White People Observer Effect: Facing the Haolifying Truth

Jeff Peterson, the slack key musician from Maui, a tall white dude, led a ukulele workshop here in Eugene last year. We were on a back porch, rows of folding chairs nested us elbow to elbow, smiling at each other, ukuleles nudging each other. He has an easy teaching style, encouraging and flexible. He passed out simple sheet music with the tabulation for a well known Hawaiian song. He played the simple version of the song a few times, and then taught it to us piece by piece, with the tab. I hadn't read tab before, but I caught on pretty quickly, and Jeff explained things clearly. He was encouraging to the audience of middle aged, mostly white Oregonians, gradually added new and challenging chords, while telling us about his slack key teachers-- famous Hawaiian names and beloved Hawaiian musicians, like George Kahumoku Jr., and Keola Beamer. 

I took home a new tune, pretty well mastered, three new jazzy chords, a stack of sheet music, and puzzled over how different this workshop was from others I'd been to. For one thing, it was digitally plugged in. Jeff referred us to his virtual lessons on his website, and told us about the tab project he was working on. It was relaxing-- the goals were clear and then met. I got what I signed up for-- I got my money's worth. It felt complete. I had my feet under me the whole time.

A decade or so ago, I went to slack key workshops in California with the late great Cyril Pahinui and Dennis Kamakahi and Ledward Kaapana, among others. They were astonishing and confusing and like trying to learn to swim in a kiddie pool by watching someone free-dive. Cyril would tell us pieces of stories about his family, about his dad, Gabby Pahinui, the original slack key legend, and his uncles and friends, like Ray Kane and Led Kaapana. It was a parade of names, pieces of geneologies. He'd ask us what we wanted to learn, he'd play a tune a bit, tell us where and how he'd learned it, who had taught it to him and where they were from, he'd answer a question or two, and then he'd play the long improvisational riffs, the waterfalls, he was famous for.

If I could have spent a decade of afternoons with Cyril, or any of those other Masters of Slack Key, I would have absorbed a universe of knowledge. Not only music, but geneology, and culture. But only one afternoon, or even a couple of workshops over the years, didn't add up to anything tangible. We were too much like the parable of the blind man and the elephant-- each workshop or lesson was a blind fumble with something enormous and amazing. 

Generally, my experiences with Hawaiian culture have been like those workshops with Uncle Cyril. Nobody hands out a nice tidy outline, a clear rubric. Things flow, the time flows, the topic flows. It's the deep end. Its amazing, but I have no illusions about my level of mastery: I dont know anything.

Learning Hawaiian was an immersion experience-- a daily, gradual exposure. The language grew slowly in me. It took years-- it is TAKING years-- to understand the unfolding meanings of the language. The layers and layers, the ways that meaning criss crosses between concepts and planes and histories and geneologies and puns and jokes. Although I could speak it pretty quickly, the complexity of the language has never been broken down into digestible chunks. 

Same for our hula halau on Kauai, with Kumu Maka Herrod of Na Hui o Kamakaokalani. I knew him as the easy going and helpful parent of my students. When my kids and I joined his halau, it was deep end for all of us. Even knowing the language, knowing the kumu and many of the students, it was the deep end. After months and months, we began to start to almost get the hang of it-- the hula, the protocol, the culture of the halau-- was a whole ocean with no written dive instructions. 

Nana ka maka, hoolohe ka pepeiao. Pane ka waha. Watch. Listen. Shut your mouth.

I love our hula halau here in Oregon, too. There are beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes, devided by age. If you don't know the words to the opening chant, there are copies of the words you can read from. Our kumu, Akiko Colton, under Pekelo Day, is a confident and engaging teacher. She has her lessons well planned out, and students come in as toddlers and stay, growing up in the halau. She makes sure beginners are clued in to the basic steps. It takes a while to catch on. 

But it's different. It's scaffolded. We're out of Hawaii, we're out of that context.

I'm not Hawaiian, but I speak the language. I was taught the language-- I was allowed that space.  I consider it a gift and a responsibilty I have been given-- not just an interesting and fun thing to learn, like a hobby. Learning an endangered language, an indigenous language-- it carries more weight and requires more thoughtfulness.

As part of that responsibility, I feel it is my kuleana to keep learning Hawaiian culture-- hula, oli, mele, and protocol. For myself, and for my kids, who were born there, and whose ancestors were born there, for generations. 

Their dad is gone, but maybe I can help keep that connection alive for them. Through language, story, dance, and music. 

So I take this seriously. 

And at the same time, I know that I am not Hawaiian-- in blood or in culture. And so as much as I love the culture, as much as I benefit from learning and understanding the world through that lens-- I know something about myself. 

I will haolify whatever I'm doing. I want taxonomies that make sense to me. I want scaffolding. I want checklists, and to-do lists, and grammars. As I try to learn, I will ask haolified questions at haolified times. Partly, this may be because I'm just a weirdo in general. As one of my hoa-kumu told me, I was too weird for the other teachers to get, but she would translate for me, as my weirdo whisperer. 

But I will have this Shroedinger's haole effect in Hawaiian spaces, even if I'm not a weirdo. By being there, I change it.

As non-Hawaiian appreciators and lovers of Hawaiian and indigenous culture, history, language, music-- whatever it is-- we have to realize our presense is not nuetral. 

And especially if we are somehow in the position of teaching, or passing on what we've been given. The holistic, integrated way that Hawaiian ike is passed down-- it can't really be replicated faithfully in a western context, through the lens of a western brain. 

Does that mean give up? Does that mean, I don't pass on what I know to my kids? Or that I remove myself from Hawaiian spaces? No, of course not. It just means-- I have to be aware. The way I'm practicing, learning, and passing on Hawaiian language, music, and story, is not the way I would have if I was raised in the culture-- if it was my first social/cultural/family language. 

So, fellow haole folks. Other people who are showing our love for the Hawaiian language, culture, and people through learning. Folks in hula, in papa olelo, in ukulele song circles. 

No matter how earnest our intentions, we change the learning environment just by being there. We make it weird. Ke hoohaole nei kakou. So we need to be sure to sit back, think twice before asking that question, relating that anecdote, dropping that name. We need to look to the Hawaiians in those spaces, just observe the level of deference and respect they offer to their teachers. We make sure we are not sucking up more air and time and space than the Hawaiian folks there. 

Am I going to withdraw myself from Hawaiian culture, because I am haole? Nope. I'll go where I'm invited. I will humbly partake from what's offered. And I'll work hard to take care of the responsibility-gift kuleana that I've been given. But I'll try to be less of a effing haole about it.