Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 7, Number 4, 1 April 1990 — Makaku [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Makaku

By Rocky Ka'iouliokahihikolo 'Ehu Jensen ©

"Born the Night of the Gods"

Contributing columnist Al Lagunero Our Hawaiian tradition teaches us well about Life. It is born from the night and from death as a retreat from whenee we eame. The subtle nuances of knowing provided by any act of creation, procreation, and re-creating are filled with life-giving, therefore, life-manifesting energies. Nothing goes to waste. The unuseful transmutes. Our lamenting songs seem unending for our dead and our dying. It seems attached to the way we must sometimes justify being alive. "Why, Hawaiians are living! We thought they were dead. They have no religion. They have no land. They have no culture. They almost don't have a langu- _ i> age. For a culture to live, must it confine itself to old pictures of an old world? For it to declare its presence and living does it have to !ive in a certain house, in a certain plaee? Why honor a traditional culture when today mueh of culture and life is at risk? Why the need to proclaim the similarities when the differences are markedly profound? Is expectation for Justice to carry out its plans only a one way road? The exhibit, "Born the Night Of the Gods", by Rocky Jensen that is now on display at Bishop Museum, reflects upon the ancient teachings, harps the same lamenting songs, and asks many questions about the categories of art and anthropology. These questions will be answered as the Hawaiian culture lives out its life and death and is reborn. That whieh we artists of Hale Naua produce today as art/ spiritualism/science is what is vaguely termed "Hawaiian art." Like the museum's exhibit "Hawai'i the Royal Isles" most experts did not know how to categorize the exhibit — is it art or anthropology?

Perhaps this little eolumn will help us to make some sort of a breakthrough. If we could plaee some of our works into the category most know as "sacred art," then what we must also do is reclaim that whieh is "sacred." To declare this as a people is up to every individual thinking as one. We aecomplished survival, the many (descendants) of our ancestors, when we thought asone. This message resounds on other levels of life as well for the welfare of life. I invite a quiet observance of the exhibit. Let us pass on the yeas and nays tynical to reviews. Let us, instead, be moved to see this as a continuing conversation of old Hawai'i through living Hawaiians whose spirit and art still live. Let us be moved to see this as a continuation of a cultural conversation through living Hawaiians who have not completely let go of the kahiko ways. I am not talking about idolatry either. Anyone who has seen the exhibit knows that this is not what I am talking about. We are not talking about Kane as having to be the phallie stone, nor anything of the spirit level having to be locked into traditional understandings of wood, feather, or stone. Neither am I talking of being locked idolatrously to the letter of traditional considerations to let the "knowing" live. The spirit of this particular artistic conversation is its presentation. Perhaps the impact of the exhibit would be better made if only one individual at a time was al!owed to enter. The silence would be honored. The exhibit is a gift wearing things of today's world. It is a declaration of the survival of this knowing presented in the most honorable way a Hawaiian of today is allowed to for the general public. And even there it is endangered — the prolification of the ancient kapus stands unguarded, alone, unrestricted to blasphemies committed by

the uneducated, the unknowing, and to those who stand the most to lose from the truths of our aneient knowings. Al C. Lagunero is an artist/poet who lives on Maui.

Pahu

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