A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

Again, the native part of Alan, signified by his other name Ku’uleialoha (approx.
‘beautiful wreath of love’), asserts itself within language; he answers his grandmother in
Hawaiian.
Several texts mention the danger of dabbling with ancient and/or sacred aspects of
Hawaiian culture. Today, the connection to and understanding of indigenous ritual,
religion, and mana are fragmentary and tentative at best. Sensitive people thus prefer to
be wary and respectful towards the spiritual part of native culture. Both ‘insiders’ like the
PKO members who argue about how to properly conduct ceremonies and treat ancient
bones in Rodney Morales’ novel When the Shark Bites, as well as non-native people
involved in cultural practices such as the dancing of hula seem to sense that sacredness
and profanity are serious matters even in the contemporary world. In this respect, Hawai’i
is not like every other faceless postmodern space, as the Local Japanese narrator of Chris
McKinney’s short story “Kahalaopuna” realizes after she has participated in a hula
competition: Her halau’s rendition of a Manoa-based legend obviously called forth the
wrath of the story’s title goddess, marking the dancers with painful burn marks. While the
pure Hawaiian member of the halau is spared, the narrator relates how they “made the
proper apologies, with a kahuna, in accordance to ancient religious laws.” 390
Native Hawaiians are faced with a host of perpetually ruminated stereotypes and
generalizations. Storyteller and poet Lopaka Kapanui condenses a native self-image in the
face of such reductive discourse in a poem entitled “A Pagan Tattoed Savage.” It reads:
I am an actor, a preacher, a tour guide, a teacher, a wrestler and sometimes a poet /
I am a Renaissance, an enigma, and a good model figure, and sometimes I don’t
even know it / All of these things I am and have been, but there is only one thing
they see: It’s the hula dancing, sign holding, spouse abusing, ‘A‘ala Park living,
four-wheel driving, Waikīkī Shell concert going, mindless State job working, City
and County refuse truck driving, 99 years on the homeland list waitin Pagan
Tattooed Savage… in me. 391
390 Chris McKinney, “Kahalaopuna,” in Hawai’i Review 22 No. 2 (Summer 1999): 82-93, here 93. Halau =
school.
391 Lopaka Kapanui, “A Pagan Tattooed Savage,” quoted from Honolulu Weekly 01/30-02/05/2002. As a
knowledgable storyteller, Kapanui had teamed up with the late Glen Grant for some of the latter’s
“Ghosthunters’ Tours.”
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