Asian/Pacific Islander American Women

A Historical Anthology

Shirley Hune, Gail M Nomura, Shirley Hune, Gail M. Nomura

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780814736333
• eBook ISBN: 9780814790663
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

A groundbreaking anthology devoted to Asian/Pacific Islander American women and their experiences

Asian/Pacific Islander American Women is the first collection devoted to the historical study of A/PI women's diverse experiences in America. Covering a broad terrain from pre-large scale Asian emigration and Hawaii in its pre-Western contact period to the continental United States, the Philippines, and Guam at the end of the twentieth century, the text views women as historical subjects actively negotiating complex hierarchies of power.

The volume presents new findings about a range of groups, including recent immigrants to the U.S. and understudied communities. Comprised of original new work, it includes chapters on women who are Cambodian, Chamorro, Chinese, Filipino, Hmong, Japanese, Korean, Native Hawaiian, South Asian, and Vietnamese Americans. It addresses a wide range of women's experiences-as immigrants, military brides, refugees, American born, lesbians, workers, mothers, beauty contestants, and community activists. There are also pieces on historiography and methodology, and bibliographic and video documentary resources.

This groundbreaking anthology is an important addition to the scholarship in Asian/Pacific American studies, ethnic studies, American studies, women's studies, and U.S. history, and is a valuable resource for scholars and students.
Contributors include: Xiaolan Bao, Sucheng Chan, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Vivian Loyola Dames, Jennifer Gee, Madhulika S. Khandelwal, Lili M. Kim, Nancy In Kyung Kim, Erika Lee, Shirley Jennifer Lim, Valerie Matsumoto, Sucheta Mazumdar, Davianna Pomaika'i McGregor, Trinity A. Ordona, Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman, Charlene Tung, Kathleen Uno, Linda Trinh Võ, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Ji-Yeon Yuh, and Judy Yung.

Part 1
Re-envisioning Women’s History

1
Constructed Images of Native Hawaiian Women

Davianna Pōmaika‘i 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 cancer—cigarette 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 Hawai‘i 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 Hawai‘i 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 Papahānaumoku, who mated with sky father Wākea to give birth to most of the Hawaiian islands and eventually to the Native Hawaiian people. The daughter, Ho‘ohōkūkalani, the maker of stars in the heavens, mated with father Wākea and gave birth to Hāloa Naka, a still-born male fetus. When buried in the earth, Hāloa Naka grew into taro, the primary food plant of the Native Hawaiian people from generations past to present. Their second-born male child, Hāloa, became the progenitor of the Native Hawaiian people.⁵ In the tradition of Papahānaumoku and Wākea, it is a woman’s powerful creative energy—that of Papahānaumoku and her daughter, Ho‘ohōkukalani—that 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 Wākea. Papahānaumoku is one of the primary female cosmic forces that Native Hawaiian women honor as ancestor.

The goddess Hina, in her many forms—coral reefs, marine reef life, ocean caves, the moon, and tides—is another principal cosmic force. She embodies the female force in the universe, while her husband, Kū, 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 Māui, 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 Wākea when Papahānaumoku had left him in anger, Hina gave birth to the island Moloka‘i-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 gods—Kū, Kāne, 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 ‘aumakua, or family ancestral gods.⁸

Heiau Hale O Papa, or “House of Papa” temples, honored Papahānaumoku and served as special places of birthing, healing, and refuge for women.⁹ Hina, wife of the ocean god Kū‘ula, is represented and honored with her husband in fishing ko‘a, or shrines, throughout the islands. Mo‘owāhine, 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 ‘aumakua.¹⁰

One of the most awesome and magnificent creative forces of nature is acknowledged to be a female nature force and ‘aumakua—Pele, goddess of the volcano. In Native Hawaiian tradition, Pele and her family of deities are the ‘aumakua, or family ancestral gods, of the families who settled and continue to live in the Puna and Ka‘ū districts of the island of Hawai‘i.

Hi‘iaka-i-ka-pouli-o-Pele, youngest sister in the Pele family of deities, embodies powerful forces of healing—the 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 Pele’s lava. In the epic myth Pele and Hi‘iaka, Hi‘iaka 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 Mo‘o; 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 ‘Ohana, 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 ‘ohana, or extended family. While responsibilities and roles within the ‘ohana 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. Women’s 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 ‘aikapu, the restrictive eating rule, University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa Hawaiian Studies professor Lilikala Kame‘eleihiwa conjectures that the ‘aikapu 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.

‘Aikapu is that which prevents the “unclean” 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 Hawai‘i. 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 ‘ohana 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 chief’s 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 “chiefess” 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 ‘ohana 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 Hawai‘i 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 Kamehameha’s 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 ma‘i oku‘u, 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 Cook’s expedition in Hawai‘i in 1778–1779, 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 Hawai‘i 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 Kekuhaupi‘o, 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 Kamehameha’s Battle of Nu‘uanu on O‘ahu 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 O‘ahu 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 Kamehameha’s rise to power rallied to wrest control over their ancestral chiefdoms back from the Kamehameha chiefs and their allies. Kamehameha’s...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Through “Our” Eyes: Asian/Pacific Islander American Women’s History
• Introduction: On Our Terms: Definitions and Context
• Part I Re-envisioning Women’s History
• Part II Revisiting Immigrant Wives and Picture Brides
• Part III Recovering Women’s History through Oral History and Journal Writing
• Part IV Contesting Cultural Formations and Practices, Constructing New “Hybrid” Lives
• Part V Reshaping Lives and Communities after Militarism and War
• Part VI Negotiating Globalization, Work, and Motherhood
• Part VII Challenging Community and the State: Contemporary Spaces of Struggle
• Part VIII Additional Resources
• About the Contributors
• Index