Monday, May 17, 2010

Musings: Colonial Mindset

Waialeale and the gold light of pre-dawn were peeking out from beneath the clouds when Koko and I went walking this morning. A fine rain, heavy enough to make me glad I’d brought my umbrella, but not so heavy as to dampen Koko’s enthusiasm, fell about mid-way, giving the brightening world an ethereal glow.

As we neared home, the sun began to rise in a blaze of hot pink and orange that filled a perfect square formed in the clouds as Waialeale disappeared beneath a pile of rosy fleece.

Meanwhile, beneath the sea, the oil from British Petroleum’s failed well keeps on flowing into the marine environment. It’s suspected that the spew is a lot larger than is being reported and may already have entered a major ocean current, prompting officials from the Obama Administration, which still thinks offshore drilling is a good idea, to issue this statement:

"We will not rest until BP permanently seals the wellhead, the spill is cleaned up, and the communities and natural resources of the Gulf Coast are restored and made whole," Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said in a joint statement.

Sounds good, but in reality, it’s highly unlikely that the "natural resources" of the Gulf Coast ever will or even can be “made whole.” But the belief that humans can fix nature, even though we still don’t fully understand either it or our impact on it, is a prevalent one; indeed, it’s a required belief system for those who want to keep us on this insane path.

It’s part of the same mindset that believes every impact can be mitigated, especially if it’s caused by a money-making activity, like Hawaii’s seed corn industry. As The Garden Island reports today, the GMO aspect of that industry is seeing particularly robust growth. But while Hawaii is all gaga over the usual — jobs! tax revenue! $$$! — there remains this niggling unknown that has at least a few of us feeling uneasy:

In addition, there has never been an Environmental Impact Statement conducted for any of the seed industry companies on island, so “we have no idea” what they are doing to the soil and water, among other things, said Blake Drolson, a founding member of GMO-Free Kaua‘i.

Besides the money, the rationale for the industry provided by one of its advocates, Laurie Goodwin, Hawai‘i Crop Improvement Association vice president and Syngenta’s Hawai‘i outreach manager, is not unlike something BP officials might say to defend their drilling:

“Seed biotechnology is a tool in the tool box,” Goodwin said when asked how she would respond to opponents of the industry.

Problem is, some “tools” are a lot more devastating than others, and by the time we find out just how big a mess some of these “tools” can make, we’ve gotten well beyond the place where nature and communities can be “made whole.”

“I’m really disappointed in the Obama Administration, that it can continue to support activities that are so devastating to the environment,” a woman told me yesterday. “Nature is sacred, and they are violating it.”

Her comment brought to mind a conversation I had last Sunday with a graduate student from Wesleyan University. He is here conducting research for his master’s thesis in anthropology, and is intrigued by why so many Americans don’t view the disturbance of Hawaiian burials as desecration.

Perhaps, I theorized, it’s because aside from money and its pursuit, most Americans don’t really hold anything sacred, if you use this definition of the word:

regarded with reverence; secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right; properly immune from violence, interference.

As Oahu Island Burial Council Chairman Kawika McKeague explained it when I interviewed him on Saturday for an article I’m writing, desecration has already occurred once the burial is disturbed. To borrow from an OIBC report:

In Hawaiian culture, a burial is kapu (sacred and off-limits). Families would kanu (bury or plant) a deceased loved one with the understanding that the person’s full life cycle would continue. Upon being “planted,” the iwi (bones)—and the aina (land) that nurtured the iwi—in time would become one. The individual’s mana (spiritual power), retained in his bones, would imbue the aina and provide a source of mana for the community associated with that äina. In this way, kupuna (grandparents, ancestors) continue their kuleana (role, responsibility, obligation, and right) to spiritually nourish their families and äina. The kuleana of the living descendants is to maintain the sanctity of the iwi kupuna (ancestral remains), thus preserving the integral relationships among their ancestors, the aina, and the living community.

