Part 1
Re-envisioning Womenâs History
1
Constructed Images of Native Hawaiian Women
Davianna PĆmaikaâi McGregor
The popular image of Native Hawaiian women as beautiful, graceful, and voluptuous hula maidens has been promoted by the tourist industry to market the romantic allure of the Hawaiian islands. The day-to-day reality of the average Native Hawaiian woman seldom resembles the poster-girl image. In fact, Native Hawaiian women span the broad spectrum of physical features, class, sexual orientation, as well as political involvement and socioeconomic status.
One significant indicator of the actual living conditions of Native Hawaiian women is their health statistics. Historically, Native Hawaiian women have had the shortest life expectancy in comparison to women of other ethnic groups in the islands.1 Native Hawaiian women have unusually high risk factors for cardiovascular disease and cancerâcigarette smoking, obesity, elevated blood pressure, diabetes, and high blood cholesterol. Due to low income levels, which hinder access to health care, mortality rates for Native Hawaiian women are higher than for women of other ethnic groups in Hawaiâi for heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and motor vehicle and other accidents. Between 1988 and 1992, Native Hawaiian women recorded one of the highest cancer-related mortality and incidence rates in the United States, equal with Black women and second to Alaska Native women.2
Another relevant indicator of the status of Native Hawaiian women is that the divorce rate of Native Hawaiians is among the highest of the ethnic groups in the islands.3 This contributes to the high number of Native Hawaiian single-mother households and to the high number of households in which a mother and child live with relatives.4
The trials and tribulations of life in modern Hawaiâi challenge Native Hawaiian women to assume strong physical, social, and spiritual roles in their families and communities. Native Hawaiian women are intelligent, beautiful, powerful, passionate, and enduring, not as constructed by the tourist industry but in a manner that incorporates the images and qualities of their godly and chiefly female ancestors. When Native Hawaiian women construct a self-image as native, the female sacred forces of nature and chiefly ancestors are invoked. This chapter describes the key female cosmic forces and chiefly women who are claimed as genealogical ancestors and why they inspire modern Native Hawaiian women as they assume leadership roles in their families, communities, and nation.
Female Cosmic Forces
In Hawaiian cosmology, female forces of nature play an equal role with male forces in the procreation of the universe. This shared creative energy contributes to the sense of empowerment among Native Hawaiian women today. Native Hawaiians trace their ancestry to earth mother PapahÄnaumoku, who mated with sky father WÄkea to give birth to most of the Hawaiian islands and eventually to the Native Hawaiian people. The daughter, HoâohĆkĆ«kalani, the maker of stars in the heavens, mated with father WÄkea and gave birth to HÄloa Naka, a still-born male fetus. When buried in the earth, HÄloa Naka grew into taro, the primary food plant of the Native Hawaiian people from generations past to present. Their second-born male child, HÄloa, became the progenitor of the Native Hawaiian people.5 In the tradition of PapahÄnaumoku and WÄkea, it is a womanâs powerful creative energyâthat of PapahÄnaumoku and her daughter, HoâohĆkukalaniâthat produced the islands of life, kalo or taro, the staple food plant, and the Native Hawaiian people through mating, as equals, with the male god WÄkea. PapahÄnaumoku is one of the primary female cosmic forces that Native Hawaiian women honor as ancestor.
The goddess Hina, in her many formsâcoral reefs, marine reef life, ocean caves, the moon, and tidesâis another principal cosmic force. She embodies the female force in the universe, while her husband, KĆ«, is the male force. Together, their reproductive energies were invoked to produce good crops, good fishing, long life, and family and national prosperity.6 As mother of the demigod MÄui, she guided him in harnessing the energy of the sun, capturing fire from the alae birds, and fishing up the Hawaiian islands from the ocean. In a mating with WÄkea when PapahÄnaumoku had left him in anger, Hina gave birth to the island Molokaâi-nui-a-Hina.7
As the social and political system evolved into a system of ruling chiefs from the thirteenth through early nineteenth centuries, the state religion focused on four principal male godsâKĆ«, KÄne, Kanaloa, and Lono. Female deities continued to be honored, but as lesser deities in the state temples; in separate temples distinctly established for women; and as âaumakua, or family ancestral gods.8
Heiau Hale O Papa, or âHouse of Papaâ temples, honored PapahÄnaumoku and served as special places of birthing, healing, and refuge for women.9 Hina, wife of the ocean god KĆ«âula, is represented and honored with her husband in fishing koâa, or shrines, throughout the islands. MoâowÄhine, dragon lizards who can transform into beautiful women and inhabit fresh water pools in the uplands and along the shoreline, were also honored as family âaumakua.10
One of the most awesome and magnificent creative forces of nature is acknowledged to be a female nature force and âaumakuaâPele, goddess of the volcano. In Native Hawaiian tradition, Pele and her family of deities are the âaumakua, or family ancestral gods, of the families who settled and continue to live in the Puna and KaâĆ« districts of the island of Hawaiâi.
Hiâiaka-i-ka-pouli-o-Pele, youngest sister in the Pele family of deities, embodies powerful forces of healingâthe process of evoking life out of the forces of death. This is especially manifest in the new forest growth that eventually heals the lands scorched and covered over by Peleâs lava. In the epic myth Pele and Hiâiaka, Hiâiaka evolves into a deity who is as powerful as her older sister Pele. She prevails as victor in a series of deadly battles with mythical dragon-like lizard figures, called Moâo; outwits dishonest human men; and revives the human male lover of her sister Pele from death.
These deities are honored and adopted as female ancestors from whom Native Hawaiian women inherit powerful, passionate, and enduring female qualities and characteristics.
