-- Jon Osorio
A speech delivered at Voices of the Earth Conference held in Amsterdam, November 10, 1993.
I would like to begin my presentation today with a story about academic colonialism. In 1980, while still a graduate student, I attended a Pacific Historians Association Conference in Agana, Guam. In one of the presentations, a young research anthropologist was discussing the difficulties of securing "data" on a small atoll, Kapingamarangi in Micronesia. He had secured the services of a Native informant who was well-versed in the arts of magic and science on his island. The researcher, a haole (white man), acknowledged the fact that the Native informant refused to reveal certain dangerous secrets to him. He said it would be necessary to train some young islanders at a university and send them back to Kapingamarangi where they would, doubtless, be more successful at squeezing information from the elder. The researcher's presentation was titled, appropriately, "Wringing it Dry".
I proceeded to challenge the anthropologist's right to take the Islander's knowledge against his will. The researcher was astonished by my question. He was a "scientist" he said, as though that settled the issue. In his pursuit of knowledge he felt entitled to betray the confidence of a man who had given him everything that he had a right to know. I asked the researcher if his paper on the subject would benefit the Native informant as much as it would benefit him.
This story illustrates the incredibly pernicious nature of the western academy and its claims to primacy. Scholars betray how contemptuous they are of other peoples' cultures when they assume that nothing can nor should be hidden from them. As scientists they know that there is nothing dangerous about a shaman's knowledge. With supreme indifference to their trusted position they proceed to wring from us what they can, analyzing and discussing us in workshops and conferences. Hopefully, they will make a career out of training others to do the same.
Given this brand of imperialism, it is necessary for Natives to protect ourselves against yet another form of foreign penetration. But, as usual, we find ourselves at a disadvantage. For not only have we gotten a late start in the business of academia, but we begin with wholly different assumptions about knowledge that not only clash with the Euro-American mode of scholarship, but have an entirely different morality as well.
For over five years now the Center for Hawaiian Studies has been doing battle in the academic arena. The Center has empowered Native scholars by challenging the colonial myth of western scholarly superiority and the hegemony of western science.
While it is true that Native scholarship has been greatly assisted by a more liberal interpretation of historical evidence -- namely the willingness of modern historians to rely on oral testimony and their desire to try to understand events from a Native perspective -- we have also had to continually battle a racial bias that has privileged the haole academic over the Native person, particularly in the area of academic hiring (Hawaiians constitute less than 2% of the faculty at the University of Hawai'i).
But to do battle, successfully, against the colonial assumptions of western scholarship we must be careful that we not forsake our own cultural strengths in the process. We must be aware that there are built-in mythologies in need of exposure and discussion. One myth is the western scholar's belief that knowledge is public property. I propose that in neither the Native nor the haole realm is this true.
In our nearly 2000-year history, Hawaiians have regarded knowledge not as public property but as deeply personal and spiritual understanding. We receive our instruction as signs from our 'aumakua (personal gods) and from mo'olelo (stories) via our kupuna (elders). In our culture, knowledge is never sold or traded, it is shared. This custom allows non-Natives to profit from our knowledge as we have found it difficult even in modern times to be suspicious and selfish with what we know. Fortunately, at least until the last decade, our knowledge and insights were never considered valuable enough to be extracted by American historians (anthropologists are another matter) who believed that their analyses were sufficient unto themselves.
With the gradual change in scholarly attitudes toward "indigenous perspectives" it has become necessary to protect ourselves from the academic prospector who comes to us hoping to reveal the wonderful and exotic ways in which we view the world. Telling themselves that they are doing the world and indigenous people a tremendous service, they either ignore or rationalize the fact that not everyone benefits equally when they share our information.
Sometimes, however, it is not enough for Native peoples to simply be protective of their knowledge. On the island of Hawai'i, Papa Henry Awae is an accomplished Kahuna la'au lapa'au (professional healer who uses native plants and herbs). He has received his expertise from his forebears and is well versed not only in identifying medicinal plants, but in the important rituals of healing. This kahuna is very careful with whom he shares his secrets. He believes that it is necessary to train someone to take up healing before he passes on. One of the important sources of rare medicinal plants is a dry land rain forest known as Wao Kele o Puna, one of the last remaining forests of its kind in Hawai'i. For the last few years the State of Hawai'i and private corporations have been operating a geothermal plant that will, if it is allowed to expand, destroy this important source of herbs and woods. Papa Awae's significant scholarship cannot be useful if the plants he depends on cease to exist.
Wao Kele o Puna is also an important haven for Hawaiians who practice the worship of Pele, the fire Goddess. For these, her descendants, the geothermal project is a horrible desecration of their Goddess as rods are thrust into the literal body of Pele in order to extract her life force. Geothermal supporters who argue that the plant will benefit the public (a claim that has yet to be proven) have consistently refused to acknowledge the validity of Hawaiians' cultural and intellectual property. The issue involves more than simply patenting our information. We must also protect the land on which that knowledge can be practiced.
