Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 2, Number 6, 1 Iune 1985 — He Mau Ninau Ola [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

He Mau Ninau Ola

Some Healih Que$tions 6y Kekuni Biaisdell, M.D.

This month's eolumn continues with ninau (questions) from you po'e heluhelu (readers) about health concepts of our kupuna kahiko (ancient ancestors). Q: E kauka, I heard the old Hawaiians believed that the right side of the body was female and the left side was male. Was this true for

both men and women.' A: Yes, what you have heard is basically pololei (correct), except that the right side was male and the left was female. This was a concept apparently held throughout Polynesia. Among po'e Hawai'i kahiko, this was just one of numerous examples of dualism, the pairing of opposites, as expressed in poetry and art and in their religious and medical practices. Other examples were day and night, sun and moon, east and west, sky and earth, health and illness, and life and death. Both men and women were recognized as having varying degrees of maleness and femaleness. External body ailments were considered to be male and internal sickness to be female. If an expectant mother felt her baby in the right side of her womb, she expected a boy; if on the left side, the prospect was a girl. When la'au lapa'au (medicinal plants) were gathered from the right side, a pule (prayer) was said to Ku, a major male akua (god); when gathered from the left, a pule was addressed to the goddess Hina, wife of Ku. Serious imhalanee between complimentary opposites could !ead to loss of mana and resulting illness. Determining the nature and mechanism of this imhalanee and appropriate corrective measures were sought through communication with the spiritual realm. Q: What were the ancient Hawaiians' views on the human soil, the fetus in the mother's body and abortion? A: Professor Rubellite Kawena Johnson has provided some pane (answers) to your ninau in an article on Hawaiian religion in the 1983 Native Hawaiians Study Commission report. The kanaka (human being) of old had a spiritual origin,

material birth and a spiritual eternity. There were four dimensions to a full, living personality: (1) Ola (life) was finite within the physical kino (human form) in the material world. It began with hanau (birth) of the baby and ended with make (death). (2) Ha (breath), with visible respiration, was closely identified with ola and could be transferred, such as from a dying person to a living person. (3) Uhane (spirit) was housed within the po'o (head) and communicated with the spiritual realm beyond. It continued, however, even after make (death), was closely associated with ea (life spirit of the universe), and was not dependent on ola and ha. (4) Kino wailua (second soul) could wander from and return to the kino. It caused dreams and also accounted for experiences of persons who make (died), witnessed leaving their kino via the tear duct, moving toward a great light, and then returning to the kino by way of a large toe. Similar experiences have only recently been widely recorded in western literature by those with sudden cardiac arrest who have been resuscitated back to life. The developing embryo in the maternal uterus was not considered a complete human being because it had not been birthed, had not yet hanu (breathed) with ha and ola, and had not acquired 'uhane, ea and manifested kino wailua. Accordingly, abortion of the non-breathing fetus was not considered deprivation of life, because the criteria for life in its complete human sense had not yet been fulfilled. In spite of these no'ono'o (thoughts), abortion and infanticide were not the institutionalized practices in Hawai'i that Capt. Cook decried as the horrid custom of the Tahitians for maintaining purity of their aristocracy. While Samuel Kamakau did refer to a case of induced abortion with an o'o stick, there were no known la'au lapa'au that had this specific action. Further, numerous living offspring of "misalliances" between ali'i and non-ali'i, and examples of congenitallydeformed persons who grew to adulthood, as reported in Capt. Cook's journals, are strong arguments against widespread abortion and infanticide in pre-haole Hawai'i. How strangely different these old beliefs are from modern, prevailing western views. And yet . . .