Women in the âOhana, Extended Family
As Native Hawaiian society evolved, gender played a major role in defining the lives of the people. The responsibilities of the women revolved around their natural childbearing role and were distinguished from those of the men. The core Native Hawaiian culture established between 600 and 1100 evolved around the productive and reproductive activities that were organized through the âohana, or extended family. While responsibilities and roles within the âohana were distinguished by both age and gender, only the gender roles were defined under the Hawaiian kapu, or sacred rules of behavior. Men were considered kapu and sacred, while women, because of their menstruation, were considered noa, or not sacred. Men conducted the primary rituals and prayers to the gods while women were restricted in their participation. Men cultivated food plants, did the deep-sea fishing, and prepared all the food. Womenâs work, although less physically demanding, was nevertheless arduous and tedious and required forethought and planning; it included gathering resources of the forest, streams, and reefs. For example, women gathered and then beat and wove materials used for thatching, clothing, rope, mats, sails, and so forth. Men and women were required to eat separately of food that was also prepared separately, and women were restricted from eating selected foods such as bananas, coconuts, turtle, pork, and red fish.
In the following explanation of the âaikapu, the restrictive eating rule, University of Hawaiâi, MÄnoa Hawaiian Studies professor Lilikala Kameâeleihiwa conjectures that the âaikapu was a means of protecting male mana, or power. The reproductive power of women gave them the ability, through the choice of their sexual partners, to reinforce the strength of a genealogical line or to introduce a new and potentially dangerous relationship.
âAikapu is that which prevents the âuncleanâ nature of women from defiling male sanctity when they offer sacrifice to the male Akua.⊠[T]he foods forbidden to women (pig, coconut, banana, and certain red fish) were not only phallic symbols but also kinolau (one of the many physical forms) of the major male Akua.⊠[F]or women to eat these foods would not only allow their mana to defile the sacrifice to the male Akua, but would also encourage them to devour male sexual prowess.⊠Nor did the haumia [unsacred] nature of women make them inferior to men; rather, it made them dangerous and thus powerful.11
Between 1100 and 1400, new influences were introduced through the migration of men and women from Tahiti to Hawaiâi. The cultures merged both through intermarriage of Tahitian chiefs with women of prominent indigenous genealogical lines and as a result of battles and conquest. Apparently, the lives of the men and women of the âohana remained stable and improved with technological innovations in fishing, farming, and irrigation.
Beginning in 1400 and up through European contact in 1778, chiefs emerged as rulers of the Native Hawaiian social system. Women also assumed sacred and chiefly roles in the social hierarchy, whereby they were freed from day-to-day labors and accorded special privileges. However, they were still bound in their activities by the female kapu restrictions, and thus gender rather than class continued to be the principal determinant of the lives of Native Hawaiian women.
Although political rule was patriarchal, highest-ranking women of sacred birth could nevertheless determine which chiefâs son would inherit rank and privilege through their choice of mates.12 Often, chiefs of lower rank would attempt to ascend in genealogical status by usurping the sexual power of the sacred âchiefessâ before the higher-ranking chiefs. Professor of anthropology Jocelyn Linnekin explains the dynamics of the inheritance of political rank as follows:
The most critical fact for understanding Hawaiian chiefly politics is that rank was bilaterally determined; although men predominated as political rulers and conquerors, chiefly women were vessels of the highest kapu rank and were critical to the dynastic aspirations of their frequently lower-ranking husband.13
The lives of the men and women of the âohana remained stable but now involved regular labor service and tribute to the male and female chiefs.
Hawaiian Monarchy
With European and American contact and trade, the development of a capitalist social system in Hawaiâi engendered the redefining of the roles of chiefs and chiefesses to commoner men and women. In the forty years from the arrival of Captain James Cook in 1778 to Kamehamehaâs death in 1819, the demand for provisions and sandalwood from ships engaged in the China trade in turn increased demands of the chiefs upon the commoner men and women to provide goods and services. This trade also spread continental epidemic diseases throughout the previously unexposed indigenous population and introduced Western military technology into the wars among the island chiefdoms. In 1804 alone, the Hawaiian historian David Malo recorded, half the population died of maâi okuâu, a disease that was either cholera or bubonic plague.14 Lt. James King had estimated the Native Hawaiian population at 400,000 when he was part of Captain James Cookâs expedition in Hawaiâi in 1778â1779, but in 1823, when the first missionary census was conducted, there were only approximately 135,000 Native Hawaiians.15 On the military front, High Chief Paiea Kamehameha took advantage of Western trade and utilized military technology in his battles to conquer and unite the chiefdoms of Hawaiâi under his central rule as king.
Reflecting the prowess of their cosmic and godly female ancestors, Native Hawaiian women of chiefly birth also trained as warriors under Kamehameha. According to the Reverend Stephen Desha, in his account Kamehameha and His Warrior Kekuhaupiâo, the high-ranking chiefesses accompanied their husbands into the battles. Kamehameha himself had three divisions of chiefly women warriors trained in lua, the Native Hawaiian fighting arts.16 Notably, the warrior chiefesses who accompanied their husbands into Kamehamehaâs Battle of Nuâuanu on Oâahu were specially trained by the high chief to be adept in the shooting of Western muskets and were the first line of offense against the Oâahu chiefs.17
The death of King Kamehameha I in May 1819 signaled a political crisis for his heirs. Rival ritual chiefs who had been defeated in King Kamehamehaâs rise to power rallied to wrest control over their ancestral chiefdoms back from the Kamehameha chiefs and their allies. Kamehamehaâs...