Ho‘onā‘ū - Prolonging an Ancestral Breath: Wahi Pana

Article I. Wahi Pana

Offering a Perspective on Oceanic Cosmology
Na Kahaka‘io Ravenscraft
Featuring excerpts from a chant evoked by legendary navigator Kamahualele, on his first approach to ka Pae ʻAina o Hawaiʻi

Symbolism in sunsets. The way the orange sky breaks through the dark clouds above and sea below is descriptive of the word "wahi" with not only means "place" but also "to break through."

Kahaka'io Ravenscraft

An island world teaches through patterns and cycles of interconnected experience. And within every degree of experience comes the cultivation of wisdom; a foundation of culture and tradition. The inherit wisdom possessed by the kanaka Maoli of Hawaiʻi nei is one set on the foundation of understanding myriad forms of life and their interactions with and within the world, both physical and metaphysical in nature. The Oceanic world, as experienced by her native denizens, is one of infinite connectivity. All things in time and space remain interwoven throughout existence. The currents of sea and wind that carve out islands in the same instance serve as pathways to link people and places to one another. In that respect they are regarded not simply as phenomena but as conscious forms of existence within the world. The same can be said of the basalt rock that rises out of the depths to build islands or the coral barriers that encircle them and of all the beings that swim, crawl, and fly within their biomes. An island world teaches of the interconnectivity between all forms of life.

Eia Hawaii. He moku. He kanaka.
He kanaka Hawaii e-
He kama na Kahiki
He pua alii mai Kapaahu
Mai Moaulanuiakea Kanaloa
He moopuna na Kahiko laua o Kapulanakehau
Na Papa i hanau
Na ke kama wahine a Kalaniehu laua me Kahakauakoko

To truly observe and experience the material culture of ka Pae ʻAina o Hawaiʻi with a sense of understanding requires a separation form preconceived notions and the paradigms assigned to the peoples of Oceania by Western perspectives, however educated they may seem. This is not to say any one form of thought prevails over another but simply to challenge the mind and impress upon it a world beyond the closed-system cosmology of the West.

Cosmologies express the manner in which a people view the surrounding world and how they come to understand its universal nature. Cosmologies express the foundation of thought within a culture, the nature of their origins, and how they identify with the myriad forms of life encountered in the world. While amongst the most insightful of traditions by which to gain an understanding of a people, Western academia has consistently caused cosmologies to be simplified as myth, all the while molding the interpretation of native traditions to fit specific models, distorting any true sense of who a people are and how they identify themselves.

Na pulapula aina i paekahi
I noho like i ka Hikina
I Komohana
Pae like ka moku i lalani
I hui aku
Hui mai me Holani

The material culture of a people, certainly in ka Pae ʻAina o Hawaiʻi, is a blueprint of cosmology. There is a symbolic language that flourishes in the expressions of hula, in the geometric matrix of kapa cloth, and in the sculpted form of a kiʻi. People of an island world display an aesthetic informed by the geometry observed in the surrounding world. The geometry of the living world. Examine a sample of kapa and see the geometric patterns represented on its surface in a flash of lightning or the teeth of a shark. Examine the crest of a mahi‘ole helmet and see its form repeated in the crescent of the moon or the arch of a rainbow. Examine the carved face of a kiʻi and see the curve of its jaw reflected in the shape of a fishhook. From garments to implements and sacred icons, there is a symbolic expression present in all aspects of material culture. From the mundane to the sacred, kanaka Maoli express their cosmology through many facets of culture.

