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+--- Thread: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation (/showthread.php?tid=18668)
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RE: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation - HereOnThePrimalEdge - 08-20-2017
How much Hawaiian culture have they incorporated into the service?
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Odd statement.
The point of my OP is to draw a comparison between the TMT & the Mormon Church in Hawaii, and how "The Protectors" blame all manner of cultural and religious ills on one, and not on the other. Read some of the comments made at the TMT hearing about the detrimental effects telescopes on Mauna Kea have on Hawaiian practitioners, then consider whether missionaries and churches have caused similar or even more extensive losses to Hawaiian tradition.
The Mormon Church has certainly had positive effects in many ways on their membership and neighbors. They also have a fair number of questionable practices, such as baptizing without permission people of other faiths after they've died. It's an ongoing program with a goal to convert billions of people, identified through their wholly owned non-profit Ancestry.com website. If their religion won't even allow you to rest in peace with your own faith or lack thereof after you've died, they certainly had no compunction in converting and replacing the faith of living Hawaiians back in the 1800's.
For all the good they have done, the church and their missionaries have also perpetrated more harm on the Hawaiian people, their culture and religion than the TMT ever could. And "The Protectors" stand silent. No rocks in the driveways of Mormon Churches or other churches in the islands. It's not the telescopes that banned the Hawaiian language, banned hula, and created dress codes for Hawaiian women. It's not the telescopes that replaced an existing way of life and belief system with their own.
RE: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation - alaskyn66 - 08-20-2017
..And they are snappy dressers..
RE: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation - MarkD - 08-21-2017
From HOTPE
Last week on another thread, someone mentioned that the Polynesian Cultural Center is owned and operated by the Mormon Church....with all of the talk about Native Hawaiian rights swirling around the legal battle with the TMT on Mauna Kea...why is the Polynesian Cultural Center granted a more or less free pass (as it were) by "The Protectors" et al?
Not sure the comparison is apt. Some differences:
1. TMT is a project proposed for a natural environment (already modified by other telescopes). There has been some grumbling about some of the previous telescopes, so there is a history of discontent.
Is PCC site sacred in any way, i.e. was there objection to the covering of the taro field? I do not perceive that there was.
2. TMT is a proposal; PCC is history. Seems fair to say that the matter of missionaries who condemned and destroyed Native Hawaiian religion and practices is not a pressing topic of concern to most present day native Hawaiians. PCC, whatever its residual negative connotations, is grandfathered in.
Making an issue of PCC now is somewhat analogous to the campaign to tear down Confederate statues. And in my conservative opinion most of the anti-statue rhetoric was engineered by mostly white Social Justice Warriors on college campuses who found it convenient (between attacking free speech commentators on campuses) to rile up the African American community on this matter.
Perhaps a demagogue could rile up the "Protectors" to march, torches in hand, on the PCC. But probably not likely.
Yes, the same Hawaiians who have no objection to the Poly Cult Center most likely appreciate jobs the observatories bring, as well as the science, and education in the 21st century.
Native Hawaiians have a fairly long history of working at luaus and various tourist attractions in Hawaii like PCC. Not sure the supposed job opportunities as TMT equate. Aren't the jobs at TMT mostly academic and technical? And not to disparage native Hawaiians, but I do not see advanced science jobs being on or near the top of the list of things they perceive as valuable to their culture. They have their focus on a lot of things; IMO that is not one of them.
In sum, seems the PCC is really old history, again, grandfathered in...
RE: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation - HereOnThePrimalEdge - 08-21-2017
In sum, seems the PCC is really old history, again, grandfathered in...
I agree. But then, wouldn't it be the same for the 1893 overthrow, grandfathered in after all this time? But yet...
The choices of what to protest appear ala carte, with little to connect the dots. My assumption is "The Protectors" have too many relatives who are church going Hawaiians, and it would create more trouble than it's worth to them. So churches get a free pass for any and all historical activities, no matter how culturally detrimental, or what types of desecration were involved. Same with OHA. Same with DHHL.
(It's) what the existentialists called "awful freedom" the reinvention of irrationality by marginalized people, just in order to spite science. -Elif Batuman
RE: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation - kalakoa - 08-21-2017
PCC is history
Walmart and Safeway and Target and Home Depot are all history too.
RE: Polynesian Cultural Ctr & Cultural Appropriation - MarkD - 08-21-2017
The choices of what to protest appear ala carte, with little to connect the dots.
Pretty much agree. They have to keep one protest running statewide at all times, I think. (Lest people think they are no longer unhappy). Didn't there used to be a saying with the word "restless" about that?