Culture. This word, I found, can hold 10 meanings. The third meaning given in our dictionary aligns with today’s thoughts about the richness of culture nourished by differences: “The sum total of ways of living built up by a group
Culture.
This word, I found, can hold 10 meanings. The third meaning given in our dictionary aligns with today’s thoughts about the richness of culture nourished by differences: “The sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.”
Keeping in mind the first canoes and Polynesian people who brought their culture with them and became Hawaiians, and broad-jumping to the immigrations that began to provide workers for the first commercial sugar plantations, there exist accounts of occasional seafarers who found this place, by accident or intent, in the interim period. As did Capt. James Cook, who according to many history books, “discovered” the land.
During a Road Scholar travel-and-learn class last week, 30 travelers joined in laughing at the irony of this phrase. This is a shipboard group I regularly meet and teach during field studies here on Kauai. En route to Kokee via Waimea Canyon, I laid it before them that when Cook’s ships anchored off Waimea, the officers and crew were greeted, provisioned and entertained by representatives of some 2,000 people living very successfully in the capital of their district under the chief Ali`i. There had already been a good discussion underway about GMO crops and the day’s headlines about proposed well drilling as our bus stopped at Hofgaard Park to let us pay our respects to the good Captain (Cook’s statue, incidentally, was wearing a new, weather-resistant lei. Mahalo to the giver).
Earlier, while passing the community college grounds, a view of the Chinese pavilion on the campus fringe caused curiosity. Because its dedication in the late 1980s commemorated 200 years of the Chinese in Hawaii, this led to us talking about how occasional haole (foreigners) made landfall before labor was recruited from China, Japan, Portugal, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and other Pacific nations.
We touched on how the various cultures were stirred into the island’s proverbial stew, enriching our diversity; how children attended school together and creatively developed a way to communicate, the pidgin English that funneled to their parents; and how, as the children matured and married, the hapa children of mixed marriages arrived with qualities that keep on enriching the diversity and beauty of our island tree of life.
It’s so easy to talk about Kauai’s cultural diversity, all the various celebrations additional to the “regular” U.S. Mainland calendar. And it’s not just Chinese New Year just passed. Think of all the annual traditions you enjoy. A fine Okinawan Festival is in progress. A top-notch presentation starring Kauai Voices celebrating cultural music recently “wowed” standing-room-only audiences on two separate nights. “A World in Harmony” vocal tour added instruments ranging from bagpipes through fiddle and shakuhachi flute to didgeridoo, resonating with my own numerous strains of DNA.
We can expect media announcements for Native American Pow wows; African and taiko drumming; “May Day is Lei Day”; Kamehameha Day, starring the regal, flower-bedecked pa‘u riders representing each Hawaiian island; summer’s O-Bon festival and a Tahitian heiva.
The list of cultural richness and diversity continues through friends and neighbors who play in the college’s classical orchestra, band and jazz band concerts staged spring and winter; the aloha festivals; the Queen Emma Festival in kokee; and the Matsuuri Festival.
The year builds toward the next big celebratory set of holiday parades and event parades — Buddhist, Christian, or Hindu, Hawaiian, African, or Chinese … the list goes on. We’ve come around the circle, or cycle, savoring the cultural platter that is savory as pateles, healthy as ulu and pinocbit, and tempting as sushi, sweet bread and malasadas.
With so many cultural celebrations, ceremonies and rituals that deserve to be marked, I’m sure to have overlooked some. But as my mind skims over the years and experiences as I type this, I know all have enriched and nourished me.
A favorite quote of mine is, “Differences were meant … not to divide, but to enrich.”
This is seen in all ways when people remain open to difference, when bias and judgment are let go.
You can be proud if Kauai can continue setting examples of good stewardship for the land, the aina, in the same way that the first people of the land here, the Hawaiians, respected their resources, shared channeled water, prevented overfishing and other greedy ways through their wise environmental rules and practices, and ensured a quality of life for the generations yet unborn. Together, with grace, harmony, tolerance — and good sense — we may continue this.
Happy Chinese New Year, readers! May the Year of the Horse, as it galloped in Jan. 31, bring each one of you growth and forward movement as part of this multicultural community. And by the decisions we make together today, may good health and quality of life also be ours, flowing on to our descendants.
• Editor’s Note: Dawn Fraser Kawahara has been a Kauai writer and promoter for 30 years. Born in British India, brought up in Australia and California, she found her home and heart on Kauai in 1984 when the fourth of her children was almost raised. A former writer and department editor for The Garden Island, she launched and continues to run her TropicBird Press and TropicBird Weddings & Celebrations–Kauai as part of DAWN Enterprises. Since 1998, she has been a Pacific Rim group leader and an instructor for HPU-Pacific Island Institute’s visitors to Kauai.
