free” thought might not be so free. We become trapped in the frameworks that others create, over time.

The social theorist Theodor Adorno described modern culture as an open prison, in which seemingly free people censor themselves partly due to the “culture industry” of mass media, which established norms and constraints on behavior.

Linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky

Linguist Noam Chomsky describes the way that the media engages in self-censorship as one in which the range of debate is narrowed, but within that narrow range very lively debate occurs. Chomsky explained how media control worked in a book of the same name:

… liberal democratic theorists and leading media figures, like, for example, Walter Lippmann, who was the dean of American journalists, a major foreign and domestic policy critic and also a major theorist of liberal democracy. If you take a look at his collected essays, you’ll see that they’re subtitled something like “A Progressive Theory of Liberal Democratic Thought. ” Lippmann was involved in these propaganda commissions and recognized their achievements. He argued that what he called a “revolution in the art of democracy,” could be used to “manufacture consent, ” that is, to bring about agreement on the part of the public for things that they didn’t want by the new techniques of propaganda. (Chomsky, Media Control, p.14)

Most Americans have no idea of the full range of political options available due to the two-party system. For Europeans, larger extremes are at least considered in their multi-party systems  – parties like the Green Party, Communists, Scottish Nationalists, Royalists and others have seats in Europeans parliaments (even though the results are often similar, with centrist parties usually forming the ruling coalitions).

Economically, the situation is similar. Finland’s plan to give all citizens a basic income, for example, is a kind of test of the freedom of thought. The idea that increasing productivity would free people from work was a prediction that was long in coming. Alaska, Brunei, some Indian nations have had basic income, but those are special cases, based on oil or some special status — Finland is the first country to do it that’s not some special case. We have been hamstrung by a capitalist logic of scarcity for so long that a trend that even Marx could see in mid-nineteenth century Britain is only now beginning to come to fruition. And if a basic income can free people from work, what does it free them to do? Among other things, to think more. And from that thought will come more ideas; a singularity of thought. This may be overstating the case, but as Slavoj Zizek put it, “don’t act, just think.”

 I also posted my piece “On Consciousness” on medium.com.

Stevenson in the Pacific

This is the continuation of the long-delayed “In Hawaiʻi” series, which includes posts on Mark Twain, Herman Melville and John Coltrane. I called this one Stevenson in the Pacific because Sāmoa features so centrally in his story.

When I was nine years old, I visited Sāmoa (then called Western Sāmoa) on the way to Tonga. My family was at the Tusitala Hotel, and in the lobby was a picture of Robert Louis Stevenson that has always stayed with me in memory. Tusitala was a Samoan name for Stevenson, meaning “teller of tales.” The hotel was in Apia, below his hillside home of Vailima – five waters. (We visited another great writer in Apia, Albert Wendt.)  Vailima was described by the great writer Henry Adams:

a two-story Irish shanty with steps outside to the upper floor and a galvanized iron roof … squalor like a railroad navvy’s board hut …

And so was Stevenson himself:

…a man so thin and emaciated that he looked like a bundle of sticks in a bag, with a head and eyes morbidly intelligent and restless…

Stevenson painted by John Singer Sargent

Stevenson sought a climate that would restore him to the health damaged from cold British winters, but I always wondered why he chose Sāmoa, as Pago Pago is, to this day, the most humid place I’ve ever been.

Thinking myself an adventurous nine-year old in 1981, I marveled at Stevenson adventuring to what was at the time an incredibly remote place. This was, in fact, what attracted him; he had considered living in Hawaiʻi:

Honolulu’s good – very good … but this seems more savage

I fancied myself following in his footsteps, moving to Tonga, but looking back, more likely, it was his stepson Lloyd’s footsteps I was following. I was familiar with his novels Kidnapped and Treasure Island, and of course Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, and saw the difference between them and Sāmoa, a testament to his versatility. It was perhaps the insights in Jeckyll and Hyde, of “man’s” dual nature that gave him the ability to accept, then embrace Polynesian people and culture. The Biographer Rice said of his arrival in Sāmoa:

…at first … he is extremely nervous about their menacing appearance. ʻThere could be nothing more natural than these apprehensions’ he wrote for The Sun, ʻnor anything more groundless.’

