What does it mean to conduct research while still being
respectful to the population being studied? For Renee Pualani Louis,
this was a question she faced when studying Hawai‘i
cartography for her new book, Kanaka Hawai‘i
Cartography: Hula, Navigation, and Oratory. Louis had signed up for
classes at Aunty Margaret Machado’s Hawaiian Massage Academy, where she met
Aunty Moana Kahele. She had entered the classes purely with the intent of
learning lomilomi, Hawai‘i massage, but also had an interest in the place names
and stories of the area surrounding them. In this excerpt from Kanaka Hawai‘i
Cartography, Louis illuminates the research process she used with Aunty
Moana and the relationship they built from their time together.
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“Aia i Hea Au? Nānā i ka Wā ma Mua” (Where Am I? Look to the
Space/Time in Front/Before)
Summer 2003—Dreams
I conducted our discussions in English, and at times, Aunty
Moana would say a few phrases in Hawai‘i language, asking if I understood what
she said. Most of the time I did understand her, but responded with my limited
language skills and usually finished off in English. This naturally set the
tone for our rapport. It did not stop her from using Hawai‘i language phrases;
she just did not expect me to respond in Hawai‘i language. I am certain that a
researcher with more confidence in their Hawai‘i language skills would have
received a different depth of sharing to which I was not privileged.
Although I initially set out to digitally record our
discussions, both audio and video, Aunty Moana preferred that our sessions be
conducted without being taped. Instead, she referred me to another video done
by Kamehameha Schools Land Asset Division. In one instance, I was told
specifically that the stories being shared were for me to remember and not for
others to know on a tape. I was able to get a copy of both the report done by
Kumu Pono Associates and the video done by Nā Maka O Ka ‘Aina.
As Aunty Moana spoke of different places, she weaved in
genealogies and personal experiences. After three or four sessions, I started
asking if the person she was talking about was the same one from a different
story, stating, “You know, the one where…”, finishing the sentence with the
story she had told me. Occasionally, she corrected me, emphasizing points I was
certain I hadn’t heard before. It was about this time that I shared with her
two dreams I had about Kealakekua and Kapukapu.
Although having a well-known and very deeply respected
person willing to share the stories of Kapukapu could be seen as reason enough
to conduct this research, I acknowledge that, for Native people, the search for
knowledge is much more than a physical task. It is also a spiritual learning. I
continue to hear many stories of academics doing research on Indigenous people
or in Indigenous communities for research’s sake, without bothering to ask if
either the people or the place could benefit from the research. I didn’t want
to be one of those people, and while I knew Aunty Moana wanted to work with me
and wanted to share her knowledge, I just wasn’t sure the place was ready to
share itself with me. So, I did what came naturally. I prayed for a sign, a
vision, a dream, anything that would let me know that it was pono, meaning
proper, righteous, virtuous, to do this research and learn about the intimate
details of Kapukapu. Thankfully, the answer came in the form of several dreams
over several weeks. These are two of the dreams I shared with Aunty Moana.
In the first I was a young girl running, playing with a
young Kanaka Hawai‘i boy in a forest. I was chasing him on a worn path, both us
laughing as we took turns hiding with the chance of surprising the other
unawares. We decorated each other with flowers and ferns picked along the way.
We climbed trees, made birdcalls, picked and ate fruit. By and by we reached a
community near the shoreline. I observed many structures, men fixing fishing
nets, women picking seaweed. Although the people noticed us, they returned to
their work speaking to each other… in Hawai‘i language.
That was certainly strange, because although I passed my
language requirement by taking a third year of Hawai‘i language, I still didn’t
feel confident in my ability to speak Hawai‘i language and was still only
somewhat confident in my ability to comprehend oral communication. So, hearing
them speaking Hawai‘i language and understanding them in my dream was strange,
in retrospect. Nonetheless, no one stopped either the boy or me from playing.
No one scolded us for making too much noise. No one warned us not to go over
the ridge.
I remember feeling like this was a new place to me. Like I
was the new kid and this young boy was from this village. I felt that he must
know the right places to go and not to go, because I certainly didn’t feel like
I knew. We continued to play, winding our way up the mountain playing
hide-and-seek in empty caves. The higher we got, the funnier the air began to
taste, and all of a sudden we were at the ridge, and we were very quiet. The
little boy’s eyes were in distress as he motioned for me to meet him on the
summit. I slowly joined him and saw the reason for his anguish. On the other
side of the ridge was the modern development Kona has become, with houses,
roads, industrial warehouses, and an ocean filled with motorized fishing boats.
Gone were the trees, gone were the birds, gone were the places for the
practices of the people of old.