That kanaka Maoli understood the world and its inhabitants as interconnected is evident. It was understood that all things of the natural world, all things of the supernatural or metaphysical, everything is part of the same cycle of existence. There is a homogenous relation between a man and the earth upon which he builds his house, in the stone and wood used for its structure, in the water he drinks when parched, and in the fish he takes for sustenance. There is a homogeny between the physical and the etheric, the tangible and intangible experiences of life. This is what is meant in the phrase aloha ʻāina. It is the perspective from which a people view and interact with their world. Aloha ʻāina describes a way of life, a sense of stewardship, and a spiritual and genealogical connection between people and place. One such cosmological echo that expresses this connection is the Kumulipo, famously referred to by anthropologists as the “Hawaiian creation myth”. In its verses a genealogical web is established by which all forms of life and creation are connected in a seamless manner, each form of life paring with an opposite to begat a new one in a multitude of generative waves of succession. It cannot be compared to Western cosmologies built upon division and categorization that separate the universe in a linear, chronological manner, because in the Oceanic mind the very notion of time and experience is not linear but cyclical in nature. An island world and her inhabitants exist within the movements of elemental cycles.

Puni ka moku o Kaialea ke kilo
Naha Nuuhiwa
Lele i Polapola
O Kahiko ke kumu aina
Nana i mahele kaawale ka moku
Moku ka aholawai‘a a Kahai
I okia e Kukanaloa
Pahu na aina na moku
Moku i ka ohe kapu a Kanaloa
O Haumea Manukahikele
O Kalani Moikeha nana e noho

Through connecting people with place a sense of stewardship is developed. Stewardship in the Maoli mind is not a systematic method of control but rather a homogenized understanding of place. In Hawaiʻi we refer to places of homogeny as wahi pana – a place with a pulse, a legendary place. And what gives a place a pulse is its people; the very lives that sustain it and in turn are sustained by it. For a farmer his wahi pana may be the wetlands in which he plants his kalo, or the stream from whence his waterways flow. For a canoe builder it is the forests that provide his timber and the stone queries from which he may produce tools. Wahi pana is indicative of an unbreakable bond between people and place. Wahi pana exist within individuals as places of profound experience and without the collective as sites of national reverence. Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau is a wahi pana to the many living descendants of Kalani Keawe‘ikekahialiiokamoku as an ancestral home and resting place of iwi kūpuna, and to numerous others, near and afar, as a site of historic significance, cultural awareness, and national heritage.

Noho kuu Lani ia Hawaii
Ola. Ola. O kalana ola
Ola ke alii, ke kahuna
Ola ke kilo, ke kauwa
Noho ia Hawaii a lu lana
A kani moopuna i Kaua‘i

An island world, a wahi pana, exists through definite, homogenized interactions between a people and a place, to the point that one cannot exist without the other. The carving of a kiʻi illustrates that sentiment in its form and practice. The hewing of wood and the shaping of it into a specific sculpted form is representative of how the natural world shapes human experience and how human experience is in turn reflected back upon the cycles of the world. Through the craft of its production, a kiʻi becomes an expression of homogeny through the subtle yet numerous facets within the cultural aesthetic. An island world illustrates perfectly the notions of coexistence and codependence. An island world teaches through patterns and cycles of interconnected experience. And within every degree of experience comes the cultivation of wisdom and the potential to persevere.

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Notes:

Native traditions relate that Kamahualele, priest and navigator of Oceanic fame, guided the chief Moikeha on his return to Hawaii from Tahiti, some thirty generations past. The above selections taken from his chant invoked upon their approach to the Hawaiian archipelago can be related as such:

Here is Hawaii. A realm. A man.
A man is Hawaii

A child of Kahiki

A royal offspring from Kapaahu

From Moaulanuiakea Kanaloa

A grandchild of Kahiko and Kapulanakehau

That Papa begat

The daughter of Kalaniehu and Kahakauakoko

The scattered islands are in a row

Placed evenly in the east

In the west

Spread evenly is the land in a row

Combined thither

Combined here with Holani

The seer Kaialea encircles the land

Separated Nuuhiwa

Flew to Polapola

Kahiko is the source that feeds

That divided and separated the land

Broken is the fish-line of Kahai

Cut by Kukanaloa

Broken into pieces are the lands

Cut by the taboo knife of Kanaloa

O Haumea Manukahikele

O Moikeha the chief who is to reside