Aloha kakou,
Well, been a few weeks since my first post...sorry. I'm slackin' bad. We've had a lot of amazing guest speakers since the semester began... a lot of information and ideas to digest and reflect on...I'll start with my thoughts and reactions to tonight's guest speakers: Tony and Niklaus
Tonight was the first time I've heard Tony present. I liked that he chose to discuss the whole controversy and bizarreness behind the celebration of "Discover's Day," formerly known as "Columbus Day." When I was a kid, growing up in the Mainland, we definitely had the federal holiday for Columbus Day. I never really questioned the ideology behind this holiday-i was too young and didn't know any better. In Elementary and Middle school, we were never really taught the horrible things Columbus did to the native people he encountered in the present day Caribbean. We definitely didn't learn about the encomienda system he introduced, and how it led to the deaths of 7.8 million native "americans." Our school system only emphasized the alleged "good" things Columbus did-mainly "discovering america" and helping to prove the world was not flat.
Why did the public school system on the mainland do this? Did they intentionally teach us a distorted view of history? did my teachers really not know the true history, or know any better, or did they think we were too young and innocent to know the truth? the answer could be all of the above, and i guess that's what happens when you learn history from the Western point of view. Conquerors and villains like Columbus get turned into heroes. But there's two sides to every story, and one thing that my move to Hawaii has definitely done is teach me the other side of the story.
If anyone wants to learn about true discovers, read up on polynesian voyaging. Learn how the kanaka maoli found Hawaii. No compass or sextent. Just the stars, the sun, the clouds, migrating sea birds, and intimate knowledge of the ocean and the way it bends its swells and currents around land. And don't believe anything that says polynesians found hawaii on an accidental drift. It was very deliberate, careful, planning and years of exploratory voyages that got them there.
Tonight was the also the third time i got to hear Niklaus speak. I'm amazed every time I head him speak, because he is a walking, talking world history book. I haven't met anyone else who knows so many specific dates, and knows history in such integrative detail. He needs to go on Jeopardy or something. He'd make a killing if he ever decided to hustle the game show network...
Anyway, there's always a TON of info and dates and details to take away from Nilkaus's presentations. But I think one of the main things to take away from him is how interconnected places and events are. No event occurs in isolation; it was likely a reaction or an effect of something else. Before hearing Niklaus, who knew how much of an influence the 16th century creation of Calvinism and the Reformation had on the forces behind the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom? When you connect the dots of everything between the Reformation, to the Mayflower, to the Calvinist missionaries' arrival to Hawaii, you sort of see this domino effect- this continuous wave of cause and effect, action and reaction. I'm kind of rambling, but the main point to realize here is that everything in this world is connected, even if we can't see the connections immediately.
Why is it valuable for us now to know the influence of Calvinism in Hawaii? What about the Papal Bull? So far this semester, we've talked a lot about how flawed our system is, and how it's destroying our health and environment. If we ever want to really take steps to change this system and create something new, i think it's important to understand the ideology and origination of the system we're trapped in now. We have to understand it and know what happened, so that we don't repeat the same mistakes, and reproduce the same system, with the same sets of values and priorities that are screwing this world up today.
That's all. Sorry if I got too weird and philosophical towards the end. I don't even know if anyone's reading this blog anyway. I have comments and thoughts I want to share about our previous classes and speakers, which I'll post soon. Thanks for listening!
