Main Body
8
Mieko Matsumoto and Eugene Berger
INTRODUCTION
DISCOVERY
The indigenous peoples who populated the Americas and Moananuiākea (the vast Pacific) prior to 1500 were incredibly diverse. Their material artifacts, oral and written records, and cultural traditions are testament to the sophistication of their political systems, the extent of their prosperity, and their varied religious and scholarly traditions. Some (but not all) of the indigenous communities of these regions utilized oral traditions to create, preserve, and transmit knowledge between generations. Others, including the Olmec, Maya, and Aztec developed writing systems. Unfortunately, the dramatic cultural and political changes (in concert with disastrous demographic decline due to introduced disease) that accompanied European and U.S. colonization disrupted both oral and written traditions across the Americas and Moananuiākea. Additionally, in the Americas, colonization was accompanied by outright intentional violence as Europeans sought to establish their claim to land and resources. As a result, scholarly understandings of these cultures and societies prior to contact with the Western world is limited. Additionally, it is important to recognize that much of the records and scholarship, generally composed by European or White American authors, created after colonization were biased by their often ethnocentric worldviews.
In the case of Hawaiʻi, prior to the arrival of Westerners, knowledge was transmitted through “a disciplined pedagogy of listening, retaining, and repetition” (Malo 2020, 23). Individuals were chosen at a young age to undergo rigorous training directed and overseen by kāhuna (experts in a variety of fields) and kūpuna (elders). Scholar Noelani Arista writes that during this time Kānaka (people of Hawaiian ancestry) understood “the authoritative speech of akua (gods), ʻaumākua (gods belonging to particular lineages), aliʻi (chiefs), kāhuna (priestly experts or experts in other schools of knowledge, and kāula (seers) [to be] indices of ancestral knowledge” (Malo 2020, 23). However, the arrival of increasing numbers of Westerners after the 1820s ushered in a period of rapid cultural change, accompanied by the introduction and spread of Christianity. To best facilitate the conversion of Kānaka, Protestant missionaries labored to develop ka pīʻāpā Hawaiʻi, an ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi alphabet based on the English alphabet. Many Kānaka were eager to develop literacy in not only ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, but also English which had great utility in trading spheres. As a result, by the end of the 1830s literacy rates for Kānaka Maoli reached nearly 95% with many Kānaka Maoli achieving bilingualism.
Kānaka were not only prolific readers, but also writers and filled the pages of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi newspapers with accounts of contemporary events, retellings of moʻolelo (historial account; history, literature, narrative), and mele (song). The moʻolelo include mele koʻihonua (cosmogonic genealogi