In Hawai'i, Native people and our lands have been exploited by Europeans, Americans and recently, the Japanese. After the lands were divided and sold to foreign settlers, and after Hawaiians suffered enormous depopulation from introduced disease, we found even our beliefs and arts could be appropriated by people with money. The commodification of the hula represents the most monstrous desecration of a once deeply spiritual art form whose composition and performance were dedicated to our Gods and to our chiefs.
Today there are hundreds of halau (schools of hula) in Japan where Japanese instructors profit from their peoples' insatiable desire to be someone else and who can afford to pay for that fantasy. Just as disturbing has been the appropriation of Aloha -- a deeply meaningful word in my culture that expresses mutual love, respect, sharing and responsibility -- into a marketing tool for the tourist industry.
Even as the industry has profited by the use of what they call the "aloha spirit" they have also, paradoxically, cheapened that word beyond recognition for Hawaiians. The industry has demonstrated there are no depths to which they are unwilling to sink in their pursuit of visitors, as they prostitute erotic portrayals of beautiful Native women in grass skirts. The word Aloha has come to mean the submission of Natives to the invasion of their world.
The second myth Native scholars need to address is the assumption that haole can know and describe our culture as well as, or better than we can. This colonial construct has been around for some time, thus, all of the recent scholarly histories of Hawai'i have been written by haole such as Lawrence Fuchs and Gavan Daws who did not speak or read the Hawaiian language.
But far more reprehensible behavior has been exhibited by contract anthropologists who work for supposedly private and academic institutions like the Bishop Museum. When the State of Hawai'i wanted to build a new freeway through Halawa Valley on O'ahu, archaeologists were hired to map out historic sites in the valley to make certain that no significant cultural site would be destroyed. When one of the researchers, historian Barry Nakamura, issued the opinion that a Hale o Papa (women's temple) was directly in the path of the proposed freeway, he was simply told he was wrong. When he persisted, he was fired. In the face of mounting protest from the Hawaiian community and a long occupation of the site by Hawaiians, the State set aside money to slightly alter the route of the freeway.
The H-3 freeway and Halawa Valley struggle may not prove the Museum was practicing outright deceit, but it certainly indicates the hegemonic nature of western scholarship. For unless a small band of Hawaiian women had been willing to go and occupy that site, it is quite certain that the assertions of the Museum specialists would have been accepted above those of Native informants. The incident demonstrated to Hawaiians the importance of developing our own credentials in disciplines like archeology if we are to protect the few cultural resources left to us.
I see some important directions we must travel as indigenous peoples. Native people must recognize that a paradox exists between how we view knowledge and how the western professional views it. We may not like to think of knowledge as property (just as we did not think of land as property a century ago) but we must be willing to adjust our thinking if we do not wish to be victimized again.
I think, in Hawai'i, we do have a model that may be useful to other indigenous peoples seeking to preserve and assert their knowledge. That model is the Center for Hawaiian Studies. At this Center in Manoa we insist that Native scholars teach Native subjects in history, art, economics and politics. Our instruction insists on the primacy of a Native point of view and encourages a political awareness of colonialism. We also promote the goodness in our own culture.
Our research encourages Native scholarship. Indeed, no other department in the University system comes close to ours in terms of publications. New researchers and teachers are recruited, encouraged, assisted and brought into the Center to teach others. I am the latest beneficiary of this process. Our research has focused on politics, history, religion, dance and language in the past, but our plan is to expand into environmental studies, traditional engineering, sciences and resource management.
The Center leads the way in recruitment and retention of Natives in the University. At present only about 7% of the University population is Hawaiian, although we represent 20% of the overall population. It was the Center that funded the creation of a special student services organization, Operation Kua'ana, which is growing more and more successful at keeping Hawaiians in school so that we may lift ourselves from the long-term cycle of poverty, crime and despairŠthe usual legacies of colonized peoples.
The Center is the most vocal and visual source of community activism in the State of Hawai'i. From our criticism of rampant urbanization and the political corruption of the State government that promotes it, to our support for the revival of the Hawaiian language through the development of curriculum, the training of teachers and advocacy for programs, we aggressively promote our Hawaiian culture in all aspects of our professional and personal lives.
Finally, the Center is the academic counterpoint to the largest Native initiative for self-determination, Ka Lahui Hawai'i, the Hawaiian Nation which is moving toward sovereignty after 100 years of colonial oppression.
It seems to me that institutions like our Center are ideally situated to be the repositories for a peoples' knowledge in a colonial world. We draw Natives with their own knowledge into our midst where we share our knowledge with each other. Yet we are powerful enough and cunning enough to protect ourselves from the worst that the Academy can offer.
I would like to conclude by saying that it is not enough for Native peoples to rely on well-meaning international resolutions like this draft declaration. We must act on our own behalf. That requires, unfortunately, forsaking our innocence and accepting that our knowledge can be construed as property. On the other hand, I believe that the western scholar must also concede that he/she has operated from a moral principal that is, at the very least, inappropriate when dealing with Natives and, at its worst, a deceitful exploitation. Scholars would do well to ask themselves, before they come to study us and while they write their dissertations, "Whose loss underwrites my gain?"
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