The act of burial and burial locations were kept huna (secret and hidden). Burials were kapu, intended to be left in peace, and carefully guarded to ensure that no disturbance occurred. Intrusions into burials (opening up the ground to expose iwi kupuna, touching iwi kupuna, uprooting iwi kupuna, etc.) was considered extremely offensive and disrespectful—an act of violence and degradation directed at the deceased individual, the living family members, and the larger community associated with that burial. Such an act would be akin to disrobing a living person and physically handling them against their will.

Hence, archaeological inventory surveys that encounter iwi kupuna through careful hand excavation are highly troubling for Native Hawaiians. More distressful is the thought of archaeological investigation via backhoe excavation. And worse still is
the notion of inadvertent intrusion into burials and destruction of iwi kupuna by high-powered, modern construction tools. Such acts cause extreme pain for us.


Kawika and I got to talking about the relationship between colonialism and burial desecrations, and it’s a close one, fed by the same mindset that allows a country to come in and occupy another nation’s lands, make comments like “oh, Hawaiians are just making up their culture as they go along” or “they’re just using burials as a way to stop development.”

“People seem to be able to make the connection with unmarked burials at the Arizona Memorial,” Kawika said, “and if I wanted to build a 7-11 in Punchbowl, the veterans would come and shoot me. But the humanity is removed from our burials. They become objects, ‘resources.’ People forget that they are all someone’s kupuna, that we are the living embodiment of that ancestral past. There’s a disconnect, and it’s part of the ongoing disconnection and colonization of consciousness.”

And it struck me in reflecting on all this today that the same colonial mindset drives our troubled modern relationship to the natural world, which we have similarly objectified, depersonalized and removed from the realm of the sacred. And why? So that we could dominate it and exploit its “resources” with an untroubled conscience.

33 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jerry Mander called this "The absence of the sacred" and although the conscience may appear to be untroubled; the objectification, industrialization, and repression of such domination and exploitation surfaces as cultural psychopathology, personal and global destructive behaviors creating a world in which there is no way to delay that trouble coming every day!

Anonymous said...

OK.
Now is probably the time to ask Gary Hooser to demand all GMO operations cease until an EIS is done.

Think he can do that? Or maybe the almighty and powerful abercrombie?

Anonymous said...

Science is the new scared!

Anonymous said...

Let's see , jobs today, high pesticide use, testing with untested pesticides in untested combinations, possible or likely outcomes
1. cancer cluster on the westside amongst the workers, neighboring houses and families, with particular suseptability to workers, children, pregnant women, the frail, disabled
2. contaminated aina that won't support farming
3. contaminated water,
loss of diversity
4, food system collapse due to no bees

Anonymous said...

good thing we have all these part-time on-island bio-chemists offering their gennome expertise


dwps

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know why Hanalei hasn't had a Taro Festival for a while? I heard it has something to do with GMO's.

Anonymous said...

How can a burial be both well guarded and secret?

How can well guarded burials be accidentally unearthed?

There is a difference between the punchbowl where the community has set aside land for marked burials and a memorial and random unmarked burials long forgotten by the passage of time.

Both may be sacred to some, but when land has changed hands over and over and burials are unmarked, just how is one to know?

Anonymous said...

Someone needs to step up plan for the future.
As the oceans rise and burials begin to erode out of the dunes is this part of a natural process?
Or can the iwi be recovered and placed in secure locations.
Decisions need to be made by the cultures present on what to do and how.

Anonymous said...

As the oceans rise and burials begin to erode out of the dunes is this part of a natural process?
Or can the iwi be recovered and placed in secure locations.
Decisions need to be made by the cultures present on what to do and how.

What is missing is communication with and inclusion of Native Hawaiian lineal descendants who are ultimately responsible for the proper care and reinternment of exposed ancestral remains.

Dawson said...

Jerry Mander called this "The absence of the sacred" and although the conscience may appear to be untroubled; the objectification, industrialization, and repression of such domination and exploitation surfaces as cultural psychopathology, personal and global destructive behaviors creating a world in which there is no way to delay that trouble coming every day!

Bingo.

