Musings: Cultural Insensitivity

The rain started when it was still dark, but close to dawn, and it fell steady and straight — loud enough to drown out the crowing of countless roosters, heavy enough to delay our walk and hard enough to saturate the ground, where I planted taro last evening in the setting sun’s golden glow.

The glow of stardom is a place where actor Pierce Brosnan, who spends part of his time on Kauai, is accustomed to basking, and he again had that opportunity this past weekend when the Maui Film Festival fawned over him and KGMB news fawned over the fawning.

It seems the Maui Film Festival gave Brosnan its “Maverick Award” in honor of his “commitment to making movies that matter” as well as his “commitment to environmental justice for all creatures of earth.”

This is another example of one of Kauai’s rich residents being lauded for supposedly “doing good” on a large scale while he meanwhile makes life miserable for his neighbors.

I’m referring to his ongoing lawsuit with Cathy Ham Young, who is seeking to have Brosnan release water from his landscape ponds so she can irrigate her taro patch. The case is now moving through the courts.

As is typical of so many who come here for the beauty and lifestyle, but don’t give a rip about the culture, Brosnan seems clueless about the ramifications of his aquatic hoarding or the requirements of being a good land steward.

In gushing over his part-time life in Wainiha Valley, Brosnan is quoted as saying:

I'm Irish and this is a bit like Ireland but with the heat turned up. I love it and it has been great for my children to grow up in a rural neighborhood.

Apparently the heat hasn’t been turned up sufficiently for him to transcend his own petty aesthetic needs so that he can recognize water is crucial to the survival of the Ham Young’s taro patch, which helps to feed their family.

Brosnan wants all the pleasures of a rural lifestyle, but can’t be bothered to follow its most basic principle in return: being a good neighbor.

I’ve seen this sort of selfishness and cultural insensitivity play out over and over again in Hawaii, and it seems to surface frequently when the issue of disturbing iwi — primarily so a newcomer can build a house, hotel or otherwise profit from a land use — comes up.

In recent comments on this blog, I’ve had people (I’ll go with the plural, although it’s hard to tell whether it’s one anonymous or several) say, what’s the big deal about building over burials? They seem to take the position that unless tombstones are in place, the burials don’t really count, and so they might as well be tossed aside or built over. They frequently argue that the past shouldn’t impede “progress,” and have made the claim that activists are opportunistically “using” the bones, and even the kanaka maoli, to try and stop development.

This attitude ignores the fact that the native community has consistently initiated the outcry over the desecration of Hawaiian burials. Those who hold these views also fail to understand that for many kanaka, the issues of development and burial protection are inextricably linked, and they stem from the premise that the people who have occupied this land for centuries should have some significant say in what is done with it, especially when their ancestors are buried on it. These aren’t separate issues.

And it does seem, from the many kanaka I’ve talked to about this issue, that it’s even more offensive when burials are disturbed by an outsider whose primary motivation is making a few bucks.

What it all comes down to is exercising a little cultural sensitivity and respect. And even if you don’t agree, or it doesn’t happen to be your cultural belief, would it really hurt you to put aside your own wants — whether it’s for landscape ponds or a beachfront vacation rental — in order to honor the needs, wishes and traditional practices of those who have already lost so much?

I mean, geez, where's your compassion? Where's your heart?