Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 25, Number 7, 1 Iulai 2008 — Native Spirituality embraced by paʻahao [ARTICLE]

Native Spirituality embraced by paʻahao

By Liza Simun Public Affairs Specialist In the mid 1990s, the Hawai'i Department of Puhlie Safety began shipping out Hawaiian inmates to corrections facilities from Arizona to Mississippi on the U.S. continent to alleviate overcrowded loeal prisons, but there was an unintended result: "We suffered racist treatment from some guards who had never seen an oeean. Some of us were punished for flashing their shaka or having (traditional) tattoos and having long hair. They thought everything we did was part of some gang activity," recalled Kaleihau Kamau'u, who was locked up in a series

of mainland corrections facilities for a drug-related robbery charge. Kamau'u saw the need to organize the nonprofit Hui Kākou Pa'ahao. The group won court settlement enabling them to honor Lono, the Hawaiian god of peaee and fertility by holding the annual makahiki festival in several corporate-run federal prisons on the continent. The 2005 settlement also protected the Constitutional right of Native Hawaiians to practice their indigenous religion in all US prisons. It's been a victory for both Hawaiian culture and Hawaiian spirituality, whieh for Kamau'u are inseparable. "I really think

we Hawaiians could solve our high rate of our incarceration and recidivism if we had a plaee to have a pu'uhonua. This is would be a plaee where we could work on fixing the broken identity that got so many of us here in prison to begin with," he said. Kamau'u knows the road to achieving his dream is not easy. Right now, he's has been ordered back to prison for violating conditions of his probation. Meanwhile, he said that in spite of the court order, corrections staff here and on the US Continent are often culturally insensitive to Native Hawaiian religion and sometimes take steps like prohibiting pa'ahao from gathering for an oli. They are given a ehanee to attend an indigenous spirituality program from Aotearoa, known as Na Maka Walu. "But this is classified as an educational program, so our right to participate is classified as a privilege that ean be revoked without any explanation by prison staff," he said. Someone else in his situation

might find bitter irony in having to fight to bring a peace-making activity into prison on its home turf, but Kamau'u is perhaps more grounded than most in his cultural roots. His great-aunt is venerated kumu 'Iolani Luahine. The in-prison curriculum he has developed spans her teachings of hula, oli, plus studies in 'olēlo and Hawaiian values. He also knows what it is to be estranged from one's own roots. Growing up in the 1960s before the Hawaiian Renaissance, he felt inferior about his Hawaiianess, but now he takes pride in it and even in his incarcerated life. "Reintegration begins the moment you walk in to prison. This means you take full responsibility for what you've done and what you will do to rebuild your connections with rich and ancient culture that is also involved right now in nation-building." Because Native Hawaiian spirituality is not codified like organized religion, practitioners are the best source of further information. I

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