Cultures are often cannibalized when they adopt the categories of the foreign
dominating culture. While colonialism is often seen as the capturing of lands
and political power, far more intrusive is the imposition of epistemological
categories--what is considered rational or real, for example.
The historical stages of colonialism are well known: economic exploitation
(gaining monopoly rights of raw materials), imperialistic exploitation (using
political and economic power to transform the local economy), political
oppression (transforming
ethnic relations), and finally fascist exploitation (transforming traditional
collectivities into nation states where then the foreign is constructed as the
advanced and developed and the local the backward underdeveloped). It is the
last phase that creates the context for cultural exploitation, creating the
conditions for a
cultural inferiority complex--the long term result is the shattering of the
spine of the local culture.
Western colonialism has become universal through a three part process: (1)
transforming traditional accounts of time (into linear developmentalist time),
commodifying everything (transforming traditional social relations into exchange
relations) and imposing a foreign language or culture.
To counter these forms of exploitation there are a range of appropriate
strategies. First, economic democracy, where ownership is vested in those who
provide labor, ideas and capital in the form of cooperatives for example (not
just to those who provide capital). Second, revitalization of language. Third,
the recovery of epistemological categories in which the local culture has
historically known itself. Fourth, the creation of links with other oppressed
movements and peoples, so as to create a local/global link. Fifth, a
neo-humanistic ecological approach that is not based on geo-politics, race
politics, or species politics but includes all that is.
While all these might be preferred strategies, most often cultural interaction
between foreign and local are based on the categories of the dominant culture.
Clearly, the historical and present interaction between Hawaiians and Westerners
is based on the cultural and historical categories of the West. Interaction has
come on their terms.
In the present sovereignty debate, for example, the contours of the debate are
based on Western political theory. The idea of a constitutional convention
(while perhaps appropriately participatory) forgets that it is a particular
American invention
divorced from Hawaiian history or from the unique blend of "local" culture. This
form of representation based on election might not be the best way for Hawaiians
to design their (constitutional) future. The idea as well that Hawaiian should
collectively sit down and rationally develop policy statements as to what they
want to do or be again forgets that many peoples do not choose (in the Western
sense of the term) their epistemology or their constructions of the other--they
live in a given historical relationship to the land or the transcendental. While
Westerners may rationally choose their relations, it is not the same with other
cultures. Who choose might
indeed include the land and the transcendental, for instance. The idea of choice
in this case itself becomes an imperialistic concept used to impose one's own
view of rationality, or knowledge.
What then are some Hawaiian, local or more appropriate ways to structure the
debate, to create the future. If ho'oponopono, for example, is in fact a way to
reach consensual agreement, to heal personal and social illness, to discern
where the relationship has gone wrong, and who needs to be forgiven and what
needs to be made right, then perhaps this model can be used to structure
interaction with the various parties linked to sovereignty or independence. Or
ho'oponopono could be revised to meet present social and political needs.
Even while cognizant of the dominance of neo-realist politics (self-interest at
the individual and nation-state levels), we can still ask what traditional
categories of governance can be reinvented to create an Hawaiian future. Besides
ho'oponopono what other categories exist that can be used to attain freedom?
What local forms of social and economic organization can revitalize Hawaii as
the US core culture looses its legitimacy?
While sovereignty and independence are both laudable ideas, is sovereignty even
possible in a world dominated by a Core, the West in present history? Moreover,
is the idea of a sovereign nation-state in itself an imposition, useful only
from a Westernized view.
Should Hawaii and Hawaiians be seeking support from non-American institutions
and agencies instead of debating with American institutions, that is attempting
to find ways to link with the global community, even a world governance
structure in the very long run. This is especially important for sovereignty,
when achieved, will still be in the context of an unequal global division of
labor where the opportunities for the recently sovereign (Africa and Asia) are
far less then those that have been sovereign for hundreds of years. Thus, even
if, or when, Hawaii does secede it will still exist in an international system
that sees only states as real, denying the visions of social movements, of
women, of the aina. Again as the experience of sovereignty for African and Asian
nations has shown, gaining sovereignty is only the beginning of the battle,
especially if the terms of sovereignty are framed in the language and categories
of the dominant.
Finally, after centuries of subjugation, the periphery often has internalized
the brutality of the oppressor. Once sovereign these same categories are used on
one's own people. Local culture colludes with the dominant Center power (the
West or Japan) long after the colonialists have left we continue using their
visions of
the future, their ideas of history. Colonialism after all is a state of mind,
that remains long after the colonialists have left.
To survive--epistemologically, culturally, economically--we have to use our own
categories of thought. Western culture must struggle through these categories
just as the Non-West has had to struggle through the categories of the West. We
have to create our own forms of interaction recognizing that we have been made
Other.
We have to make links with others who have been colonized. We must also be
careful that this duality not become internally oppressive.
In creating a future based on authentic ways of knowing, which categories should
be used? Which are truly authentic? From which period of history can these be
derived from? No culture is static (accept again in the context of imperialism
when culture becomes custom, museumised or airportized), cultures are living,
even reinventing themselves by resisting the dominant culture. Indeed,
instead of defining culture in the traditional Western sense of values and
habits, perhaps culture is resistance. Resistance creates culture.
However, this collusion with the dominant cultures makes one multi-cultural
since every moment is an encounter with a foreign culture and a remembrance of
one own's culture. Rethinking the relationship between local and global, these
moments can eventually become the creation of a new planetary culture--one based
on local
understandings but planetary in the sense of an expanded we: living in Our home,
for you and I and everybody else.