Anonymous said...

There's talk of blowing up the well to stop the damage. If that would work, they should do it now.

Dawson said...

"There is a difference between the punchbowl where the community has set aside land for marked burials and a memorial and random unmarked burials long forgotten by the passage of time. "

The only difference is that the former was created by the conquerers of the latter.

In Hawaii as in the rest of the world, the foundation of the Western colonial mindset is to diminish, devalue and deny the authenticity -- especially the spiritual authenticity -- of the indigenous culture they propose to conquer. It makes post-conquest dominion a moral and ethical no-brainer.

Be the colonials missionaries or merchants, devaluing the spiritual authenticity of an indigenous culture is money in the bank. Classifying their sacred sites as spiritually worthless makes it easy to build mining operations, cattle ranches, ag empires, military bases, churches, money-making recreational facilities and real estate developments in the places where their gods once walked and their ancestors still sleep.

The hypocrisy, of course, is pointed out in the Punchbowl citation -- the colonialists would have a shitfit if the situation were reversed.



"Both may be sacred to some, but when land has changed hands over and over and burials are unmarked, just how is one to know?"

Learned descendants of the people buried there know. Ask them.

Unless, of course, you've already devalued them as being just "some."

Anonymous said...

Dead people don't care about their bones...why do the living?. Memories of my dead parents live in my head not in the soil.

Anonymous said...

Bingo?

“The modern world is a history of ideas meeting, mixing, mating and mutating,” Dr. Ridley writes.

"But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

“The Idea of Decline in Western History,” read it and think...

Anonymous said...

"But with new hubs of innovation emerging elsewhere, and with ideas spreading faster than ever on the Internet, Dr. Ridley expects bottom-up innovators to prevail. His prediction for the rest of the century: “Prosperity spreads, technology progresses, poverty declines, disease retreats, fecundity falls, happiness increases, violence atrophies, freedom grows, knowledge flourishes, the environment improves and wilderness expands.”

And everyone lives happily ever after.....

Anonymous said...

And everyone lives happily ever after.....
Nobody ever promised that, too many everyones.

Avengers Life said...

I read Kawikas quites with interest and feel fully vindicated in my own personal assesments of what I was taught and wrote myself on the matter. We wrote almost the exact same thing. Trying to explain that to people who can only understand Judeo Christian Western thinking however, and create and apply laws based on those facts is a whole other controversial issue.

It is difficult for some people to ever comprehend and understand that we are all humans deserving of equal care, reverence, dignity, sanctity, ,love, affection, support, shelter and human rights when they only beleive that people who think, beleive and have their same spiritually deserve the rights to the protections of the law for their deceaced.

For these people, a bulldozer digging up the bodies of other peoples ancestors and loved one is not an offense. It only counts in their eyes if they are one of them. THe real humans that matter or count. THeir ancestors and the only ones that matter. The only ones deserving of a sacred and protected rest. THe rest of us and our ancestors can go to h double l as far as they are concerned.

THey have no souls and will get a rude awakening come their own time ends upon this earth. And they will discover tht never ending circle of life they denied and spend all eternity contemplating their arrogance.

Just my opinion.

Dawson said...

"Dead people don't care about their bones...why do the living?. Memories of my dead parents live in my head not in the soil."

Q.E.D.

Anonymous said...

"The act of burial and burial locations were kept huna (secret and hidden)."

Interesting. Maybe it was so secret and hidden that other Hawaiians built over them through the centuries. I think a distinction needs be made between maka`aina burials (all over the beach sands) and ali`i burials (secret, hidden).


To address the argument that "burials" are now only political tools, etc. Why didn't the Hawaiians deal with this issue when hundreds and thousands were being dug up across the state prior to 1990s laws? Were they afraid of the "colonizers" and their jobs? Did they not worry as much about them then? Interesting to interview those in their 50s and 60s and 70s to assess why nothing was done sooner...

Anonymous said...

Avengers Life said of Native Hawaiians: "THey have no souls and will get a rude awakening come their own time ends upon this earth. And they will discover tht never ending circle of life they denied and spend all eternity contemplating their arrogance."

