Authors keep isles’ cultural origins alive

Reviews by Donovan Kuhio Colleps
Special to the Star-Advertiser

"Language Contact in the Early Colonial Pacific: Maritime Polynesian Pidgin Before Pidgin English," by Emanuel J. Drechsel (Cambridge University Press, $99)

You’d never know it from the conventional academic wisdom, but Hawaiian Creole English, or pidgin, was not, according to Emanuel J. Drechsel’s new book, a purely Western invention. Instead, Drechsel argues, there was a Maritime Polynesian Pidgin, distilling Hawaiian, Tahitian and Maori languages into a common tongue, that pre-existed the arrival of the early fur traders and Capt. Cook.

In his deftly researched "Language Contact in the Early Colonial Pacific," Drechsel, a faculty member in the interdisciplinary studies program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, attempts to map linguistic and socio-historical genealogies of Maritime Polynesian Pidgin from the 18th to late 19th centuries.

Especially exciting about this work is the way it questions previous studies’ failures, due to "cultural blinders," to "recognize non-European influences or varieties when studying pidgins and creoles."

While Drechsel’s primary audience is academic, his book provides a fresh understanding of pidgin’s roots that any reader of Herman Melville’s "Typee" or "Omoo," for one, will appreciate.

"Ka Naʻi Aupuni: Kamehameha & His Feathered Gods, Tahitian Colonies & Sorcery," by Malcolm Naea Chun (First People’s Productions, $20)

A blend of archival detective story, scholarship and memoir about na akua hulu manu (the feathered gods) of Hawaii, Chun’s new book is "a study about why Kame­ha­meha was so intent in gaining the feathered gods of others."

The tradition of handing on the responsibility of caring for various forms of the feathered war god, Kuka­ʻili­­moku, to an alii heir is a well-known pattern in the moo­lelo handed down to us. Alii nui such as ʻUmi, Kame­ha­meha and Kekua­oka­lani were all inheritors, but little is known about the details of the feathered gods’ functions in their times.

With 36 color pages showing early paintings, sketches and photos, Chun, a well-known scholar of Hawaiian culture and history, hypothesizes the journeys these feathered gods took to reach Hawaii from Kahiki (Tahiti or any distant place) and how they may have been understood and used, back in the day.

"Na Hulu Kupuna o Hula: The Cherished Elders of Hula," by Ishmael Worth Stagner II (Mutual Publishing, $12.95)

"Na Hulu Kupuna o Hula" is a collection of personal reflections and invaluable insights about kupuna hula, those "ardent keepers of Hawaii’s dance traditions," by the late Ishmael Stagner.

The book was lovingly compiled and edited by his younger sister, Dorinda Makana‘onalani Stagner Nicholson, and his daughter, Carmael Makana‘onalani Kamealoha Stagner, after the author’s death in 2014. Stagner, himself a kumu hula as well as Hawaiian music historian, writer, genealogist and psychology professor at Brigham Young University-Hawaii, notes that it "is not a hula manual."

Instead, he explains, "What it hopes to do, is help you understand and appreciate better, those cherished elders … who hid the hula, and kept dancing and chanting when it was illegal and dangerous to do so."

Included are photos of Stagner taken throughout his life and career with various hula halau, family and friends.