If a big wave comes in, large and unfamiliar fishes will come from the dark ocean, and when they see the small fishes of the shallows they will eat them up. The white man's ships have arrived with clever men from big countries. They know our people are few in number and our country is small, they will devour us.
This is a quote from David Malo, the first Native Hawaiian ordained to preach and Hawaii's first superintendent of schools, and serves as a warning of what was to come for the Hawaiian people in the face of American hegemony. Wikipedia summarises the book well enough:
Unfamiliar Fishes traces the growing influence of American missionaries in Hawaii in the 1800s and the subsequent takeover of Hawaii's property and politics by American sugar plantation owners, eventually resulting in a coup d'état, restricted voting rights for nonwhites, and annexation by the United States. A particular focus is on 1898, when the U.S. annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and invaded Cuba, and then the Philippines, becoming a meddling, self-serving, militaristic international superpower practically overnight.Like any book that examines the loss of a people's homeland and culture from our (the white man's winning) side of the conflict, I find this is to be a sad story. King Kamehmeha, having just united the islands into one kingdom and smashed the temples of the old gods, prepared the environment for the introduction of a foreign god. Providentially, within a few months, the first New England Christian missionaries arrived. These people arrived with the best of intentions but started a chain of events that would lead to the loss of Hawaii's sovereignty:
For Americans, Acts 16:9 (St. Paul's dream that a Macedonian was pleading for his preaching, the "Macedonian Call") is the high-fructose corn syrup of Bible verses--an all-purpose ingredient we'll stir into everything from the ink on the Marshall Plan to canisters of Agent Orange. Our greatest goodness and our worst impulses come out of this missionary zeal, contributing to our overbearing (yet not entirely unwarranted) sense of our country as an inherently helpful force in the world. And, as with the apostle Paul, the notion that strangers want our help is sometimes a delusion.Sarah Vowell explains that whether it's regime change in Iraq or bringing the gospel to heathens, however pure the intentions, intervention will always have unintended consequences. I was reminded of a story from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a conversation between an Eskimo and a missionary sent to save his soul:
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"Priest: "No, not if you did not know."Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"Why indeed? For the benefit of whose soul? I read this book because Sarah Vowell was recommended to me as a smart and funny author who brings history alive through her witty observations, but I don't know if this is the best example of her writing. The history was kind of scattershot, with many interviews with people in Hawaii today and visits to museums from Honolulu to a whaling museum in Massachusetts, and no real analysis. This is an example of the humour:
I stopped by New Bedford on one of those perfect New England October days, when the sky is blue and the leaves are gilded and the air has that bracing autumnal bite so that all you want to do is bob for apples or hang a witch or something.Not particularly hilarious. As sympathetic as Vowell is to the Hawaiians she meets, she does share blame where it's due:
If Kalakaua had taken better care of his charge, been more mindful of just how fragile his tiny nation's independence was, if he had led with restraint and probity, if he had spent less, drunk less, gambled less, steered clear of the petty, greedy opium con, then his enemies would have been unable to swaddle themselves and their undemocratic motives in the mantle of the Magna Carta and 1776.And she adds this thought-provoker:
I wonder what (Queen Liliuokalani) would have thought if she had known, witnessing (McKinley's) inaugural parade, that 112 years later, the first Hawaiian-born president of the United States would be inaugurated and in his parade the marching band from Punahou School, his alma mater (and that of her enemies), would serenade the new president by playing a song she had written, "Aloha O'e".Funny how history circles back on itself. I wonder if Obama knew that he was being serenaded by a song written by the last of the Hawaiian rulers, written while imprisoned by his government, for the crime of not recognising their authority to dethrone her? In Unfamiliar Fishes, Vowell meets with a small independence group, ethnic Hawaiians who carry "We Are Not American" signs at public events, but I have to wonder to what purpose? I can't imagine the non-ethnic Hawaiians are going to leave the islands any more than the non-Natives here in Canada will be leaving to surrender the land back to the original inhabitants. I will restate that from the perspective of today, the treatment of the natives in the lands the Europeans (and their descendents in the States) wished to conquer was deplorable, but it's a bell that can't be unrung. It is heartening that some elements of Hawaiian culture, especially hula and the creation chants, were preserved for history and revived in the 1970's:
Hawaii can still be found: in the swaying hips of high school students performing hula dances down the hill from David Malo's grave; in the arms of men rowing an outrigger canoe below the cave where Queen Kaahumanu was born; in the fingertip of an old man pointing to his ancestors' names on an antique petition; and every time two Hawaiians really say hello, touching noses, breathing each other in.Another wee complaint: although I knew that the focus of this book was Hawaii, I wish more had been done with the promise of examining all of the lands that the United States took over in 1898. It was mentioned in passing that this was the year the US took control of Guantanamo Bay (something I've often wondered about), and Guam and Puerto Rico (but why aren't they states?) and expelled the Spanish from the Philippines. I wanted more about Teddy Roosevelt and the connection between Hawaii and the Guatemalan (Panama) Canal and I wanted Hearst thrown in ("You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war!"), and more importantly, I wanted events thrown in that I hadn't heard of -- this was such an interesting time that I'm sure there were other far-reaching consequences that I'm unaware of. In the end, I was left wanting more: more history; more humour; more perspective.