(Rice, 1974, 109)

He was a vocal critic of Victorian hypocrisy, and “was not afraid to live as he wished,” marrying a woman ten years older than he who was probably part African American.

Stevenson took four trips with his family to the Pacific, and two to Hawaiʻi at auspicious moments; one before (1889) and one immediately after the overthrow of the monarchy (September 1893). And unlike other Europeans, Stevenson was a royalist and his sympathy was with the Queen. Upon landing in Honolulu he went directly to her and expressed his sympathies. He had already written at length about colonial activities in Sāmoa, criticizing Western powers right at the moment that Germany and the US were dividing Sāmoa in two.

On his first trip, Stevenson became friends with Kalākaua and Princess Liliʻuokalani. He also met another famous writer of his age who had visited Hawaiʻi, Mark Twain. He wrote to Twain from Sāmoa as it descended into civil war:

I wish you could see my ʻsimple and sunny haven’ now; war has broken out…

But his closest association was with his fellow Scot Archibald Cleghorn and, famously, his daughter Princess Kaʻiulani. He wrote to a friend, “how I love the Polynesian!” and seemed particularly fascinated that one of them, heir presumptive to the throne, was an Edinburgh Scot, like himself, on her “worse half.” The poem he wrote her before she left for an English education is fairly well-known:

Forth from her land to mine she goes,

The island maid, the island rose,

Light of heart and bright of face:

The daughter of a double race.

Her islands here in Souther sun,

Shall mourn their Kaiulani gone,

And I, in her dear banyan shade,

Look vainly for my little maid.

But our Scots islands far away

Shall glitter with unwonted day,

And cast for once their tempests by

To smile in Kaiulani’s eye.

End of Federal Recognition as Indian Tribe is beginning for “Real” Hawaiian Sovereignty – Williamson B.C. Chang

I took my UH Manoa students to Professor Williamson Chang’s class last week. I was surprised and honored to have Prof. Chang write a guest blog on a topic that couldn’t be more relevant right now – the seeming failure of Fed-Rec.

Breaking: US Supreme Court enjoins Na’i Aupuni

This morning I heard from my uncle Peter Apo that the US Supreme Court had “enjoined” Na’i Aupuni. At first I wasn’t sure whether this meant a temporary or permanent stop to the Hawaiian convention.

According to the Star Advertiser:

A U.S. Supreme Court justice on Friday issued a temporary stay blocking the counting of votes in an election that would be a significant step toward Native Hawaiian self-governance.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s order also stops the certification of any winners pending further direction from him or the entire court.

Is this a victory for independence, or only for the Grassroot Institute?

 

The Greatest Hawaiian Books of All Time (in English or translation)

I donʻt include many recent books – only two from the 21st century – because their legacy has yet to be determined.

1. Samuel Kamakau, Ruling Chiefs of Hawai’i – The Sheer volume of history in this tome makes most other work pale in comparison. Kamakau also issues stern warnings, even to the King, of excessive Western influence.
2. S.N. Haleole, Laieikawai – Translator Martha Beckwith (author of the definitive book The Kumulipo) had this to say of Haleʻoleʻs book:
   

   

   La‘ieikawai is a Hawaiian romance which recounts the wooing of a native chiefess of high rank and her final deification among the gods. The story was handed down orally from ancient times in the form of a ka‘ao, a narrative rehearsed in prose interspersed with song, in which form old tales are still recited by Hawaiian storytellers. It was put into writing by a native Hawaiian, S.N. Hale‘ole, who hoped thus to awaken in his countrymen an interest in genuine native storytelling based upon the folklore of their race and preserving its ancient customs – already fast disappearing since Cook’s rediscovery of the group in 1778 opened the way to foreign influence – and by this means to inspire in them old ideals of racial glory.Hale‘ole was born about the time of the death of Kamehameha I, a year or two before the arrival of the first American missionaries and the establishment of the Protestant mission in Hawai‘i. In 1834 he entered the mission school at Lahainaluna, Maui, where his interest in the ancient history of his people was stimulated and trained under the teaching of Lorrin Andrews, compiler of the Hawaiian dictionary, published in 1865, and Sheldon Dibble, under whose direction David Malo prepared his collection of “Hawaiian Antiquities,” and whose “History of the Sandwich Islands” (1843) is an authentic source for the early history of the mission. Such early Hawaiian writers as Malo, Kamakau, and John Ii were among Hale‘ole’s fellow students. After leaving school he became first a teacher, then an editor. In the early sixties he brought out La‘ieikawai, first as a serial in the Hawaiian newspaper, the “Kuokoa,” then, in 1863, in book form.

