ParadiseMaui.blogspot.com: May 2009

Hawaii is one of the world's great melting pots, mainly because of the sugar cane and pineapple industries. Over the last hundred and fifty years there have been at least eight distinct waves of immigration, in-migration to the islands from places like China, Japan, the Philippines, Mexico and Samoa, bringing field workers to plant and harvest the sugar cane and pineapple.

These different ethnic groups still have a form of identity even today, although they have intermarried within the different groups, and also with the original Hawaiian immigrants who are said to have arrived from the Marquesas Islands over seven hundred years ago.

When Western foreigners first began arriving in Hawaii, beginning with Captain Cook in the 1780s, the natives observed that they were unique in many ways. One of the ways was that they didn't embrace and trade breath like the Hawaiians did. The word "aloha" in fact, means "in the presence of" (alo) "the breath of life" (ha) and Hawaiians embraced closely both when first meeting and when departing, thus the use of "aloha" for both hello and goodbye. Westerners, however, would not embrace, but would stand apart and extend their right hand... shaking hands as we do today. The Hawaiians described this as being "the breath of life" (ha) "without" (ole), pronounced "ha-ole". Today this has been corrupted into something that sounds like "howle", and it is used as an epithet. A boy or girl born of a Hawaiian parent and a Caucasian parent is often called a hapa-haole, a half-caste.

Virtually every Hawaiian native in the state of Hawaii has mixed blood to some degree. There are very few if any pure Hawaiians left. In an attempt to preserve, protect and restore the Hawaiian culture and language, measures have been taken and laws passed, essentially to subsidize and reward the remaining Hawaiians. There are numerous programs that are only open to Hawaiians, and what constitutes a "Hawaiian" depends on the program, and the amount of pure Hawaiian blood (blood quantum) required to qualify for the particular benefit. For example, if you have 50% Hawaiian blood, you can qualify for the Hawaiian Homes Program, and you can attend the Kamehameha Schools.

In contrast to US mainland programs that seek to break down the barriers and distinction that make people "special", Hawaii is more like what we would see on a Native American reservation, in which those on the reservation are supported and managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In that sense, the state of Hawaii is like an enormous reservation with no fence around it.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Maui: An overview of the island

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