Navigating Uncharted Oceans of Meaning

8/4/2019 Navigating Uncharted Oceans of Meaning

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I ka lelo n ke ola, I ka lelo n ka make.

In speech there is life, in speech death.

Hw pvb (lelo noeau)

With you is my life, With you my death. With these Words, the

american missionary rev. William richards placed himself un-der the protection o the aha lelo, a Hawaiian chiey council com-posed o the highest-ranking alii in the Sandwich Islands. On the a-ternoon o 6 November 187, Richards deended himsel beore theaha against a charge o libel brought by the English consul, RichardCharlton. Charlton had argued with Richards over a letter the minis-ter had written to his Boston-based employers, the American Boardo Commissioners or Foreign Missions (ABCFM). Te letter, writtenin October 185, contained the news that an English captain, Wil-liam Buckle, had purchased a Hawaiian woman rom a chieess. Teproblem was not the letter itsel but the act that it had been madepublic, through American newspapers. It would take the news twoyears to make its way back to the islands rom New England, a worldtwo oceans and six months sai l away. Te purchase o the woman,according to Charlton, was slavery and constituted a violation o Brit-ish piracy law (qtd. in Richards, Letter to Evarts, 6 Dec. 187). WhenRichards reused to sign an oath swearing to the veracity o his letter,Charlton accused the missionary o libel. Now both parties had comebeore the aha lelo to argue their cases. Te question beore the

chies was whether or not the American Richards should be turnedover to Charlton to ace the charge in ront o an English jury.

In an eloquent statement, Richards tried to persuade the aliih h w hm d h Egh cu dcd:

[Y]ou are our chies. We have le our own country and cannot now re-ceive the protection o its laws. . . . I I am a bad man, or i I have brokenthe laws o your country, it is or you to try, and acquit or condemn me.You alone are my judgesit is or you to send me rom your shores, or

theories andmethodologies

Navigating

Uncharted Oceans

of Meaning: Kaona

as Historical and

Interpretive Method

noelani arista

noelani arista

a hw u hw, m. h -

, h uq m:

e-a e w hw-

G lw, 17931827,

w w 2010 a n pz,

g b s a h-

b-w -

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[ 2010 by the modern language association of america

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d hc d pp

pvg v h h, I gu hboth must be drawn on i satisying historieso interoceanic relations are to be told. Given

h cu vu dcp h bgg uy gg d -p Hw-gug uc, I bvthat it is necessary to create a historical inter-pretive method built out okaona as a generallinguistic and conceptual paradigm. I use thismhd p vcu p d -digenous oral and written traditions in a waythat has not previously been attempted by his-torians or literary scholars studying Hawaii.

An Uncharted Ocean of Sources

A methodology inspired by the possibilitiesaorded by the study o Hawaiian-languagesource materials is possible since Hawaii argu-ably has the largest literature base o any nativelanguage in the Pacifc and perhaps all nativeNorth America, exceeding a million pages oprinted text, a staggering 15,000 o which

are Hawaiian-language newspapers publishedrom 184 to 1948 (Nogelmeier , 96). It seemsinexplicable, thereore, that the historiographyon Hawaii has long ignored the existence oHawaiian-language source materials. Scholarsor the most part have avoided the necessityo obtaining linguistic and cultural luency,opting instead to continue basing their histo-ries about Hawaii and Hawaiians largely onsources written in English. Until now most

scholars have depended on a slim number otexts translated rom Hawaiian into English,perpetuating what Puakea Nogelmeier hastermed a discourse o suciency ().

Understanding Kaona

Mary Kawena Pukui and Samuel H. Elbertdefne kaona as hidden meaning, as in Ha-waiian poetry; concealed reerence, as to a

person, thing, or place (10). Pukui, the ore-

most expert on the Hawaiian language andculture, elaborates on this defnition in heressay Songs (Meles) o Old Kau, Hawaii, de-scribing it as something composed into songs

and chants and assumed by listeners, whosought to interpret a compositions layers.In addition to a literal meaning, songs andchants had a kaona, or inner meaning: Teinner meaning was sometimes so veiled thatonly the people to whom the chant belongedunderstood it, and sometimes so obvious thatanyone who knew the fgurative speech o oldHw cud vy py (247).

From this perspective Hawaiian oral litera-

ture can be made comprehensible to a literary-studies audience. Kaona can be understood asmetaphoric, allegorical, or symbolic meaning.As Pukui explains, there are two primary waysthat we might look or kaonain what is statedand in to whom the statement reers:

Many poems did not hold to one thoughtalone. wo lines might be about the beauty o

a particular place and next about a bird thatperched on a tree. Such sudden and appar-

ently fckle changes in thought might soundpeculiar and jerky to a European. But to theHawaiians it was comprehensible becausekaona told the straight, consecutive story, al-though dressed in a garb o colors that didnot seem to match. Persons were sometimesreerred to as rains, winds, erns, trees, birds,ships, and so on. A person might be reerredto in the same poem as rain in one place and wd h. (24748)

