Hawaiian Culture

Yeah,

Hi,

my name is keith bouvier and today we're going to

dive deep into Hawaiian culture that is seen today,

why that is based off of historical events were also

going to take a look at some creation stories and some

other myths as well.

So just to preface myself and not aligned.

So a lot of these pronunciations will be off. Please bear with me. I mean, no offense.

Uh we're also going to see some gaps in some of the original stories,

these creation stories, but first we're going to take a look

into the history and to why we're going to see some of those gaps.

Yeah,

So the Hawaiian islands were first settled as early as 400 ce.

Where when Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands,

about 2000 miles away traveled to,

they were traveled to buy a highly skilled sailors, farmers, fishermen.

Uh and these Hawaiians, they lived in small communities who battled one,

another four territory.

Here's a quick map just to show

uh, that travel from the marquesas islands, marquesas islands to Hawaii

and throughout all of Polynesia at that time.

The first european contact came from James Cook.

He in 1778, 1st called the Island Sandwich Islands that has no relevance.

I just get some fun

information. He was killed one year later

on Hawaii's big island.

uh the first Kamehameha dynasty over Hawaii was from 1795 to 1875. This is

Very important moving forward.

So King Kamehameha,

he conquered other brewers in order to unite

the Hawaiian islands into one sound kingdom.

So during that time in the 1820s,

this is when the first Christian missionaries arrived to the islands now

one year before. in 1819

lei ho lei ho

I hope I'm saying that right, The son of commedia may have one,

he got rid of the kapu system,

which the kapu system was a system of

taboos or forbidden things that should be avoided.

One example of this would be

men and women eating together that was seen as things that should not exist.

So instead of replacing the kapu system with nothing,

It was replaced with Christianity in 1820.

It just so happened that Christian missionaries came to the island at that time.

So it can be argued that if King Kamehameha

had not united these islands previous to this time,

Christianity would have had a lot more trouble spreading through the

tribes probably wouldn't have gone as peacefully as it did.

Also with the christian missionaries,

like in many other civilizations,

we see during this time,

they brought diseases with them that almost decimated the Hawaiian

people. Uh in 18 87 this was the constitution that kingdom of Hawaii uh signed.

It was very forced upon them.

It really stripped a lot of the Hawaiian monarchy of its authority as

later called the bayonet constitution just because they were forced into it.

Uh Coming from this though, we have queen

All right

Lolly.

Oh cool colony,

I really hope I pronounced that correct.

She took over in

1891. She wanted nothing to do with the constitution of 1887,

she wanted more rights for native Hawaiians. So in

1893, the United States formed a committee of safety organized by Sanford B. Dole.

Yes. The same goal that you know, as they preserved fruits.

Not the same guy with his cousin, but I digress. They staged a coup

against the queen and the monarchy at that time

and they placed her under house arrest. Really stripping

all authority from Hawaiian monarchy.

It was a quick picture.

This is actual picture taken from that coup or around that time of that coup from U. S.

Military presence in Hawaii.

Uh in 1898, the Hawaii is annexed by the United States.

Uh annexation is the transfer of political sovereignty

over to a new state. In this case, it was the United States. So hawaii was legally,

well, I used legally loosely it was

transferred over to the United States.

Uh 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state of the United States by popular vote.

I would like to go back and mention though

that three years after the Hawaiian government was overthrown,

uh english was replaced.

I'm sorry, english replaced Hawaiian as the official language of government,

business and education.

So again, we're seeing a second

state of colonization.

The first one was religious, this one cultural

uh then in the 19 seventies there's a sense of Hawaiian renaissance.

So in 1978 the amendment to the constitution

allowed Hawaiian to be taught in schools again,

but it wasn't until 1987

until Hawaiian was actually

taught in schools.

Thanks to the Hawaiian immersion program, which is still going on

today.

The renaissance of Hawaiian culture includes language, dance, arts, tradition,

customs, anything

name it,

This was a sign that you would probably see outside of businesses, schools,

things like that in before 1978, which doesn't seem that long ago because it wasn't

Then in 1993,

President Bill Clinton acknowledged that overthrowing the Hawaiian monarchy

Uh, in 1893 was illegal. Uh, nothing really came from this.

It was just an official apology saying that

the United States was, sorry,

I'm not really sure

what what that really came from that. Besides, just the apology.

