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The other day I was walking to class in the rain, and I came across a green book on the edge of a bench under a tree. Curious, I stopped, picked it up and read the gold embossed letters:
* Psalms Proverbs Captain Cook discovered the Hawaiian Islands in 1778. As the first white man to set foot in Hawaii, he was mistaken for the Hawaiian god of the harvest Lono returning on a floating island with white sails. Fearful, but curious, the Hawaiians welcomed Cook and his crew in a celebration and feast fit for a god. My next Lecture is about to start, I take my seat by the aisle, take out my notebook and pen, and wait. My eyes wander the room, at the lectern, the blackboard, the tiled floor of the platform, and a little green book sitting on the edge, by the stairs. With a closer look, I see that it is the same as the book I discovered earlier. Suddenly my jacket pocket seems less righteous and holy. After a long stay in harbor full of food, provisions and gifts, Captain Cook sets sail away from Hawaii, right into a storm. His ship is forced to returns to harbor for repairs. The Hawaiians start to wonder. "If this was the god Lono, then why is he stopped by the storm?" I walk past the Miklejohn House, towards Union South passing the parking lot where a swarm of mopeds, motorcycles, and cars are parked. One of the moped's baskets is a crude milk carton crate, and inside it lies all alone a simple green book. A closer look convinces me that this identical green book was left here--the holes in the side of the crate are much too wide to keep this book intact while in motion. By 1820, droves of Missionaries had arrived in the islands, building churches, schools, preaching and printing the work of god. They banned the sexual explicit dance called hula, forbid the pagan practice of riding the waves called surfing, they convinced and forced the people to clothe themselves in pants and suits far too warm for the tropical sun. They instituted the English language, a written form of language, damaging the institution of oral history that had been continued and relied on for thousands of years. It is an ugly little thing, thin pages of onion paper, with scratchy textured green vinyl crudely glued onto a thin cheap sliver of cardboard paper. On the inside in the bottom corner there is a printed request that this book "not be sold", right above bold blue words depicting "Manufactured in the United States of America". Much like the American Indians, the Native Hawaiians believed in no form of land ownership. They were a giving people, much in harmony with nature. The way of the Hawaiians was frowned upon, the endless well of "Aloha" spirit was exploited, their land taken from them, sugar cane plantations established, foreign laborers immigrated. American and British businessmen demanded power from the crown, supported by foreign warships residing in Honolulu Harbor. I feel like a fool now, participant of a passive, modern form of missionary tactics of the spread of religion to the "uncivilized" people. The beginning of the book has a passage translated into 26 different languages. Many of these languages are those of the formally known "conquered" and "pagan" people. Someone out there is planting these books around the campus, playing off the fact that there are hundreds and thousands of young persons such as myself who are here at the University searching for a greater knowledge and understanding of the world, as well as themselves. 100 years ago to this date, 1898 marks the illegal annexation of the territory of Hawaii to the United States of America. This annexation has not been celebrated with much joy this past summer. The Hawaiian people, numbers decimated by European disease and capitalism, outnumbered by descendents of foreign laborers, and American missionaries, have been reduced to strangers in their own land. A religious friend of mine once told me to "get off" all the horrors and atrocities that religion has caused in the history of mankind as an excuse for being skeptical of modern American Christianity. But somehow by holding this green book in my hand I feel a longing for home, a home I know of today that was shaped by the arrogant ideals of an imperialist era. The aggressive and outgoing nature of the missionary accompanied by soldier and plantation owners brought about an overpowering authority of how Hawaii should, and was to be. Preaching morals and godliness to the savages of Hawaii, by teaching the western language, thinking, democracy, equality, capitalism, American culture, an unsuspecting people is subject to cultural genocide. |