Hawaii Part I: Travels with my Conscience

So after my 2004 visit to Dubai I caught the travel bug.  The next big venture would be a family vacation to Hawaii in 2005, with new adventures and lessons in store.  I had been to Hawaii twice before: in 1995 for our honeymoon and again in 2000 with all the kids (in addition to our daughter my wife has two sons from her first marriage).  In 2000 we dropped in on Kauai, where some discoveries would spur a return.

One of the greatest aspects of the Hawaiian Islands is that each of the seven major islands possess distinctly different, though equally inviting environments.  Kauai is wonderfully lush and deserving of its nickname as the “garden isle.”  The oldest island, its volcanoes are long extinct and completely different from the still expanding ‘Big Island’ of Hawaii.  During our inaugural visit to Kauai in 2000, my family devoted a carefree day driving north to Hanalei and randomly sampled beaches.  We wandered a bit past the charming tourist town and arrived at the northernmost swimming spot on the island, Ke’e Beach.  Here we stumbled not only upon a splendid beach, but also a trailhead that intrigued this avid hiker.  The temptation was strong and I abandoned my family to amble the first stretch.

I had happened upon the Kalalau (pronounced ‘CALL-allow’) trail skirting the storied Na Pali coastline and witnessed beauty beyond my imagination.  The Na Pali Coast is a State Park, featuring magnificent volcanic mountains plunging dramatically into the sea.   After the fact, I learned that the trail runs 11.5 miles to Kalalau Beach, where sixty camping permits are available each night.  The trail is exceedingly difficult (on a scale of one to ten, the Sierra Club gives Kalalau a nine), in places a mere foot across, with a misstep sending you 600 feet straight down to a rocky coastline.

 

While I didn’t get too far, my jaunt concluded at the Ke’e Overlook, a point that looks back to afford a grand view of Ke’e…and in the other direction is heaven.  On this latter bearing is a breathtaking panorama of the “pali’s” (Hawaiian for “cliff”) that zigzag along sparkling blue water.  Absolutely nothing in my previous experience rivaled this beauty and I had a strong desire to return and fully experience the trail.

Na Pali coast from Ke’e Overlook

When my wife proposed a return, I shared our plans with a native Hawaiian friend who lives on Oahu.  Our friend Martina cherishes her culture and is a wonderful proponent, singing songs in the native tongue while accompanying herself on ukulele (the family business is manufacturing Kamaka ukuleles, which are world renowned).  She is also adept at performing hula.  A medical doctor by profession, Martina’s practice includes tending to the few remaining lepers on Molokai.  Molokai became quarantine for lepers in the 1860’s in an attempt to stem the spread of one of many lethal diseases introduced by western culture.

Through our e-mail communications, Martina shared (in 2005) that there are only about thirty patients remaining, the youngest being about 62 years old.  It was roughly forty years ago that the quarantining of lepers ended and this handful were all committed as young adults.  Fortunately, leprosy has a cure now and although these folks are no longer plagued with the awful syndrome, they were disfigured by the disease and find it comfortable living there.  They are not confined and most are temporary residents, often debarking to visit family and friends on other islands.

Every other Thursday Martina boards a propeller plane to Molokai and comes to rest on a grass landing strip, after which she strides to a nearby pickup truck with keys left in the ignition!  Then she drives to the facility where the (former) lepers are housed to address any medical needs.  Martina possesses tender concern about her patients and the heartfelt stories she shares brings to light how these unfortunate souls rise above the miserable hand life has dealt them.

Beyond letting Martina know we would soon be able to get together again, I asked for reading suggestions to further my understanding of her people.  It was astonishing how naïve I was, because I had read much about Hawaii and believed myself conversant in Hawaiian history.  But my perceived insight would be completely upended by Martina’s reading recommendations and her lengthy discussion of the Akaka Bill.

Digesting the books she suggested, I was awakened how the United States brutally stole paradise.  The biggest sin was the decimation of the island’s people.  The estimated population before intervention was between four and eight hundred thousand natives when Captain Cooke came upon the islands in 1778.  A century later, after being infested with western values and diseases, the native population dwindled to a mere 40,000!

Compounding the dilemma, there was a movement in America beginning in the 1820’s to deliver missionaries to Hawaii and cure pagan habits.  By the late 19^th century, the offspring of these messengers of Christian values had become capitalist sugar plantation owners and literally stole Hawaii away.  The motivation was greed and this 2% of the population wrongly called upon America’s military might to depose the native government.  The result was severe trampling of native Hawaiian culture.  It was a western mentality presuming Hawaiians were ignorant and lazy which promulgated the rape, but the Dubai trip awakened me to how misguided that notion is.