So from that history, I just want to highlight a few main events.

First off, I just wanted to share the resiliency of the Hawaiian people

that has been

rooted in their culture

for thousands and thousands of years.

I'd also like to highlight the two major colonization.

Right, so we see the religious colonization uh,

In 1820, when missionaries,

Christian missionaries first arrived and then the cultural

colonization, when the United States was introduced

and really diminish that, that culture. So moving into the creation stories,

we're going to see why these color organizations

had such an effect on these creation stories.

So the ancient Hawaiians lived by a

very animalistic philosophy meaning that they thought that living souls

to animals, tree stones, clouds as well as humans

were

everywhere

we see this a lot in Japanese shinto

belief, very very similar

uh religion and mythology were often very interwoven

in Hawaiian culture and a lot of genealogy

and these creation stories were preserved in song, chant and narrative.

Now there is a problem with that

because

a lot of these

myths and creation stories were preserved

by this way.

It was usually passed down

by oral tradition.

So this was very much a problem once we started seeing this sense of colonization.

Right, so the religious colonization, the cultural colonization, a lot of these

creation stories, a lot of

these these

connections,

they kind of lost,

luckily there are starting to be found again more and more thanks to the

Hawaiian renaissance.

So hopefully we can start tying more of these stories together.

But let's start with the four main gods.

Now I also need to preface that there are hundreds if not thousands of gods. Right,

remember that

ancient Hawaiians believed in an animalistic philosophy. So

lots of

God's lots of spirits, lots of

nature around them was very, very important. So

Let's take a look at

the four main gods.

So there is kind of low uh can ku and Lono.

So first let's take a look at Connie, he is the highest

of the four gods.

He's considered a creator god associated with the dawn sun

sky separated from Pope which is darkness first and then

two and

low no came along after that.

This is very similar to greek mythology where Poe was this void.

Right?

And so we have canon emerging from this void and it wasn't so much he emerged from it.

It's he pulled himself out. That's what's described in the original text.

He has pulled himself out and became self aware

right?

And then ku and Lono pulled themselves out once they saw

Connie had done so and they also became self aware.

Again

this ties into the resilience of the Hawaiian people becoming

a self made person in this sense of god.

He's also associated with creating man from clay. We won't get into that story.

But again there are ties there with greek culture.

And also I believe a little bit of Islam as well, we're not getting too much into that.

But

he's also seen as a creator.

Yeah

so then we get into cu cu is known as the god of warfare and the caesar of land.

So he's worshiped in the summer months historically speaking,

there has been some mention that there were some human sacrifice

during his

time of worship

uh Next we have uh you know uh

represents peace, music, fertility and agriculture not to be confused with papa,

the fertility goddess and the earth mother.

Again there are a lot of these gods

and other deities.

Uh so low no the opposite of coup was worshiped during the winter months,

october through february.

So during that time there was a cop like I mentioned before,

it was forbidden to do any sort of warfare or unnecessary work during low nose time

and last we have

kind of lower

represents the complimentary iconic. So

the first Europeans,

they modeled this interpretation to me, the devil

very similar to their own christian faith is not meant like that.

Uh kind of lower was meant as a balancing force

opposing can write also ruled the underworld.

So I can kind of see that that correlation.

But really these four gods were meant to balance each other out right?

So we have low no

celebrated during the winter months,

bringing peace coup during the summer months, bringing war,

Connie.

This powerful being in kind of also very powerful but in an opposite sense.

So those are the four main gods.

Next let's go get into the

Um Aleppo. I hope I pronounced that correctly.

And the Cumin Aleppo is a perfect example of an oral tradition being passed down.

So this is a chance. There's over 2000 lines and there's total of 16 sections.

The first seven sections Fergus focus on the or the darkness and

that's what we're going to cover today in this the last nine,

focus on the light and really focuses on man and the genealogy of the royal lineage.

So the first age was darkness was everywhere,

marine invertebrates were born and a lot of the marine flora were born.

So if you can imagine

the bottom of the ocean very dark. And then

as you start going up,

the levels becomes more and more light and the creatures start becoming

more and more what we

No

right, so very similar. Um These ages they

started to get lighter and lighter and lighter. So then we go into the second age.

That's where we have the marine.

Hawaiian Culture

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