Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 5, Number 4, 1 April 1988 — Makaku [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Makaku

By Rocky Ka'iouliokahihikolo 'Ehu Jensen

Changes!

My last few columns dealt with the problems whieh plague my profession and our native art as a whole. The problems are many and the resolutions have been few. As I have said many times before, it has been a 15-year cultural battle. We are still where we began in 1973 — no native arts eouneil, no contemporary native museum of fine arts, no teachers of Hawaiian art and history and so on. Instead we have the tables and booths "sold" to us at fairs where we display our crafts in a swap-meet atmosphere. Very few approach our art form in modern and progressive forms.

I was privileged on March 16 to be video-taped for a film commemorating "Legacy of Excellence" currently at the Bishop Museum. One of the questions asked was, "How do you explain the fact you are using steel tools and the ancients used stone?" Unfortunately, this misunderstanding is not unique to the given situation. The naivete expressed by such a question is the silent prejudice our art has had to suffer since its discovery. We are a viable society of kanaka maoli. Our culture was never stagnant, never immobile, never monotonous. It changed with the seasons with new chiefs and with a constant flow of creative introductions. Hair style, tattoo, kapu, pa'u fashions, capes and helmets, printings of kapa, ritualistic traditions and even sculpting style were dictated by new and innovative ideas.

You only have to study the lifetime of High Chief Kamehameha to discover how many things he caused to change during his tumultuous reign. He was the cause of introducing Kihawahine and Kamohoali'i into the pageantry of the Makahiki. Why, he even changed the parade route. Going further back into time, we find tht Uliiuka was the seeress who developed the art of magic to its most sophisticated heights. Ku'ulakai was responsible for new methods of fishing. La'amaikahiki brought

a more refined form of theatre to these shores, plus the introduction of the large temple drum and the reverence of Lono'aoali'i. Pa'ao brought a new form of temple desi^n, the acknowledgement of Ku a supreme Akua Kumupa'a and possibly the reintroduction of an "occasional" human offering.

Lu'ukia designed the five-ply pa'u and is credited with delicate and extraordinary kapa designs on same. Keanu, chief of O'ahu, made the Pearl Harbor waterways navigable and Kiha-a-Pi'ilani was the architect of Maui's answer to Rome's Appian Way. Changes! We have always been people of change and graceful adaptation. Look at our statues. Different eras display different emphasis on ancient philosophical themes, depending on the mood of the age. The older ones show a more pensive style, ealm, power held in eheek, unobtrusive and in complete control. The later style is representative of the more arrogant and tempestuous strength of the island's overlords — the divine mana displayed in exotic faces and expanded pectoral musculature. They are all evidence of our ability to change, progress, evolve, grow and appreciate the function of doing so.

It wasn t our meeting with ka po e akea that helped us to change; we have been doing this since the very beginning. I am appalled there are those who still believe we plait, carve and beat kapa under swaying palms forever and ever. Today we paint with brushes. We sculpt with metal chisels and adzes. We wea ve with a multitude of fibres. We create realism, expressionism, cubism, etc., based on perfected ancient abstract forms that truly depicted and continues to depict the extreme professionalism of our creative process. My hope someday is to aid in the introduction of a native fine arts museum whieh will display that progressive art as it should. Until then, Mai Kai Po Mai Ka 'Oia 'I'o.

Hale Naua III exhibit as it should look.

Pimoe by Eric Kalani Flores of Kauai.