My society inflicted significant damage to a wondrous and beautiful culture from misplaced notions of superiority and it was disturbing how I could have been oblivious to this from my earlier attempts to understand the Hawaiian culture.  Despite all of the history I had absorbed, I never picked up on the pillage committed.  It was reading a book by a native Hawaiian that opened my eyes, and the lesson I learned was to be careful when investigating new cultures.  As they say, history is written by the victors.

In an effort to repair some of the damage, one of Hawaii’s senators, Daniel Akaka, has been trying since 2000 to get the “Akaka Bill” passed.  The emphasis of the proposed legislation is to grant native Hawaiians recognition as original inhabitants who are entitled to a distinct governing body – rights similarly granted to North American Indians.  Incredibly, Hawaiians are recognized as a distinct ethnic group, but not as the people who were originally native to these islands.  To understand the bill, here are a few words Mr. Akaka expressed to the President Bush in 2005 about its merits:

“There is no doubt that Native Hawaiians are indigenous to Hawaii. There is no doubt that Native Hawaiians exercised sovereignty over the Hawaiian archipelago. There is no doubt that Native Hawaiians had a governing structure and entered into treaties with the United States, similar to that of their American Indian and Alaska Native brethren.
Where we differ is that whereas most tribes have been allowed to retain their governing structure, Native Hawaiians, following the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, were forbidden from maintaining their government. Native Hawaiians did, however, maintain distinct communities, and retained their language, customs, tradition, and culture despite efforts to extinguish these "native" practices.

The bill does not create a new relationship - Congress has long recognized its legal and political relationship with Native Hawaiians as evidenced by the many statutes enacted to address the conditions of Native Hawaiians. This bill does not create a new group of natives - we have always been here, in fact we were here before the United States. Rather, this bill establishes parity in federal policies towards native peoples in the United States by formally extending the federal policy of self-governance and self-determination to Native Hawaiians. “

During our visit I challenged myself to engage some of the locals and gather feedback on how the US had impacted this culture.  The most striking interview was an exchange I shared with an attendant at the Bishop Museum.  The Bishop Museum is a splendid testament to Hawaiian culture, located in Honolulu and was one of many treasures Bernice Bishop donated to her people.  Bernice was the last direct descendent of King Kamehameha (the celebrated Hawaiian king who united all of the islands) and after she died, her “western” husband established this museum.  To Mr. Bishop’s credit, he was so disgusted by the United State’s overthrow of Hawaii in 1893 that he left for good, returning only upon death to be reunited with his wife.

The museum attendant I engaged was half Hawaiian and half Chinese.  It took no time to learn he passionately supported passage of the Akaka Bill and subsequently validated the damage inflicted upon his culture through a compelling personal story.  A brilliant aspect of Hawaiian culture was (and sadly note that I didn’t say “is”) the ability to recite one’s family tree.  I learned years ago that original Hawaiians are believed to have sailed over 2,000 miles from Polynesia around 1100 - 1200 A.D.  Amazingly, many Hawaiian families could recite their lineage back to Polynesia before the migration!  Try to weigh the difficulty of naming your own ancestry back eight centuries (with much shorter life spans than we are blessed with today) - a single, remarkable facet of a culture deemed mentally slow by my culture…which still thought the world was flat when Hawaiians navigated several thousand miles over the oceans to a new homeland.

The attendant shared with me that his grandmother was a kahuna (Hawaiian term for a shaman, or medicine woman) and could deliver the names of all his ancestors, in order, back to the original isles.  The tradition ended here though, since his grandmother was forbidden to speak the native language!  I was terribly saddened by this tale that reinforced the reality of damage done.

Despite the underlying tragedy, I was encouraged by the growing awareness I was developing and it prompted me to learn more world history.  I won’t beat a dead horse, but it was thanks to modern research and the additional years it granted me which enabled these discoveries.  I have been blessed, and the day-to-day details of dealing with diabetes are chump change when you are striking out and realizing such revelations.

Perhaps the clearest sign that I was getting a bit better at perceiving things was re-reading James Michener’s Hawaii.  I first read this before our second trip to Hawaii and felt it was a wonderful piece of historical fiction – a brilliant story that educated the reader about the culture and natural history of the islands.  But you know what?  I think I completely missed the point of the book.  Reading this tale a second time after recognizing how the Hawaiians had been subjugated allowed me to pick up on the real thread.

I’m no literary scholar and quite probably mistaken, but now I believe Michener has authored a masterpiece, rich in irony, that underscores both the arrogance of conquerors and the truth that we are all equals.  It is shocking that the biggest tragedy escaped me the first time around: how the main western character (a missionary from New England), was honestly motivated in his attempts to erase “heathen” worship but couldn’t accept the folks he was trying to change were his equals.

Today Hawaii boasts a population where many cultures have inter-mixed and the other theme Michener subtly insists is how we hold prejudices without realizing how much in common we share with our brothers and sisters.  Seems that even without leaving the US there were plenty of profound adventures and discoveries awaiting…