Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 2, Number 4, 1 ʻApelila 1985 — Study Features Keanae Hawaiians [ARTICLE]

Study Features Keanae Hawaiians

By William E. H. Tagupa Cultural Affairs Officer "Children of the Land: Exchange and Status in a Hawaiian Community," a recently published book by Jocelyn Linnekin, studies the native Hawaiian community of Keanae on Maui's northern coast. The persistence of tradition in a society whose primitive culture has been modified by contact with a more advanced society is the problem addressed by Linnekin in her 264-page book published by Rutgers University Press. The working assump.tion is that "Hawaiian culture most possess a certain resilience, even in the face of a devastating history of foreign contact." Keanae is unique because the Hawaiian residents still retain ownership of their taro producing lands and grow the crop for ineome as well as for the reinforcement of their social bonds. Though relatively isolated, Keanae is still economically tied into the market economy and interrupted by the oeeasional tourist who wanders the coast roads of Maui. Its people are representative of Hawaiian tradition but not in a "naive or unchanging manner." More importantly, such traditions are "both lived and invented . . . as rural Hawaiians conform to their own and others' expectations of what that tradition comprises." If nothing else, today's "Hawaiian renaissance looks partly to communities such as Keanae for cultural models." Linnekin points out particular activity patterns and social institutions. For example: • Gift giving among individuals and families. • A pervasive ethic whieh holds that "overt eeonomie disparities" among community members should be avoided. • The acquisition of prestige in the community. • Marriage and adoption as a means by whieh strangers are brought into the community on an intimate basis. Linnekin concludes that cultural reproduction and persistence is always selective in practice. When Keanae residents elaim to live by fish and poi, they are not giving a description of their dietary habits, but rather are making a siat,ement of their Hawaiianness. When young Hawaiians choose to live in Keanae, they are choosing to embrace that identity. With some apparent intrepidation, Linnekin is slow to develop the manner in whieh Hawaiian traditions are "both lived and invented" though it becomes readily apparent in the concluding chapters. Mueh more, however, needs to be said as who assumes the role of inventing tradition and the manner in whieh such inventions are accepted or rejected as tradition. Perhaps a second volume whieh will answer such questions is in the makina.