John Oliver Last Week Tonight - Hawaii

[HiloJulie]

Well, new Moderator not withstanding, but I see we’re back to, and I quote someone who has been in the news a great deal from very recent past, but here goes:

“Same old tired playbook”

“Next question thread please!”

[Moderator 2]

Thanks to everyone who contributed thought provoking, historical and cultural insights on this thread, whether they be links to books, periodicals, or news articles.  And opinion.  There’s much to consider and learn.  

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.  There’s more than one way to skin a cat.  Even if you’re an old dog, you can still end up like the cat.

[TomK]

Well any creditably you thought you had vaporized.. good luck with that.

Is this analogous to shooting yourself in the foot? One wonders.

[ironyak]

HPE - Do we know why there are shrines near the adze quarry?
For religious purposes?
https://www.nps.gov/places/mauna-kea-adz-quarry.htm
"More than 35 shrines rest on high points throughout the complex. The shrines consist mostly of upright stones made of angular slabs of rock. The two classes of shrines at Mauna Kea Adz Quarry are occupational and non-occupational. Occupational shrines appear to be related to adze production, are generally found near workshops, and have items such as stone flakes and preformed blades left on or very near the shrines. Non-occupational shrines do not appear to be associated with adze making and range in complexity from small groups of upright stones to shrines with pavements, prepared courts, and a large number of uprights stones. It is thought that the shrines were meant for the different small and large gods associated with Mauna Kea. Non-workshop-associated shrines found near an open-air shelter at Lake Waiau, a sacred alpine lake near the summit, may possibly be associated with the snow line and Poli'ahu the goddesses of snow who resides on the volcano."

Your point?

HPE - Whether they were built concurrently, or as part of the process?
Not that I know of, but this isn't my area of expertise. As mentioned in the video, most of the adze blanks and chips date anywhere from 1400 to 1800 CE, but radiocarbon dating may push early work at the site to around 1000 CE, so plenty of time for the complex to develop.

HPE - Or was the road to the quarry the best road up Mauna Kea due to the amount of traffic and transportation of food up and adze down, so cultural practitioners found it the best route if they wanted to climb the mauna, either as mining community or as a separate shrine in the heavens?
It would be hard to imagine that it was the most difficult route up the mauna, as it's already a bit of a task to get up there. If you're trying to make a point, it might be helpful just to say it?

Understanding that, for me personally, when someone provides an interpretation of how the site was used, who has decades of experience and the access and motivation to review tons of related academic research, I tend to listen to their expertise. Can an alternate narrative be made? Sure, but given it's not grounded in the same level of experience and academic knowledge, it's hard to give it a similar weight of consideration.

https://keolamagazine.com/land/the-story-of-iliahi/
"All the people—chiefs and commoners—worked at cutting and carrying sandalwood. Consequently, the crops were neglected and famine fell like a dark cloud over the sandalwood mountains."

Yeah, capitalistic inducement can be a bitch. As we're just speculating, I would suggest the fact that there were still vast sandlewood forests available, that this type of mass harvesting was not the usual mode of gathering this resource in pre-contact Hawaii? The rest of that history, the debts to imperial powers, the ecological devastation, and such, all are what we would now call part of a Resource Curse that we've seen play out repeatedly in colonized lands over gold, oil, and many other natural resources.

HPE - Would it be a construct of the “haole mind” to think the job description for chiefs was different than that of commoners? Management and labor?
Maybe not to think it, but maybe to assume to know the actual nature of that relationship? As mentioned, maybe other comparisons like foreman and crew, or coach and team, or respected familial elder and young helpers, might equally apply. Or maybe the arrangement is something we just don't have a good comparison point for, given its nuance and complexities, and it may not be a great idea to guess at the mindset and motivations?

Genuine question - do you speak a second language HPE? In my modest attempts to acquire a second language (Japanese), it's not just vocab, syntax, and grammar that have to be absorbed, it's the unique cultural and social considerations of the language (who is speaking, to whom, in what context, etc) that makes a simple question from an American in English, e.g. "How's your family?", a intricate maze of considerations in Japanese (is the speaker male or female? speaking to a male or female? of similar age? nature of the relationship? at school, work, or home? etc). This cultural framework is extra tricky to figure out when not born and raised in it, such as for a gai-jin/haole like myself, so while I do my best to understand differing cultural perspectives, I don't presume that I know their intricate details and nuances well.

TLDR: Do you even expertise bro? ;)

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Your point?

