Mo‘olelo

• In Event: Exploring the Tension Between Higher Education and Native Ways of Knowing: Challenges and Possibilities for Creative Spaces

Abstract

"Where do you come from and to who do you belong?" These were the first set of questions asked of me when I began my under graduate education at the Center for Hawaiian Studies as the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. As I rushed to create a quick response, I thought to myself "what an odd set of questions to ask." I was certain I knew the answers to these questions. After all, I'm Hawaiian. I had to be, because both my parents were Hawaiian. In fact, I graduated from a high school that required that I be Hawaiian. So what else could I be?
Mo‘olelo in the Hawaiian language is usually understood to mean story. This presentation is a story about learning where I come from and to who I belong. A story about my own journey in the sea of knowledge. The academy has often been a place hostile to traditional ways of knowing and existing. And yet it was here in the academy, where I learned the story of my people and our history. However, these stories were different from the stories I learned about from my childhood. These stories told about a different reality of my people, vibrant stories filled with traditional knowledge and ways of existing that seemed so far removed from current time.
Learning about traditional knowledge involved learning about ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, our mother tongue. Having this ability led to the discovery of looking at the world through a different lens, one that is imbued with a Hawaiian worldview. It is through this lens that I came to understand the depth and breadth of mo‘olelo to mean more than just a story. It was mo‘olelo that explains our genealogy, politics and history from our locus of enunciation.
Mo‘olelo provides an explanation of our forced assimilation as a people to western culture at the expense of disassociating ourselves from our culture, from our identity. It explains the politics that help set the state for this transformation to occur which then altered the history we are led to believe about our people and ultimately about ourselves.
The greatest joy I live is in knowing this truth. And it is the with this knowledge that I recognized and accept the responsibility to continue to tell this mo‘olelo so that future generations will know the importance of knowing "who they come from and to who they belong."

Author

• Lia O'Neill M. A. Keawe, University of Hawaii - Manoa