For Pukui the kaona o a mele was aveiled message directed at a particular audi-ence o listeners. In more recent times a gen-eralized understanding okaona has enteredcommon usage among Hawaiians. For thoseenjoying linguistic and cultural luency, aswell as or scholars interpreting Hawaiian-language source material, kaona has come tomean double, multiple, or hidden meaningsin individual Hawaiian words. No longer is

the target audience okaona specifc, nor is

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to translate the Gospel o Matthew rom He-brew into Hawaiian in 185. aking a lookat their interaction will illustrate the web oassociative meanings that support structures

okaona. In a letter to Ruus Anderson, assis-tant secretary o the Boston-based ABCFM,Rchd dcbd h pc:

In the aernoon, Maro, my teacher comes andaua, the ahitian. I give the passage to Maroaccording to the best knowledge I have o thelanguage. Ten aua gives it to him in the a-hitian translation, then Maro puts it into pureHawaiian, and I write it down. When he uses anew word I put the word in my vocabulary and

carry it to the chies so as that I may be sure toget its correct meaning. I then read the transla-tion to a number o people to see whether theyunderstand it. Tus I have proceeded throughseventeen Chapters and hope to fnish the Gos-pel o Matthew in about two months.

ranslation engaged Malos knowledge okaona, o interconnected meanings and thecontexts to which words belong in Hawai-ian. Richards emphasized the importance o

Malos expertise in language in a letter to Jer-mh Ev, cpdg cy hABCFM (7 Oc. 1828):

Te author is among the most intelligent othe people and a most valuable assistant intranslating his knowledge o his own lan-guage, is thorough, is able to give authoritiesor his use o words by reerence to ancientmeles [songs] and kanikaus [grie chants],is a valuable member o the church, is oen

consulted by the chies on important businessand is esteemed by them as a good counselor.

Richards also recorded important in-ormation about how language unctions inan oral tradition. he idea that words maybe given authority and enlarge their feld omeaning through their usage in other orallypreserved works is o particular interest here.Malo was highly conversant in Hawaiian oral

traditions; not only had he been trained in rit-

ual, spoken prayer, and genealogy, but he alsoknew dierent chant orms, like oli, mele, andkanikau.2 As Malo translates the passages, heneeds to take Richardss imperect Hawaiian

and discuss the problematic areas with aua,who was a ahitian missionary working withRev. William Ellis, o the London Mission-ary Society in Hawaii. Trough a ahitian-Hawaiian repositioning o the word, Malocomes to a more coherent Hawaiian statemento the Gospel. Richardss culturally blank Ha-waiian is remediated, acquiring meanings nowsonorous with Malos Hawaiian traditionalknowledge. A process o comparisonMalo

apprehending a Gospel passage, locating it ina Hawaiian plane o word contexts, and thendelivering it back to Richardsleads to theprocess o educating Richards in the Hawai-ian contexts o the words and where and howthey unction in their various locations, givingthe missionary an education in Hawaiian cul-tural literacy.3 Te cross-cultural translationamong Richards, Malo, and aua serves alsoas a metaphor or the work that scholars mustdo when reading and interpreting sources.

Curiously, Richardss report provides uswith evidence or the necessity o a kaona-conscious way o reading Hawaiian historicalsources. Richardss relationship to Malo wasthe beginning or both o them o relating to h d pducd muu duc:

When we are engaged in the translation it isreally very pleasing to watch the countenanceo Maro and see how he is aected by the

dierent truths. Among the passages whichseemed powerully to aect his mind I maymention, In Rama there was a voice heard.Te oxes have holes, the birds o the air havenests, also the history o our Saviors temp-tation in the wilderness, together with all hisparables, fgures and il lustrations. . . . We areamiliar with a thousand fgures, which in ourlanguage and to our minds are orcible andbeautiul. But attempt to use them in this lan-guage and to this people and they vanish. Not

so with the illustrations o our Savior, they are

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always understood, they touch the heart.(Richards, Letter to Anderson)

Richardss singular observation was that

the central diculty o the translation pro-cess was not only that he had to stretch him-sel to understand that Hawaiian words hadrelated ields o meaning but also that thethings he took or granted about expressingbeing in the world were not intelligible toMalo or other Hawaiians. For the gospel totake root, Richards needed to ind the cor-rect words and phrases that would resonatewith Hawaiian experience and would connectto and draw on established Hawaiian usage.Beyond that, Richards knew that God wouldpvd wh humy w wg.

In this essay I have given a glimpse o howkaona as a phenomenon generalized to theHawaiian language can begin to assist schol-ars in envisioning and practicing a historicalmethodology that is Hawaiian-based. hismethodology, premised as it is on the linguis-tic structures and comparative thought pro-cesses embedded in the Hawaiian language,

emphasizes multiplicity, questioning the va-lidity o monoperspectival Euro-Americaninterpretations o contact, colonization, andresistance. Emphasizing the uidity implicitin Hawaiian, this method provides a para-digm or reenvisioning moments o under-standing and miscommunication in contactsituations between continental and oceanicpeoplesbetween New Englanders, Britons,d Hw, xmpd h p-p vg c p.

I ka lelo n ke ola, I ka lelo n ka make.

In speech there is life, in speech death.

