Kealoha Pisciotta - Mauka & Makai

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

Doctors and dentists offer expert, sometime dangerous, services to the public at large. Native people do no such thing. Their obligation to justify and explain themselves is much less.

Kealoha Pisciotta has also led the fight against the TMT. Her arguments against it have been based on personal statements about specific Hawaiian cultural and religious practices. I would contend that she needs to prove a basis for those statements, either in historical fact, or in existing long term cultural practices that have been observered before she became a practitioner (otherwise she may have just made up the practice). If she can’t do that, she is dangerous, perhaps not like an impostor dentist hovering over an individual in a dentist chair, but to society at large by making personally biased, inaccurate, and blatently false claims, claims which are then believed by others because they’re willing to accept nothing more than her word, without any other proof that she is an expert practitioner.

Is the jury still deadlocked? The odds that natural climate variability can account for the magnitude of the temperature changes over the course of the satellite record are roughly five in a million, researchers report. - Science, July 19, 2018.

[MarkD]

Your points are fair. The discussion here was primarily on the whale burial. This was much more of a private matter, involving a dead whale, some native Hawaiians and a marine protection agency, and its supporters.

The TMT case is much different; the native Hawaiian challenge to TMT does require a high level of justification.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

the native Hawaiian challenge to TMT does require a high level of justification.

I made the connection because her comments and testimony about the TMT have not always been... accurate, so for me that calls into question the validity of her statements about the whale. There were only two participants in the burial, no other witnesses, and the evidence was weighed down and disposed of into the depths of the ocean.

We'll never know for certain what took place, and why, but what we're dealing with here is not your average, ordinary, run-of-the-mill whale burial.

Is the jury still deadlocked? The odds that natural climate variability can account for the magnitude of the temperature changes over the course of the satellite record are roughly five in a million, researchers report. - Science, July 19, 2018.

[MarkP]

The stakes may be different but the underlying issue of truthfulness of statements and assertions made remains the same.

[kalakoa]

The TMT case is much different

The case itself, perhaps; I note the striking similarities between the "sea burial" and the "camping" which was happening during the TMT protests, not to mention the "aloha checkpoint" (if that's still a thing).

With precedent set, how about we just claim that marijuana is a "cultural practice". Unpermitted dwellings and expired registration, too, because those are just part of the religion, and that's all protected, right?

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

part of the religion, and that's all protected, right?

If not exactly protected, then certainly practiced. I know a large number unpermitted dwelling and expired registration-insurance-safety check practitioners. And they’re long past practicing, they’ve become quite adept at it. They just haven’t figured out how legitimize their actions by claiming adherence to an indigenous group.

How about the Menehune Movement? Authorities can’t question your blood quantum with any known test. Everyone who wants to join is automatically 100%, and they're allowed to live as unrestricted as the Menehune did as part of their historic, sincerely held belief system.

Is the jury still deadlocked? The odds that natural climate variability can account for the magnitude of the temperature changes over the course of the satellite record are roughly five in a million, researchers report. - Science, July 19, 2018.

[kalakoa]

Authorities can't question your blood quantum

They already can't, that's not "equal protection under the law" or something.

[geochem]

I would argue somewhat differently on all of our modern day cultural practitioners - based on the underlying (community) purpose of showing respect for traditional practices. Presumably, we show respect for those practices primarily because they are the vestiges of beliefs and understanding of the environment and human interactions by a prior culture even though those practices are not an integral part of modern life. An analogue would be, say, the Victorian houses of San Francisco - they aren't energy efficient, the rooms are cramped and poorly lit with natural light, the plumbing is questionable and not always reliable, whereas a modern building could do everything that they do with greater comfort and a lower energy demand - but we preserve them as a cultural artifact of a different age.

The traditions and beliefs can also be "mined" for useful information about the culture - the Pele chants being a record of past eruptions - or using the practices and beliefs to try to track the early people back to their origins.

However, if we accept and allow propagation of false cultural practices, those can easily overshadow and possibly obliterate the true ancient beliefs - a case in point: it's been pretty well validated that the cultural prohibition from removing lava rocks from the volcano was something completely made up by National Park rangers forty or fifty years ago - yet the young Hawaiian children now believe that this was an authentic cultural practice from ancient times.

In my opinion, these modern activist cultural practitioners are doing real harm to the culture that they are supposedly protecting - and doing that harm for entirely self-serving purposes. IF they respected their traditions and their original culture, they would do their best to portray it in as accurate a way as they can and only when and where those practices were applied. Making ad hoc claims of this or that being against their culture, or required by their culture, just so that they can get what they want, will ultimately result in diminishing of interest in preserving the culture.

It is also an unfortunate side effect of the "identity politics" that has become so popular recently....

[MarkP]

I have almost no respect for the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement as a modern cultural phenomenon. People like the anti-TMT crowd have made it a joke. Of those people that I interact with in regular life that I know to be Hawaiian I can find no fault with and those that come most readily to mind I am pleased to associate with.

[MarkD]

kalakoa: "With precedent set, how about we just claim that marijuana is a "cultural practice". Unpermitted dwellings and expired registration, too, because those are just part of the religion...

Items 1 and 2 have a solid basis. Some native tribes have the right to ceremonial use of peyote, a much stronger drug than marijuana. If pot use could be similarly demonstrated as cultural, the case could be made. And codes preventing the widespread building of traditional grass hales is highly problematic, though I can see the argument that such exemptions should be allowed only on reservations--which native Hawaiians do not have.

geochem: "it's been pretty well validated that the cultural prohibition from removing lava rocks...was something completely made up by National Park rangers...yet the young Hawaiian children now believe that this was an authentic cultural practice..."

Good point, and this relates to another angle: some native Hawaiians trying to throw their weight around by barking at people for 1) taking rocks from HVNP 2) putting sticks into a hot lava (disrespecting Pele) 3) taking sand from a beach. What is the evidence for cultural prohibition on sticks in lava?

Perhaps the ultimate example might be opposition to TMT. I won't opine on this proposition any more, but speaking generally, it is known that native peoples, Hawaiians and native Americans on the mainland, periodically make noise--sometimes bossing people around--in part to let everyone know they're still relevant.

Interesting distinction between tribal peoples doing their own thing--drugs, building structures, burying animals--and facing criticism for that versus tribal peoples declaring that others' actions are offensive (building TMT on Mauna Kea, Dakota Access Pipeline)