Midge Gorman

Hawaiian and Native American Cultural Similarities

Is there a parallel between Native Americans and Hawaiians and how has their culture changed or evolved to its present state?  What effect does their native language and evolving literacy have on this?  It is familiarity with these two cultures and new knowledge about multicultural studies that lead me to compare and contrast the similarities in them. I am of strong Native American heritage and sympathetic to the plight suffered by them at the hands of the white man.  For about ten years, I traveled extensively between the US mainland and Hawaii and continuously studied the heritage and culture of those islands. I have seen enough similarity between Hawaiians and Native Americans ancient history and how the culture has evolved that encourages me to delve deeper into how it came to be. 

It was sometime around 400 A.D. that the first planned migrations came to Hawaii from eastern Polynesia to live. Tahitians arrived near 1200 A.D. (with no intention of assimilating) and subjugated the islanders, eventually becoming the dominant culture of Hawaii. Because the early Hawaiians depended on nature for everything, they were closely connected with reverence and respect for the natural world. This love of the land made that simple system one of the earliest examples of environmental protectionism preventing over exploitation of the scarce island resources.  One effect of this immigration has been the mass erosion of natural resources that supported the old culture of the Hawaiians. This same phenomenon occurred with the Native Americans when conquered by the colonists.  It was communal sharing of almost everything that prevented individual decline, which made the importance of being a contributing member of the community of the utmost importance.  It insured survival of the group within the traditional culture.  “By 1850, the United States had realized its Manifest Destiny.  The nation stretched from the Atlantic to the pacific—“from sea to shining sea,” as Americans heralded jubilantly.  Many dreamed of adding Canada, more of Mexico, and various Caribbean islands, such as Cuba, to the growing republic.” (Weeks 7)

It was the arrival of the white man, intent on assimilation, in the late 18^th century that so disrupted the island society. As with the American Indian, the Hawaiian’s land was divided among the intruders.  These vulnerable and isolated natives died of sickness white men brought into their lives, causing a rapid decline in population of native Hawaiians as it had the Native Americans. When Hawaii was discovered by the Europeans, the estimated population was close to a million.  By 1920, there were less than 24,000 pure Hawaiians remaining and the life expectancy had declined to only 35 years.  Native Americans were almost wiped from the face of the earth by overzealous white men.  Black Elk offered an epitaph to the larger struggle, whose roots stretched back to earliest European colonial settlement and concluded at Wounded Knee: “I did not know then how much was ended.  When I look back now from this high hill of my old age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young.  and I can see that something else died there in the bloody much, and was buried in the blizzard.  A peoples dream died there.  It was a beautiful dream….The nation’s hoop is broken and scattered.  There is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead.” (Weeks 6)

In recent times there has been a renewed resurgence in Hawaiians redefining their identity and reviving their native language. Native Americans have struggled with their identity since their defeat.

There are many parallels between the cultures of these two ethnic groups.  Both were conquered by the “white man”, and in their own country in the late 1700’s.  These conquerors came with no intention of assimilating into those cultures.  Although the two groups have resisted total assimilation, it has gradually seeped into their lives.  Their stories share some of the basic stages of the immigrant narrative in that they experience shock, resistance, exploitation and discrimination in their social contract.  The Native Americans were considered to be problem minorities by the dominant culture but the Hawaiians appear to have been easier to conquer, therefore not so problematic.  Missionaries played a major role in educating both groups.  They invented a written language consisting of twelve letters of the alphabet for the Hawaiians. The Native American children were whisked away from families and off to boarding schools to be educated the “white” way.  In the past, storytelling had been accomplished through chants, song, dance and crude pictographs.  Although both groups still “talk story”, their writing skills have given us interesting narratives on their thoughts and feelings as to their plight in life.  Literacy has given them the ability to discern when they are being exploited or discriminated against. .Their thinking and reasoning skills were sharpened by education.  It has brought them onto a level playing field where opportunity may not always be equal, but nevertheless attainable. 

References:

http://www.alternative-hawaii.com

http://gohawaii.about.com

Weeks, Philllip.  “Farewell, My Nation: The American Indian and the United States,   1820-1890.”  Harlan Davidson, Inc., Wheeling, Illinois. 1990.

Census Data