“it isn’t about whether you’re purple or brown or green or have polka-dots. it’s about whether you’re a competent, sensitive, respon-sible human being.”
I think one of the big reasons that many believe that only Kānaka Maoli should excavate Kanaka Maoli sites is there is a (safe) assumption that they will be sensitive.
i do not give the people ispoke with a voice—they already possessed that—but i do provide them another opportunity to be heard.
I really like this comment and her beliefs about the power dynamic b/w interviewer and interviewee. You can tell that Kawelu really cares about and respects her interviewees. Someone in her shoes could've easily been super self-righteous about "giving a voice to those who can't speak."
we as researchers filter our insights through personal lenses such as social class, language, gender, and ethnicity. Denzin and lin -coln make this point more succinctly: “There are no objective observa-tions, only observations socially situated in the worlds of—and between—the observer and the observed” (2005a, 21). Thus, my particular perspective as a Kanaka Maoli archaeologist matters, and the personal interviews i con -ducted provide a unique perspective on the relationships associated with hawaiian archaeology.
I believe Narayan would agree with this claim.
archaeologists do not necessarily need to be indigenous to do indig-enous archaeology.
This statement reminds me of the point that Narayan made in her article.
lson has bluntly stated, " 'Indigenous' is a misnomer, for all of us are indigenous somewhere and the majority of anthropologists at some time deal with their own communities" (Fahim et al. 1980:650). We are all "native" or "indigenous" anthro- pologists
I think this very technical definition of "indigenous" devalues the use of "indigenous" in ethnic identity for Indigenous peoples and Aboriginal peoples.
Through their speech and actions children transform relationships, possessions, and statuses. Seen as not responsible for their words or actions, children do all sorts of things that adults should not.
I see this happen in my extended family. Adults and older children have younger children do/say something that would result in harsher consequences for the older person because children (especially younger children) do not face the same level of scrutiny.
Although children may joke, falsely claim to have run an errand, disobey their elders, or even gossip about other children, they will not themselves choose to hide either goods or words to harm adults or their reputation
I agree with this claim. Generally, children fib, but fibs donʻt harm anyone, and usually children donʻt lie to purposefully harm someone.
older children often avoid explicitly showing off with their speech. These older children depend on physical displays of their pos-session, so much so that those who consume food completely out of sight often find themselves in a predicament: they want to communicate to others their good fortune but have no way to do so.
Older children are in an awkward in-between stage; they want to showoff their food and good fortune, but they now understand and feel cultural shame.
(with some excep-tions)
What sort of exceptions?
“heart-to-heart” communication but also has a literal mean-ing when referring to the shared nakedness of bathing. In the context of Japanese military culture this could have had the additional meaning of being unarmed and therefore both unthreatening and vulnerable.
Nudity as vulnerability was not only used as a bonding agent between but also as a weapon against Japanese soldiers. As we saw earlier, U.S. soldiers dehumanized Japanese soldiers by stripping them and making them seem weak and vulnerable. At the same time, ofuros allowed Japanese soldiers to bond by being nonthreatening and vulnerable. I find this juxtaposition interesting.
It is rather a caricature of a presumed Marshall Islander manhood, stylized into primate-like blackness and danced for the sake of pure comedy. Like drag, the intrigue of Yoden’s performance comes from the imperfection of the artifice, from the absurdity of “culturally superior” Japanese boys at an elite imperial school trying to dance a “primitive” dance
A comparison to minstrel shows would be more fitting than this comparison to drag, considering the racial overtones and the performance by a "superior" group of a "primitive" group. I think calling it "pure comedy" minimizes the fact that it is still racist. Also, I don't love the sexualization and fetishization of the Chieftain's daughter.
these lyrics are not just about “possessing” but also about being accepted (and “pos-sessed,” in a sense) into a chiefly lineage
This is a very idyllic view of colonialism and imperialism. Since when do imperialists care about "being accepted"?
Concrete turns out to be but only one of the many entangled and intertwined destinies of the reef. In the perennial deep-time competition between coral and concrete, the atoll always wins.
I think that this "optimistic" viewpoint is harmful to those who don't have the luxury of waiting for the concrete to break down.
These traumatic reshapings of reefs and rewritings of land corre-spond to how hegemonic histories have oversimplified and rewritten the atoll’s complexity. The American national memory of invasion and “liberation” of Marshall Islanders from Japanese forces in 1944 has become the official story of what “really” happened.
Unfortunately, I feel like this sort of revisionist history is pretty common and molds the (hi)story in order to fit it within the narrative of American Exceptionalism.
Assigning the role of the ‘ulumotu‘a/fahu to the sibling with the most wealth is against the indigenous Tongan arrangement of tā-vā because it places more value on wealth than on seniors and elders (see chapter 2). This rearrangement of time-space gives rise to vātamaki (disharmonious social relations)
really great and observable example of how the rearrangement of tā-vā can occur and lead to disharmony; also how valuing your elders is more important the money/wealth
FIGURE 16.Tonga-Hawai‘i: circular migration.
I really appreciate the inclusion of these diagrams. Often there are sections where Ka'ili includes A LOT of information back to back, but the diagrams allow you to recall and visualize the info you just read. There are very basic, but they do help in terms of understanding and overview.
(sīpinga kovi). Disharmonious social patterns include the following
pretty common in the western world, especially in relation to the presence (or lack there of) of harmonious social patterns
social forms of tāmaki that generate disharmonious social patterns include the following:
also pretty common in the western world
conflict is a permanent aspect of reality
Conflict is inevitable, but it can either be symmetrical therefore harmonious or asymmetrical therefore disharmonious.
SOCIOSPATIAL
interaction b/w society and infrastructure