Notes

1. Richards recorded his entire statement beore the ahalelo in his letter to Jeremiah Evarts dated 6 Dec. 187.

2. Rchd cdd h wd Egh,

clear whether he simply said, I ka lelo n ke ola, I ka

lelo n ka make or whether he changed the phrase topersonalize it with my and with you, pronouncing

i oukou kou ola, i oukou kou make or some vari-

h. Hwv, v wh cdd Egh hph d u bcu my.

. I m dbd Lu Lhu Ym h d-

cussions with me about kaona and or some o the ideas

h pp h pgph.

4. According to Puakea Nogelmeier, the archive in thePacifc most comparable with Hawaiis is New Zealands.Maori writings equal approximately thirty thousand

pages o text, seventeen thousand o which are containedin the Maori Newspaper section o the New Zealand Digi tal Library (www.zd.g/cg-b/by).

5. Te missionaries rom the ABCFM promotedpala pala (reading and writing) in the Hawaiian language.However, the sprawling record o the missionits letters,

journals, ocial reports, newspaper articles, and memoirs,collected since 180is the oundation on which knowl-edge o Hawaiians and Hawaii was built, by Americans and

others across the globe. For the world study o Hawaiiansand Hawaii to move orward, it is critical that this largelyEuro-American historiographic tradition be contextual-ized in relation to the writings o native Hawaiians in theirown language. I hope that the next generation o scholars in

multiple disciplines wil l be involved deeply in this project.

6. Te translations that most authors rely on are Malo;Kmku; d I.

7. See the work o Adrienne Kaeppler, Konai Heluha man, and Okustino Mahina on Heliaki, a onganphm gug d dc m kaona.

8. I am indebted to Puakea Nogelmeier or his discus- wh m bu h d, g uddg

kaona and about the way the concept has changed over

time in the Hawaiian community, particularly among

cmp d ch.

9. Kanikau were published extensively in Hawaiian-

language newspapers rom the mid to the late nineteenthcentury. Composers were o all stations and agesrom

alii to children. he sheer volume o chants and the

length o some o them were noted on several occasions

by newspaper editors, who published apologies when theyw ub p ubm.

10. I Hw, d wd d p cu-

vy, c , d h pc w kw by ppm.

11. Malo was a counselor to the alii and was trained in

oral traditions that included the sacred genealogies o chies,mele inoa (birth and honorifc songs), kanikau (laments),

hula (dances and chants), and religious ceremonies. Te alii

had assigned him to both teach and learn rom Richards.

1. Malo composed several grie chants published in

Hawaiian-language newspapers. A dirge he composed orKaahumanu, a chieess, enjoyed such popularity that it

nvgtg ucrted oces f meg: Kaona s hstrcl d iterpretve metd [ P M L A

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continued to be published rom 184, its frst appearance,u h y 1900.

1. Te cross-cultural t ranslation and composition thattook place among these three men serve as a rich start-ing point or thinking beyond the colonial binary native/

missionary and the power dynamics commonly associatedwith those positions. Further inquiry into these kinds ointeractions may orm a basis or theorizi ng potentialcross-cultural analysis and encounter in our own period.

Works Cited

Ii, John Papa. Fragments o Hawaiian History. Honolulu:Bhp Muum, 1959. P.

Kaahiki, Ioane. Kanikau no P. Manihi. Ka npepa ko koa [Huu] 9 Oc. 1871. P.

Kaeppler, Adrienne L. Poetics and Politics o onganLaments and Eulogies.American Ethnologist0.3

(199): 474501. P.

Kamakau, Samuel Manaiakalani. Ruling Chies o Ha waii. Honolulu: Kamahameha Schools P, 1961. Print.

Mahina, Okusitino. Te Poetics o ongan raditional

History, Tala e onua .Journal o Pacifc History 8.1(199): 10922. P.

Malo, David. Hawaiian Antiquities. rans. Nathaniel B.

Em. Huu: Bhp Muum, 1997. P.

Nogelmeier, Puakea. Mai Paa I Ka Leo: Historical Voicein Hawaiian Primary Materials, Looking Forward

and Listening Back. Diss. U o Hawaii, Mnoa,

200. P.Pukui, Mary Kawena. Songs (Meles) o Old Kau, Ha-

waii. Journal of American Folklore 6.45 (1949):

24758. P.

Pukui, Mary Kawena, and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian

Dictionary. Huu: U Hw P, 198. P.

Richards, William. Letter to Ruus Anderson. 1 Jan. 185.MS. ABCFM Papers. Houghton Lib., Harvard U.

. Letter to Jeremiah Evarts. 6 Dec. 187. MS. ABCFM-HEA Papers, 180190. Hawaiian Mission ChildrensSoc. Lib., Honolulu.

. Letter to Jeremiah Evarts. 7 Oct. 188. MS.

ABCFM Pp. Hugh Lb., Hvd U.Silva, Noenoe.Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resis

tance to American Colonialism. Durham: Duke UP,

2004. P.

Taman, Konai Helu. Decolonizing Pacifc Studies: In-

digenous Perspectives, Knowledge, and Wisdom in

Higher Education. Contemporary Pacifc 15.1 (00):117. P.

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