3. Moses Nakuina, Wind Gourd of La’amamao – UH Mānoa Professor Niklaus Schweitzer says:

   

   The Wind Gourd of La ‘amaomao enables the reader to understand important values of pre-contact Hawai’i, such as the role played by the ideal attendant of an ali’i, which was characterized by a caring attitude both towards the lord as well as towards the maka’ainana, the common. ers, and which included expertise in a variety of useful skills, such as canoe carving, canoe sailing, fishing, bird catching, and a host of others. Generosity, kindness, loyalty, honesty, justice, filial piety, patience, are values of old Hawai’i emphasized in this saga which was considered sig.nificant enough to be published in several versions in Hawaiian and English, beginning with Samuel M. Kamakau’s serial, Moolelo no Pakaa (1869-1871), in the newspapers Ke Au Okoa and Ka Nupepa Kuokoa. The present version by Moses K. Nakuina is based on Kamakau but draws from a number of other sources as well.

    

4. Davida Malo, Hawaiian Antiquities/Mooolelo Hawaii – While some might put this first, as its importance is unquestionable, itʻs more of an anthropology than a history, as Malo seems to dissect and critique Hawaiian culture. He had the “zeal of the newly converted” as Emerson put it, and it shows. Itʻs still crucial for all scholars of Hawaiian studies.

5. Lili’uokalani, Hawai’i’s Story – A first-hand account of the most important event in Hawaiian history, from its most aggrieved victim – the Queen shows tact and grace beyond what can be expected.

6. Noenoe Silva, Aloha Betrayed – the first very theoretical book on Hawaiian history and politics, Silva invokes Spivakʻs question “Can the subaltern [the oppressed underclasses] speak?” and goes beyond it to articulate the ways in which they do.

7. John Papa I’i, Fragments of Hawaiian History – 

   

   Iʻi was the patrician who chided the upstart Kamakau, and told us in incredible detail how it really was in the time of Kamehameha II.

    

8. Mary Kawena Pukui, Olelo Noeau – Of all Pukui’s work, this is perhaps the most valuable, because the meanings  – the kaona – of Hawaiian proverbs may have been lost without it.

9. Joseph Poepoe/Steven Desha, Mooolelo no Kamehameha/Kekuhaupio – So apparently Desha plagiarized (if such a concept exists in Hawaiian thought) from Poepoe, whose work is yet to appear in published form. It is still a valuable supplement to Kamakauʻs account of Kamehamehaʻs conquests. The Kamehameha Schools Press English translation is called Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekūhaupiʻo.

10. Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter – 

    

    A masterpiece according to Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, a mere collection of speeches according to others; its impact cannot be denied. It galvanized the Hawaiian movement in a way no other book has.

11. Lilikala Kame’eleihiwa, Native Land and Foreign Desires – While my own research opposes some of her conclusions on the Māhele, her work on Hawaiian metaphors will stand as a lasting contribution to Hawaiian perspective.

12. Keanu Sai, Ua Mau ke Ea: Sovereignty Endures – 

    

    It’s a bit hard to find, but Sai’s contribution to revising Hawaiian history cannot be denied. This is also a useful primer on occupation and the legal aspects of Hawaiʻi’s history and status today.

13. Pi’ilani, Kaluaikoolau – The heartrending story of Piʻilani and Koʻolau has been recognized by W.S. Merwin and many others. Gary Kubota’s play is only the most recent tribute to this moving account of a familyʻs resistance to the “Pu Ki” [PG: Provisional Government].

14. John Dominis Holt, Waimea Summer – Holt seemed often to feel uncomfortable in his own skin, with frequent references (including in The Sharks of Kawela Bay) to his fair skin and blond hair, despite being nearly half Hawaiian. But this may have been what allowed him to write about the hapa-haole and Hawaiian experience with such skill; probably the only book to include pidgin, Hawaiian language and Faust.