Tales from the Dark Side of the Archives: Making History in Hawai'i Without Hawaiians
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Tales from the Dark Side of the Archives: Making History in Hawai'i Without Hawaiians Avis Kuuipoleialoha Poai* [H]e makemake ko'u e pololei ka moolelo o ko'u one hanau, aole na ka malihini e ao mai ia'u i ka mooolelo o ko'u lahui, na'u e ao aku i ka moolelo i ka malihini. I want the history of my homeland to be correct, it is not the foreigner who will teach me the history of my people, it is I who shall teach the foreigner. -Samuel M. Kamakau' I. INTRODUCTION ............................... ........ 538 II. "THAT'S ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS": APPLICABLE PROFESSIONAL RESEARCH STANDARDS FOR STUDENTS, ATTORNEYS, SCHOLARS, AND JUDGES ............ ......... 543 A. Sweating the Small Stuff Why Proper Citation to Credible, Verifiable Sources Is Important ..................... .......... 553 1. Why a seventh-grade textbook and HawaiiHistory.Org are not credible sources .................................................554 2. Why extensively quoting outdated and/or facially biased sources is not "relevant history "-it is unsophisticated advocacy ............................... .............. 560 Assistant Faculty Specialist, Director of Archives and Legal History, Ka Huh Ao, Center for Excellence in Native Hawaiian Law, William S. Richardson School of Law. To my husband and son, thank you for enduring twelve weeks of drudgery-I could not have written this article without your support and understanding. I am also indebted to Kapali Lyon, Susan Serrano, Dina Shek, and Eric Yamamoto for their patience, time, suggestions, and comments. I have adopted modem orthography for Hawaiian language ('O1elo Hawai'i) terms in this article where applicable, using the 'okina, representing a glottal stop, and the kahako to denote lengthening of the vowel sound. However, I do not add these markers when quoting original materials from nineteenth-century court records, laws, and newspapers. Any errors in translations, orthography, and spelling are my own. The title of this article, which was somewhat cheekily inspired by the television series, Tales from the Darkside, has a nuanced meaning that I invite readers to reflect upon. The opening sequence of the show began with this rather ominous message: Man lives in the sunlit world of what he believes to be reality. But there is, unseen by most, an underworld, a place that is just as real, but not as brightly lit ... a darkside. Tales From the Darkside (Laurel Entm't, Inc. & Tribune Entm't 1983). 'Samuel M. Kamakau, Hooheihei ka Nukahalale, KE Au OKOA, Oct. 16, 1865, at 1. 538 University ofHawai'i Law Review / Vol. 39:53 7 III. PAST IMPERFECT: MAKING HISTORY WITHOUT HAWAIIANS .............................................. 565 A. Law As Archive............. ...................... ...... 567 B. Hawai'i'sHistoriography Is Flawed... ............................... 572 C. The Silencing of Minaleo: The Effect of Colonialism on the HawaiianLanguage Corpus ofArchival Materials....... ......... 575 D. Lost in Translation: The DisappearanceofHawaiian in Hawai'i's Legal History .................................................... 582 E. A Case in Point: Kuykendall, the Oligarchy Newspapers, and Dole's Assault on the Opposition Media............ ................ 599 1. The English newspapers that spoke for the oligarchy: how the establishmentpress shaped history.............. ............ 607 2. The 1893 Overthrow and Sanford BallardDole's war with the opposition newspapers. ........................... ....... 612 IV. CONCLUSION.. ..................................... 626 I. INTRODUCTION In today's world, the ways in which Native Hawaiian 2 history has been framed drastically departs from the way Hawaiian historian Samuel Kamakau envisioned and advocated to Hawaiian Kingdom citizens in 1865-foreigners should not be teaching Hawaiians about their own history-and yet, that is exactly what has happened. For Native Hawaiians, our continuing struggle for self-determination has often involved questions relating to our history and a critique of how we have been represented or excluded from various accounts. As noted by scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith, "Under colonialism indigenous peoples have struggled against a Western view of history and yet been complicit with that view. We have often allowed our 'histories' to be told and have become outsiders as we heard them being retold."3 2 The terms "Native Hawaiian," "Kanaka 'Oiwi," and "Kanaka Maoli," are used interchangeably in this article. "Kanaka Maoli" is defined as a "[flull-blooded Hawaiian person." MARY KAWENA PUKUI & SAMUEL H. ELBERT, HAWAIIAN DICTIONARY 127 (rev. & enlarged ed. 1986). In modem times, it refers to all persons of Native Hawaiian ancestry without regard to blood quantum. See Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie, Introduction, in NATIVE HAWAIIAN LAW: A TREATISE xi, xiv-xv (Melody Kapilialoha MacKenzie et al. eds., 2015). The term "'Oiwi" is defined as "Native, native son." PUKUI & ELBERT, supra, at 280. 