In your eyes, and according to Christian beliefs that is. Eternal life after death is very much a part of Native Hawaiian religious beliefs. This of course, is unacceptable to you as your beliefs are the only one that really matters here. And you warn those who believe otherwise that we will all "get a rude awakening" when our time on this earth ends.

Native Hawaiians have respect for burials of all people and cultures, and view the digging up of bones as desecration - no matter whose bones they are. See...the difference is, we do not feel it is our equal right to go to other peoples' homelands and and displace another's culture or desecrate burials or traditional sites that are deemed sacred. It is improper and inappropriate to do that right here in our own homeland of Hawai`i.

Anonymous said...

"Native Hawaiians have respect for burials of all people and cultures, and view the digging up of bones as desecration - no matter whose bones they are."

Except when they needed someones bones as raw material for a fish hooks, tools, or personal adornment.


Those burials are hidden to revent raiders from mining the burials for raw materials.

Anonymous said...

Anon. May 18, 2010 12:07 PM

I think Avengers Life was talking about the people who dig up Hawaiian burials, not Native Hawaiians.

Anonymous said...

thats a pretty sweet deal, to develop a "colonialism" narrative which blames some sort of "western culture" phenomena for one and all local or regional ills. very efficient. now one need not dig any deeper as to other potential causes of social or economic problems and most everybody gets to save face ("you have a culture that does not value education? no problem, not an issue, not a factor"). so the appeal is understandable. and its effective. radicals (Hitler, FARC, Earth Liberation Front, etc) have shown the “blame that guy / group for everything” thing to work pretty well


dwps

Dawson said...

"thats a pretty sweet deal, to develop a "colonialism" narrative which blames some sort of "western culture" phenomena for one and all local or regional ills. very efficient."

That's a straw man argument.

Very lazy.

Anonymous said...

oh please. Nothing is easier or lazier than the colonialism straw man.

Anonymous said...

The colonialists never like to think they could be at fault and the cause of so many lingering social problems.

Anonymous said...

dwps said; "you have a culture that does not value education? no problem, not an issue, not a factor."

I assume you are speaking of the formal western educational model that is now coming apart like a cheap suit?

Pre-contact Hawaiians seemed pretty educated to me. Educated enough to Malama the Aina and feed themselves. Probably one of the most advanced and self-sustaining cultures on the planet. I'll give them an A+

Anonymous said...

"Educated enough to Malama the Aina and feed themselves."

bet most can't do that now!

Anonymous said...

"thats a pretty sweet deal, to develop a "colonialism" narrative which blames some sort of "western culture"

OK, DWPS, who is wrong, maybe about 60% of the time has a bit of a point here. You have to view the current "bad" at least a little bit through the filter of "it could be worse". Balance means acknowledging the bright side once in a while.

Cultural insensitivity may be worse in many pacific nations that did not get stolen by the Americans 195 yrs ago. We absolutely do have huge problems due to the overthrow and "western culture" in the islands but they pale, in many respects to the problems of other island nations. And lets face it, western culture is world culture. Thank Sparticus like 20k years ago.

Public education is a whole other story. The only reason public schools exist is to create a homogenized mainstream culture that will support whatever the government does. Public education should scare the hell out of liberals, but they love it. And no real conservative would ever seriously back the idea of public school either. Both sides live it because in reality, it is nothing more than a propaganda machine...

Anonymous said...

195 was typo

Anonymous said...

"Public education should scare the hell out of liberals, but they love it. And no real conservative would ever seriously back the idea of public school either. Both sides live it because in reality, it is nothing more than a propaganda machine..."

So what are they teaching the kids at Punahou and Island School? Anarchy?

Anonymous said...

"So what are they teaching the kids at Punahou and Island School? Anarchy?"

One can only hope

Anonymous said...

No way. Up until recently, only kids of card carrying Republicans could get into Punahou. I think Obama's mother was the first liberal whose kid was admitted.