08-14-2017, 08:26 AM
Last week on another thread, someone mentioned that the Polynesian Cultural Center is owned and operated by the Mormon Church. This got me thinking, with all of the talk about Native Hawaiian rights swirling around the legal battle with the TMT on Mauna Kea, including but not limited to the deep historical backdrop of the 1893 overthrow, missionaries, and Captain Cook, why is the Polynesian Cultural Center granted a more or less free pass (as it were) by "The Protectors" et al?
Isn't the Polynesian Cultural Center, owned by the very missionaries who condemned and destroyed Native Hawaiian religion and practices? Didn't these people systematically and intentionally set out to dismantle a culture, far more than any site preparation or construction of a telescope could ever do? Isn't the commercialized presentation of Hawaiian culture by the Mormon Church at the very least an egregious act of cultural appropriation?
The Mormon Church even removed a taro field, which some might call the desecration of a sacred plant, as one final act of subjugation and victory in order to build their non-profit tourist attraction:
From their website:
Over 100 "labor missionaries" again volunteered to help build the Polynesian Cultural Center's original 39 structures on a 12-acre site that had previously been planted in taro, the native root used to make the Hawaiian staple food poi.
http://www.polynesia.com/purpose-and-his...ZIWz6I-KQw
What gives?
(It's) what the existentialists called "awful freedom" the reinvention of irrationality by marginalized people, just in order to spite science. -Elif Batuman
Isn't the Polynesian Cultural Center, owned by the very missionaries who condemned and destroyed Native Hawaiian religion and practices? Didn't these people systematically and intentionally set out to dismantle a culture, far more than any site preparation or construction of a telescope could ever do? Isn't the commercialized presentation of Hawaiian culture by the Mormon Church at the very least an egregious act of cultural appropriation?
The Mormon Church even removed a taro field, which some might call the desecration of a sacred plant, as one final act of subjugation and victory in order to build their non-profit tourist attraction:
From their website:
Over 100 "labor missionaries" again volunteered to help build the Polynesian Cultural Center's original 39 structures on a 12-acre site that had previously been planted in taro, the native root used to make the Hawaiian staple food poi.
http://www.polynesia.com/purpose-and-his...ZIWz6I-KQw
What gives?
(It's) what the existentialists called "awful freedom" the reinvention of irrationality by marginalized people, just in order to spite science. -Elif Batuman
"I'm at that stage in life where I stay out of discussions. Even if you say 1+1=5, you're right - have fun." - Keanu Reeves