Aloha Ke Ao Nei

Aloha! (Hello!) E hele mai 'oe me a'u (Come with me). Allow me to take you on an adventure through my recent experience with Polynesian culture. After a great week at sea, making friends and studying vigilantly, we finally made it to the magnificent island of Oahu in Hawai'i and boy is it magnificent! We spent the morning at the Bishop Museum learning about Polynesian culture before hiking Diamondhead, a mountain peak in Oahu, in the afternoon. It was a great trip with a beautiful view of the city of Oahu and the nature that surrounds it.

My first informal interest to have picked up is the oceanic language. The language of Oceania and its islanders is surprising simplistic from a linguist stance. It consists of thirteen letters: five vowels (a,e,i,o,u) and eight constants (h,k,l,m,n,p,w and ' {the okina}). When the discussion of a global language came up a few decades ago, the oceanic language was considered a finalist just because of the simplicity of its alphabet. However, like all languages, there are different dialects that separate the islands from each other. Some dialects are more different than others but its estimated that even the most different dialects still speak about 60% of the same language. Deciding on a dialect to study in Polynesia isn't an easy choice but since I was studying in Hawai'i I figured it made the most sense to study the Hawaiian dialect.

The simplicity of the language brought up some interesting concepts, debates, and discussions throughout the next few days. Does the simplicity of their language make their culture "less advanced" or does it make it "ahead of its time"? I'll use this to transition into a new segment I'm adding to my blog, Global Lessons.

Global Lesson #1

In my literature class, we studied the Polynesian culture through the eyes of renown anthropologist, Wade Davis. Davis argues that culture is not as linear of a chain as most tend to believe and I concur. Try thinking of culture more as a spider web than as a ladder. A web has multiple different paths that all lead to the center (Diagram below: I used 8 different topics for the sake of simplicity but that does not even come close to scratching the surface of all the different aspects of culture.)

In the Western point of view, a culture is typically judged in its progress by its technological prowess and economical power. That is the generally accepted judgment today across the board but is it right? If you view cultural evolution as a ladder than this may seem correct. However if you view culture as web than you realize that trying to judge a culture is anything but a black and white matter. Its a very gray discussion. For example: The western world may have viewed the lifestyle of the native Hawaiians as brutish and savage due to their lack of technology and the lack of a major religion. However the Hawaiians viewed the Europeans as cruel and foolish.

The Hawaiians, alongside the rest of Polynesia, populated the pacific without the use of modern navigation tools like the compass. Using just the stars, and observing nature around them, Polynesian navigators were able to travel the Pacific in just a canoe. It is said that a master Polynesian navigator can read the waves around an island to identify it, the same way a forensic scientist can identify a suspect with their fingerprint. Truly amazing stuff. 

To recap, the idea of culture progression shouldn't be a linear path. Every culture has a different piece to the puzzle in the collective of human beliefs, thoughts and ideas (a.k.a the "Etnosphere"). Giving these cultures a voice and working with them to put these pieces of the puzzle together should be a universal human goal.

A Hui Hou (See you later/Until next time)

Maxwell