Without saying a word, he communicated to me with a long
hard glare, and I knew what I was supposed to do. As he returned to his
village, his time, I stood and walked the summit toward the ocean, the village
on one side, the modern development on the other. These two incongruent
cultural landscapes were separated by this ridge that I walked like a fence
until I reached the ocean. I sat on the cliff pondering what this all meant as
the sun began to set. I realized I
was at a juncture in space/time. I knew what was coming fro the village. I knew
the cultural landscape that celebrated a Hawai‘i understanding of life would
soon be engulfed and could quite possibly be forgotten… unless some people
chose to remember, and not just remember but remind others of what existed here
before it became thoroughly swallowed up.
Becoming or being one of those people is a tall order, a
hefty responsibility that I was not sure I was chosen to carry out. So I did
the unthinkable. I dove off the cliff into the ocean below, even though I
somehow maintained my fear of the ocean in the dream. I remember thinking that
if it was the right thing to do, I wouldn’t die. I had heard somewhere that if
you die in your dreams you are quite possibly dying, and I didn’t want to die.
I just wanted to know for sure that this was right.
I didn’t die. I remember surfacing rather relieved. I was
treading water when I saw probably my greatest fear approaching, the huge
dorsal fin of a shark. I began thinking now I was going to die. But then I
didn’t panic or feel like fleeing. I remember thinking if this was it, there
was nothing I could do. Then I realized I was surrounded by all the creatures
in the ocean, turtles to the left of me, dolphins to the right, and various
fish scattered between them, including rays and eels. As the shark slowed and
settled in front of me, the circle was complete. The awe I felt for all these
ocean creatures to surround me as such was so great, the meaning too much for
me to comprehend, the power too immense to perceive. I awoke, but as I did I
remember looking down seeing it all: the circle, the village, the modern
development, and me.
By the time I had my second dream, I had a chance to speak
with someone about my fears of the ocean. I expressed the reasons and the
rationale for my fear and was given very good advice from committee member Manulani
Aluli Meyer in a personal email communication. She said fear lives in our
minds. When it is shaped by experience, it becomes a conception that is
difficult to change by just thinking about it. To remove this kind of fear, I
had to get out of my mind and return to my body. I had to go into the ocean and
deconstruct the fear that I had created in my body by retraining my body to
change my response to the ocean.
I did just that. I started taking small steps to get over my
fear and began visiting the ocean more often and staying in the water longer
with each visit. At first the slightest touch of any object would send a bolt
of terror through my body. Eventually, I got over the terror of things touching
me in the ocean and started working on feeling comfortable treading water. This
is a good place to tell you about the second dream, because it starts with me
treading water in the middle of Kapukapu.
In this dream I have no idea how I got to be in the middle
of the bay. There are no boats around me, no kayaks, and no people, just the
calmly lapping sounds of the ocean all around me as I tread water looking west
into the Pacific Ocean. In this dream I am not afraid of the ocean or of not
being able to feel the earth under my feet. As I turn to my right, I see the flat
of Ka‘awaloa and imagine the ali‘I, Hawai‘i leaders, that made their residences
there. It seems like an excellent place for affairs of the government. It’s
near a permanent aquacultural food supply, has access to agricultural fields up
mauka, has easy, quick access to launch an attack or flee from one, and has
several brackish water holes.
As I continue to turn to my right, Kapaliomanuahi rises from
Ka‘awaloa flats and becomes Nāpalikapuokeoua. The sight is immense, and I
realize that where I’m treading water, the ocean floor is probably as deep as
those cliffs are high. I continue to turn to my right, facing east looking
toward the beach. I imagine the shore once lined with sand and small structures
for the kāhuna, master practitioners, who lived and practiced here. Still
turning to my right I see Hikiau Heiau and realize it would have been the
tallest structure on the beach, but is now dwarfed by modern homes that
continue to line the coast as I turn to the south. It is at that moment that I
sense the presence of another. It was the shark, Kua, from Ka‘ū, an ancestor
for many families from Ka‘ū and the namesake for Kealakekua, according to Aunty
Moana’s story.
I turn to face him. It seems as though I know that this is
the reason I was there treading water. I was waiting to meet him. In retrospect
I am really not surprised I was not afraid of treading water or the arrival of
a shark or meeting such an important ancestral entity. I turned completely toward
Kua and said, “Ah, there you are.” He swam by, nudging me, and I took it as a
sign to hold on, which I did. It’s amazing that you can breathe underwater in
your dreams. He gave me a tour of the bay, showing me the many crevices and
underwater caves. It was beautiful. When it was time to go, he looked me in the
eye. I recognized that look. It was the same glaring look the little boy gave
me at the summit. They were one and the same.