I don’t think my comment was clear.  I know what shrines are.  I asked whether it was known, if there’s evidence they were built intentionally as part of a greater adze mining complex, or because the existing mining road made religious pilgrimages and shrines possible, by the priests?  Probably not possible to know as there is no written record by the shrine builders saying “we came here with the intention…”

when someone provides an interpretation of how the site was used, who has decades of experience and the access and motivation to review tons of related academic research

The older you get the greater the number of archeological interpretations you’ll discover that change over the years.  Nothing is carved in stone.  Except maybe adze.

Yes I speak a second language, in addition I took a year of Sanskrit in college but couldn’t speak it if I ran into the Buddha.  Fortunately his followers wrote down some of what he said.

My sister is a Republican. I understand all too well how you can interpret every single issue even in the present day from both sides.  Let me assure you, even with video, audio, and direct quotes any occurrence can be explained from a person’s preferred point of view.  I understand that.  I also understand from 500-1000 years away it’s almost impossible to know with 100% certainty which interpretation is correct. Unless there is a first person written source.  Even then, maybe not 100%.

The devil’s advocate, the contrary in Little Big Man have their place in society creating a change of perspective.  But sometimes if it’s all devil all the time it can seem like just some guy riding on a horse backwards, going nowhere.

[Punatang]

A year ago, Mark went to Washington D. C., and gave Congress and lawmakers over 5,000 native trees from the area to raise awareness about global climate change. You can meet Mark on Sundays at Maku‘u market in Puna. ❖

Thanks for that article Edge.  Our little plot benefits greatly from Mark's work and yet we had no idea. 

If you enjoy the themes in this thread then you won't be able to put this down.  You can also listen for free with a free audible trial.

https://www.amazon.com/WEIRDest-People-W...1250800072

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Henrich

[ironyak]

HPE - I don’t think my comment was clear. I know what shrines are.
Yeah, I figured you did, but it made for an opportunity to provide a little more text about the shrines and specifically the apparent occupational focus of some of them, which appears to be evidence against the notion that they were just for separate "priests" but possibly more integrated with the work itself. For me, examples like the Ise shrine show how craftsmanship, religion, and tradition can all combine to provide cultural meaning and personal purpose to manual labor, even over a millennia of repetitive work at a single site.

The older you get the greater the number of archeological interpretations you’ll discover that change over the years.
Oh, none of this is "Truth" of course, just current explanation with the evidence at hand, from those with years in the field. The lack of practitioners when the site was first being documented in the early 1800s, and not having an oral or written record of the activities there, will probably make this history difficult to know with any degree of certainty, but lots of interesting and related academic work happening - "what may be termed occupational shrines were built to the presiding gods in convenient places, and cultivators, woodsmen, fowlers, and others recited their rituals and laid their offerings upon their particular shrine before engaging in their work. (Buck, 1957)"

I understand all too well how you can interpret every single issue even in the present day from both sides.
I'm not sure I'd compare whatever the usual Republican is up to in explaining the world with an academic field like archeology, but I get your point.

But sometimes if it’s all devil all the time it can seem like just some guy riding on a horse backwards, going nowhere.
In looking for a good snorkle joke to link to link to, I was meandering back through some of the TMT threads, and was going to mention that it appears you tend to play devil's advocate, as you put it, somewhat stridently on these sorts of topics related to Hawaiian protests and sovereignty, displaying an uncharacteristically rigid perspective. Not meant as a dig or anything, just an observation from the other side of the screen, with all the limitations therein.

Personally, I've come to recognize that Hawaiian culture and history is all very complicated, and not really my place to speak about. I've come to believe that large parcels of ceded land and a portion of DHHL proceeds should be handed over so that native Hawaiian groups can do whatever they think will work best for their community, instead of having a state agency play middle-man promoting commercial developments while opportunities for Hawaiian homesteads don't actually improve much decade after decade.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

large parcels of ceded land and a portion of DHHL proceeds should be handed over so that native Hawaiian groups can do whatever they think will work best for their community, instead of having a state agency 

Yes.
We’d all be a lot better off, Native Hawaiians, politicians, every race and creed, if we discussed how that could be accomplished, in the present time, rather than arguing about the mostly unknown distant past.

[MyManao]

We’d all be a lot better off, Native Hawaiians, politicians, every race and creed, if we discussed how that could be accomplished, in the present time..

Yeah, well, Edge, if you can't address your own past it's hard to expect anything different in the future.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

if you can't address your own past 

As is often the case I have no idea what you’re talking about.  If you are referring to my recent secret initiation as the 6th member of Hawaii’s Big Five I make no apologies.

(If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, am I for or against, how much would a person have to do to be considered on par with the robber baron big boys, is low high, does one attribute make you a member of a defined group, or two, or three…???) (That’s the point.)

I put ketchup on my ketchup. - Heinz Ketchup t-shirt