A Paradise Lost - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

historiographers highlight the variety of “training and performance in the theatre, music,
dance, and the visual arts,” as well as the teaching of “a wide range of languages” and the
preservation of the Hawaiian language as its biggest merits. 204
At the same time, the University has long remained a vestige of Euro-American
cultural hegemony. Hence, its history, anthropology, and literature teaching and research
have to be viewed critically. Especially the English Department has long denied
indigenous and Asian writers access to the ivory tower of canonized and ‘serious’
literature. The significant changes in attitudes and teaching have been brought about by
the ethnic studies departments, and then carried over into the sanctuary of colonial
education: The more recent cross-listed courses, collaborations of university and Local
groups such as Bamboo Ridge, as well as the organization of Asian/Pacific conferences
indicate a due shift of awareness and policy, and a promising degree of decolonization. 205
The University has thus been the cradle of many of Hawaii’s contemporary
writers as well as the institution that sanctioned and authorized the earlier Orientalist
canon. Hence the development of some of its departments can show the progression from
a literature about Hawai’i to one from Hawai’i. When the territorial college, founded in
1907, acquired university status in 1921, the Board of Regents stated: “The University
should become a center for the study of Hawaiian and a strong effort made to preserve the
language in its purity.” 206 The way for formal education in the native language was paved
several years later by according Hawaiian the same status as the traditionally required
languages of the Occident and Orient had, thus treating an oral and declining language as
the equal of languages with highly developed and academically studied literatures. In
spite of such promising beginnings, by the 1940s it seemed that the church “was the last
refuge of the spoken language within the cities.” 207 At the same time, the developing
204 Kamins/Potter 1998: 309.
205 Richard Hamasaki and the late Wayne Westlake, two Local poets in the ethnic studies program, initiated
the cross-listed “Ethnic Literature of Hawai’i” in the 1980s. A recent example of decolonizing activity
would be the renaming and rededication of the University’s Student Services Center on Manoa campus,
conducted with a Hawaiian prayer and blessing ceremony, complete with traditional costume, meaningful
plant decoration, as well as native chanting and instrumentation. The Center was named after Hawaii’s last
monarch, Queen Liliuo’kalani, on February 21 st , 2002 (personal attendance). Considering her overthrow in
1893 that paved the way for American annexation, the renaming was a symbolical, apologetic, and political
act. It fits in with the recently formulated recognition of “our kuleana (responsibility) to honor our host
culture and promote social justice for Native Hawaiians” (Honolulu Weekly May 1-7, 2002, article on the
UH-Manoa Strategic Plan 2001-2010).
206 Kamins/Potter 1998: 138.
207 Ibid.: 139.
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