It was after this dream that I finally felt this research
was the right thing to do. I, of course, shared these experiences with Aunty Moana,
and our talks became more intense. She would still take quite a few minutes
talking about the demands others were placing on her time, but she more quickly
moved on to telling me personal stories and experiences she had in connection
to the spiritual landscape of Kapukapu and its surrounding areas. I literally
felt myself transported into the stories she told—and I didn’t even have to
close my eyes to imagine them. As I sat on the floor of Aunty Moana’s living
room, I had no idea there was actually a pattern being revealed. She began with
the story of Kealakekua as she had heard it passed down from generation to
generation. She then elaborated on the misrepresentations of seven names that
have been changed and circulated in textual and cartographic sources. Lastly,
she breathed life into Kealakekua, revealing nine intimate stories of sensual
geographies.
She would always give me a few days between sessions and
encourage me to spend that time in those places I learned about. She said we
remember better when all our senses are engaged in the learning process. That
way the place and the story fused without na‘au, small intestines, and
metaphorically, the seat of thought, intellect, affects, and moral nature
(Andrews 1865). Our minds record everything, but our recall is usually limited
to those things on which we focus. By experiencing the world more sensually, we
allow our minds to make more subtle connections with each place. A practiced
mind associates smell, temperature, humidity, wind direction, and the rhythmic
movement of plants with the precursor of bad weather and will automatically
bring a jacket to work without even thinking twice.
I spent many, many hours learning dozens of stories from Aunty
Moana that summer. Stories that became a part of my being as I sensually
experienced as many places as I could access. I was sad for my summer of
learning to come to an end, because I knew I had only scratched the surface of
knowledge maintained by this respected community elder. After each one of our
discussions I wrote down as much as I could remember in personal journals.
However, I remember thinking that I didn’t want my writing things down to take
away from the experience of remembering the narrative, from experiencing the
performance. I reminded myself that these notations were not meant to be a
substitute for the performances. They were meant to aid me in writing this manuscript.
On my last day that summer with Aunty Moana, I wrote down
the place names of all the stories she had shared with me and asked her which
ones I could share in my dissertation. We discussed the reasons for each
selection, and just before I left she handed me a handwritten copy of her
manuscript, “Clouds of Memories.” She explained that she wrote all these
stories down as she grew up listening to friends and family “talk story.” Since
it was her last and only copy, I refused to take it and later acquired a copy
from a friend to whom she had given a copy some years earlier.
I continued to call and visit Aunty Moana regularly after I
returned to O‘ahu. The phone calls became fewer and farther apart, mostly
because she was very busy working on other community matters. However, I was
beginning to write up the work we had done together and wanted to present it at
different conferences and needed to share that with her before turning in an
abstract. When I did get through to her, she asked me where the conference was
being held, who would be attending, and why I thought it was important to share
the information. I asked before each conference and each article that
referenced any information she shared with me. Although these conversations
were the most tedious, they were also the most liberating because I knew I had
received her blessing. This may seem excessive from the perspective of an
academic code of ethical conduct, but it was the right thing to do. I continue
to honor Aunty Moana at any presentation that contains any information from our
work, or rather my training, together. Sometime later Aunty Moana was checked
in to the Kona Hospital when she could no longer care for herself. Thereafter,
I visited with her at the hospital, bringing her my latest chapters or
articles. By then, she had grown to trust my representation of the information
she shared with me, and most of our time together was filled with retelling
stories. In the last few months of her life, I discovered someone had stolen Aunty
Moana’s handwritten copy of her then-unpublished manuscript. On what was to be
my last visit with her, she asked me to make copies of the manuscript I had
acquired from a friend so she could give them to her adopted son and daughter.
I gave her my “field” copy that day, knowing I had another “clean” copy at
home. I told her I would bring the other copy next time, when I got back from a
conference. At that moment, I realized there would not be a next time.
That was one of the hardest visits of my life, second only
to being present at the death of my maternal grandmother. I asked if I could
scan and include some of her stories in my dissertation, and she agreed to six
of them. Of the twelve other stories she shared, she agreed I could transcribe
seven of them from her then-unpublished manuscript, “Clouds of Memories.” She
asked me to recount the other five stories from my recollection and, after
careful consideration, agreed I was ready to share them from my own voice. Aunty
Moana may not be in this world, but she is still part of my reality. I know
those stories I share from my own voice carry with them the weight of her
ancestors. To this day, I do not share them without first asking permission. I
did not want to leave her bedside. I did not want this journey to end. But the
nurse came in and said visiting hours were over. I kissed Aunty Moana goodbye
on the cheek, and told her I would remain “open” to her continued guidance. She
was calm and composed and graciously reminded me, “This is important work.”