Posted by A Great grandson of Kalanikauiokikilo Kalaniwaiakua Kekumanomanokapu on January 15, 2004 at 12:18:45:
In Reply to: Re: JENNIFER LOPEZ on issue: The ROCK (SAMOA) vs. Hawaii ( Native's Prejudice) POLYNESIAN vs. POLYNESIAN. 2003, 2004, 2005 posted by kama on November 02, 2003 at 16:32:13:
Thanks all very good, Miss Lopez. It shouldn't be about negative ideas, but you drag us all there with your rant. So here we go. You are missing the point with your argument. Consider the following. When was the last time you saw a Hawaiian claiming to be Samoan? Or needing to be a Samoan, ali'i or not? Or even needing to be considered as an equal Polynesian? Answer: you haven't. Why? Because Hawaiians have an identity and it's not Polynesian. That is an idea from outside Hawaii. We are related to other Polynesians in the same sense that the Norman-French are 'related' to the British peoples.
But to be Hawaiian is only partly genetic. It is also spiritual and psycological. In this way, Hawaiian people are distinct, separate. We are certainly not 'like' Samoans or Tahitians or anyone else. We are the indigenous people of Hawaii Nei. Our ancestors were chosen people and led to Hawaii by the gods and we are a select and special people who have given the world Aloha. Our original sense of chieftanship, of kingship and of sacredness embodied in living persons is not like any other people in the Pacific. No other people bred chiefs into living gods through selective mating over hundreds of years like the Hawaiians did. Although not a walking 'akua' himself, Kamehameha sought out the last living chiefess who was as his Queen Mother for his heirs Kamehameha II and III.
Therefore, it is difficult for many Hawaiians to hear someone like yourselfflatten out the diversity of peoples in Polynesia so breezily. Your scientific arguement is mostly accurate, but a dead and empty coffin into which you shove all Polynesian cultures so that we can all conform and be the same.
How can you with a clear conscious do that for the sake of arguing that a Samoan (a bad actor by the way) should be able to play a Hawaiian in a movie? Must you reduce us all into one kind of people to do that? Why not face that real problem: racisim. Many Hawaiians are angry because they are secretly racists who believe that Hawaiians are superior to many other Polynesian peoples. Argue about that problem.
Black people didn't fight against racism by saying that deep down inside all people are white. Or especially that deep down inside we are all black.
As a Hawaiian I resent you lumping me in with Samoans, Polynesians, Proto-Austreans, all human beings, whatever. Please stop. I am Hawaiian. No mater what dictionary, ethnographic study, constitutional amendament, DNA marker you throw at me or my people, it doesn't change. Hawaiians should and must unite with their neighbors in the Pacific, but we are not just a sub-group.
Let the Rock play Kamehameha. Who cares. It's only a movie. And probably a bad one at that. Hawaiians need to let go a little and concentrate on more important things.
But for this to unleash the absurd idea that Hawaiians and Samoans are not different is dangerous. One of the things eroding Hawaiian indentity is the oh-so-precious Rainbow-Coalition-United-Nations-Indigenous-Peoples-PanPolynesian-U.H.-Manoa-Pacific-Studies suction vortex cusinart way in which everyone is blended and somehow made to be all the same people. It's insulting.
Hawaiians had and continue to have a unique culture, one that was in fact far more sophisticated and evolved (religion, engineering, political, agricultural) than most others (not all, but most) in the Pacific. That cannot be, and should not be ignored.
All ideas about Hawaiians being just another part of a larger network of a larger identifiable Polynesian people tends to come from outside Hawaii. Once Hawaiians were here, we didn't feel the need to go back to anywhere in Polynesian. And those who did usually came back and stayed. Nor are there any consistent and sustained signs of yearning or even caring for the old islands or continests we may have come from in the melees and chants. I believe it's because these were places Hawaiians though about but did not fantasize about returning to. I think they really didn't want to ever go back.
I don't think we'll be dragged back now.