Yesterday in Boston the wind blew Fall leaves all around and the chill of the season is finally setting in.Received an invitation from the Harvard Native American Program (HUNAP) to attend a dinner for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Island students attending Harvard and other schools in the area. HUNAP is the student support services department whose objective is to help native students at Harvard cope with the rigors of coursework and being far from home. HUNAP builds a community for Native Students and gives them a place to hang out and discuss the challenges they face in higher education. Students are invited to bond at scheduled events: dinner, going shopping, pow-wow, and HUNAP also has a schedule of seminars on cutting edge research and things like how to apply to graduate school that students are invited to attend. At the end of each school year Harvard students also plan and put on the Harvard Pow-Wow.Last night's dinner was attended by three Hawaiian PhD candidates (myself included) in History, Art History and Religion, one medical student in her final year, three Hawaiian freshmen, and two freshman at Harvard from Saipan. I also randomly bumped into a Tongan brother at Target who is doing his mid-career at Harvard Kennedy School of Government and he brought a visiting scholar from Boston University who is working on putting together legislation for the Marshall Islands. Including my five year old son, that makes us TWELVE strong. And I might add these are the folks that could show up to last night's dinner, and the folks we know about.Hawai'i people are lurking all around up here on the East Coast. When I arrived here and each time I visited I met students from Hawai'i and their families who fed us and made us feel at home. Since I've been here at least five others have gone on to become professors, and professional consultants and Post-Docs. (Randy Akee and KJ, Lehua Yim, James and J'aime Takamine, Ka'eo Duarte, and Anae Mersbergh and her 'ohana) Nice to meet other folks so far from home. It reminds me of this letter I read in Ka Hoku o Hawaii, from 1908 entitled, "He Leka Mai ka Aina Mamao Mai." from Cambridge Massachusetts.Here is an excerpt from the young man's letter:Ma ka poaono iho, ua paani hookuku ko makou kula ma ka paani kinipopo peku wawae me ke kula nui o Brown, a ua kaa no ka eo i ko makou kula he 6 a Havard (note he left out the "h") a he 3 a Brown. He 20,000 paha poe makaikai i hele ae e ike i keia paani ana.Eia au ke koi ia nei e komo iloko o ke kalapu o ke kula, a he uku makahiki ko keia kalapu. A ua koi pu ia mai nei no hoi e komo i ka Ahahui Hooikaika Pono Kristiano. He auhau no ke komo ana, a ua lilo no au i lala mamuli no o ke ohohia ia mai. Aka, e papa e, ke noonoo nei no au i ka'u mau wahi kenikeni e pono ai ma keia aina malihini. Ua ano hoi hope no ka manao ke noonoo ae no ko kaua nele, a ua manao ae la no e hoi no ka aina hanau, aka, noonoo ae la no hoi ia oe e ka "makua hoomanawanui" a hooholo iho la no e hoomanawanui no i ke anu a me ka luhi o ka imi naauao. Ke holomua nei no au ma ka'u mau haawina, aole no o'u hopohopo no na haawina. Ua hiki ole nae ia'u e imi hana i keia manawa, oiai, ua hele a ku ka paila o na haawina, a ua makemake au e hoike aku imua o na kumu "Aole au ka Hwaaii e haule ihope o na keiki haole."As VP candidate Joe Biden said last night on a number of occasions: "Let me repeat that:""Aole au ka Hawaii e haule ihope o na keiki haole." Ma HARVARD no ho'i ia haumana he Hawai'i!!!! ma ka makahiki 1908.no laila eia makou ka haumana Hawai'i e holo mua ana me ka imi naauao. Ke kupaa nei makou i ke keehina o ko kakou kupuna, i ke ala hehi mua ia e ko kakou kupuna no hoi. Nui loa na mea e pili no i ko kakou kupuna ma keia aina o ka puka ana o ka la ma ka hikina o Amelika, aia na palapala ma na waihona palapala kahiko ma Nu Enelani nei. Ua kipa no kakou i na ki'i a me na hana no'eau a ka Hawai'i, na ahuula, na lei, na kahili i haawi a i ole kaili wale maia ko kakou kupuna ma na hale hoikeike ma Nu Enelani nei.Ina he manao kekahi e hele mai a e kipa i Bosetona, e leka uila mai ia makou.
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The 'olelo above could be interpreted in many ways, and may serve as a guiding principle in helping us to think about the relevance of history to the present. What has been interesting to me in my recent readings as well as teaching a semester in the history department has been to play close attention to people's idea of what they mean when they say, "ka wa kahiko."The question of time came up pretty early in the semester when one of my 200 level introduction to Hawaiian history students asked me, "when are you going to start teaching history?" The question amused me and made me think---well, what did I think was history, that she considered as simply something else.I gave a defensive and pretty smart a** remark, after I realized that what she meant by history was marked by an attention to chronology, of dates that could only arise after the arrival of Captain Cook organized our history into a BC / AC timeline in much the same way the birth of Jesus Christ operated for World Civ, or the Greco-Roman World. Anyway, I tried to explain that the three weeks devoted to Hawaiian history before Cook, was still history, but found myself reverting to phrases like "the oral tradition," and "Hawaiian culture," in ways that sought to legitimate and approximate her idea of "history," but largely failed to communicate----well, it was only the third week of class.As the semester progressed though I found that I was fairly surprised that many of my students applied the phrase "Ka wa kahiko" which they seem to translate as 'in ancient times," to the time of Kamehameha. Through this move, my students granted the early 19th century a patina of antiquity in ways that seem incomprehensible given the wealth of orature that has been passed down through the mouths, memories and pens of Hawaiians, who recorded these traditions during that "wa kahiko."Here's another thing that caught my attention, namely that a lot of people venerate the "wa kahiko." But a time, as process cannot be considered static or captured and neatly bundled as a set of practices or beliefs that never change or transform over time, hence my second difficulty with the "wa kahiko" designation as the past which we mine for "momi" (the current term of art in Hawaiian language and lit circles---which in unsettling ways seem to mimic the practices of strip mining ethnographers of Pukui's time) so that we can map "authenticity" onto our present day lives.Hence my query, my question, a process of searching; how can we problematize and theorize our connection and thinking about ka wa kahiko without making a period of time static, "the source" and well, "history" in its most unflattering sense: the detritus of passed lives that are no longer relevant to today, in other words, that can no longer speak to us in meaningful, deep ways.
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