3 LINDA TUHIWAI SMITH, DECOLONIZING METHODOLOGIES: RESEARCH AND INDIGENOUS PEOPLES 33 (2005). 2017 / TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE 539 Chief Judge James S. Bums (retired) is a respected jurist with an illustrious 30-year law career.4 He is known for his "calm demeanor," and his "common-sense approach to the law and his ability to treat people with dignity and respect." 5 Mindful of his many contributions and the well- deserved public accolades he has garnered, I worried about the potential ramifications for contradicting the history posited by Judge Bums in his article, The Crown Lands Trust: Who Were, Who Are, the Beneficiaries?6 Indeed, Native Hawaiians have been taught to respect their elders: "I pa'a i kona kupuna 'a'ole ktkou e puka."7 This poetical saying, known as an 'Olelo No'eau, is said to remind us to respect the senior line because they came first.' And while Judge Bums is entitled to our profound gratitude for his many years of service, as a Native Hawaiian, I have an overriding commitment to honor my ancestors, who have for over a century been effectually silenced by outsiders telling the history of our own people. Judge Bums, like many others, recounts a Westerner's view of Native Hawaiian history where Native Hawaiians existed in a feudal and war- ridden society with ali'i and m'T (king) exercising absolute authority. 9 According to this Western narrative, once Europeans arrived, Native Hawaiians had little power or control, were forced to adopt European- American laws, and were ultimately betrayed by their own leaders.'o How this oft-repeated story has become so deeply entrenched in our legal system requires us to look critically at the sources upon which many historians rely and the sources they overlook. Quite simply, the available corpus of Hawaiian-language materials, hand-written and published, is the largest of any native language in the Pacific, and the largest of any indigenous language in the United States and perhaps in all of native North America." The corpus exceeds a million pages of printed text' 2-the 4 End ofJudge Burns' CareerPosits a Lesson, HONOLULU ADVERTISER, Apr. 20, 2007, http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2007/Apr/20/op/FP704200332.html. 5 Id. 38 U. HAw. L. REV. 213 (2016). MARY KAWENA PUKUI, 'OLELO NO'EAU: HAWAIIAN PROVERBS AND POETICAL SAYINGS 136 n.1251 (1983). This 'O1elo No'eau is translated as: "Had our ancestress died in bearing our grandparent, we would not have come forth." Id. 8 Id. 9 See Burns, supra note 6, at 217-23. 10 Id. at 214, 232-38, 253. 1 See discussion infra Section III.C.; see also M. PUAKEA NOGELMEIER, MAI PA'A I KA LEO: HISTORICAL VOICE IN HAWAIIAN PRIMARY MATERIALS, LOOKING FORWARD AND LISTENING BACK 1 (2010); Noelani Arista, Ka Waihona PalapalaManaleo: Research in a Time of Plenty, Colonialism and Ignoring the Hawaiian Language Archive, in INDIGENOUS TEXTUAL CULTURES (forthcoming 2017) (manuscript at 1) (on file with author). 540 University ofHawai'i Law Review / Vol. 39:53 7 remainder, which is hand-written and located in various archives locally, nationally, and internationally, is left largely uncharted. It is estimated that a very tiny fraction, less than one percent of the available corpus, has been translated and used.' 3 Entire books of history have been extracted from this tiny fraction of the available corpusl 4-the rest has been left to "obscurity" in the "dark side" of the archives. The history that has been gleaned from this tiny fraction has become known as the "authoritative canon" and the so-called foundation of Hawaiian knowledge and history.' 5 However, the translations upon which these source materials were founded upon are flawed-the original works were simplified, reordered, and decontextualized to fit and reinforce Western intellectual paradigms.1 6 Worse still, the authoritative canon comprising the "entirety" of Native Hawaiian history eclipses the larger body of source materials available. The inherent problem of an ignored Hawaiian language repository "is structural and attitudinal."' 7 Scholars today interested in Hawai'i history are not faced with archival destruction, as has occurred in many Native American and other indigenous sites of colonial contest, and is currently occurring in our world today." Instead, these sources have been devalued, ignored by scholars, while colonial processes over time have resulted in what Ngfigi wa Thiong'o refers to as a cultural bomb: The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environments, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of nonachievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland.19 Judge Bums, like so many other historians and jurists before him, whether through honest ignorance or purposeful omission, has relied on research that comprises only a small portion of what is available-the result: deeming this research as "sufficient" to represent the "official" history of the Native Hawaiian people. Unfortunately, however, this is not 12 See NOGELMEIER, supra note 11, at XIII, 2. 13 Id. at 2. 14 Id. at XIII. 15 Id. 16 Id. at 29.