History and Politics Through Hawaiian Language Sources


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I Ka `Olelo No Ke Ola: Understanding Indigenous Hawaiian (PDF: 9 pages)

History and Politics Through Hawaiian Language Sources

Noenoe K. Silva and J. Leilani Basham

Department of Political Science and Department of Hawaiian Language
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Honolulu, HI 96822
E-mail noenoe @ hawaii.edu and jbasham @ hawaii.edu

Ua lehulehu a manomano ka `ikena a ka Hawai`i.
The knowledge of the Hawaiians is myriad and great.
(traditional saying)

United States colonialism in Hawai'i resulted in several generations of Native Hawaiians being schooled in English, unable to speak the mother tongue of their ancestors. It has also meant that the study of the history, politics, and anthropology (among others) of Hawai'i has been conducted almost exclusively in English, ignoring the wealth of source material available in Hawaiian. More than seventy-five newspapers in the Hawaiian language are preserved on microfilm, ranging in date from 1834 to 1948. In these papers, Hawaiians wrote their own histories, literature, political opinions and analyses, as well as poetry and religious thought. The language revitalization movement of the past twenty-five years has created a new generation of scholars now able to read the writing of their ancestors. In this paper, we will present examples of how Hawaiian history looks from indigenous Hawaiian points of view. These include how the myth of Hawaiian non-resistance to colonialism was exploded by the recovery of the history of the organized political resistance of the 1890s and a new understanding of the role of political songs in the same resistance movement. Many more examples abound, and in our individual and collaborative work we continue to research and publish these.1 The importance of such indigenous views of the past to students of every age and level would be difficult to overestimate, as they finally are able to see their ancestors (and, thus, themselves) in history. This paper should be of interest and value to other indigenous scholars engaged in recovering their own histories.


Posted: Tue - January 29, 2008 at 10:27 PM    
   
 
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Published On: Jan 29, 2008 10:30 PM
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