“[Hawaii is] a rock with some flowers and some towns” – Oly Noneza, A Hawaiian
The echoes of Colonialism still reverberate throughout the world, hundreds of years after its inception and nearly a century after its (near) abolition. The world works in larger processes and rhythms and the ripples of these processes haunt the modern world today. History is not doomed to repeat itself because of some mystical force that finds humor in the irony of it all, but rather because almost nothing has as heavy an influence on the future as the events of the past. When people today point out that institutions like slavery and colonialism and Japanese internment were not their own choices they are correct. What they fail to realize is that the past is as powerful as their choices today - that it holds an influence as much as any man does today. We are not fated to relive the past; we are fated to suffer its consequences.
Po’ouli, in native Hawaiian means ‘black face’. It’s an apt name, considering that the small tropical bird features a striking obsidian-hued face, surrounded by a mix of cream, gray and brown coloring on the rest of its body. Averaging just under six inches in length, the small bird would be at home perched upon the width of an outstretched finger. The Po’ouli’s song is like the sound of wet rubber soles on tile, with an occasional lower pitch thrown in.
Before the Polynesians inhabited Hawaii, the Po’ouli was one of many foragers that thrived in the dense undergrowth of the islands. The thick forest floor was a buffet of snails, spiders and other insect for the Po’ouli to survive on. Even with the arrival of the Polynesians, the Po’ouli found its habitat undisturbed. It seemed the dense tropical jungles nestled on its islands were immune to its first human contact.
Maui, the second largest island of the archipelago that is Hawaii, is a bastion of the natural world; its ancient beauty largely unperturbed even in the modern age of deforestation and manmade landscaping. Its habitat was a veritable paradise for the Po’ouli. The steep terrain and the thick green jungle that clings to its slopes has managed to avoid human exploitation through pure impenetrability alone. Polynesians settled the island sometime around 1000 AD – though the date is constantly disputed – and instituted much of what is considered to be traditional Hawaiian culture.
Maui’s impenetrability would go on to prove itself further against the British explorer James Cook. He would never set foot on the island, as he was unable to find a suitable place to harbor his ship. Perhaps this was for the better. In the tradition of Cortes, Cook came without a care for the devastation left behind. His journal reads like the diary of a scorned ex, with promises of retribution and long sections devoted to lamenting the Hawaiians resisting his self-imposed leadership. The Hawaiians, despite initially identifying Cook as one of their gods,eventually got tired of his overdeveloped Colonial European sense of superiority and refused to provide him with the unlimited labor and resources he seemed to think he was entitled to. Cook thus decided to follow the tradition of Cortes and kidnap the Hawaiian King to get what he wanted. This resulted in his death at the hands of the potentially conquered, and stands as one of the few times in colonial history that a conqueror got his just due so swiftly.
Yet the expedition would be much more impactful than anything that the petulant Captain Cook or the native Hawaiians could have expected. The Po’ouli, like its habitat, was on an island, ecologically speaking. Hawaii was free of pigs and snakes and a large influx of mosquitoes and other dangers that lurked in the undergrowth of forests across the world, the wide swath of ocean that surrounded it protecting it from the outside world for much of its early history. Hawaii and its human inhabitants was much the same – an island separate from smallpox and gunpowder and steel and colonialism.
Cook’s expedition at first seemed most harmful for Hawaiians. Their population was upwards of 300,000 at the time of Cook’s expedition. By 1820 it was around 60,000. By 1900 it was close to 24,000. This can be equated to two major factors – the devastation of smallpox and the gerrymandering of Hawaiian identity, making the term less and less inclusive and making ‘Hawaiian’ a minority category in its homeland. Europeans had, after all, spent the last 200 years perfecting their subjugation of people with which they could find differences. By the 1800s, colonialism was no longer an experiment as when Cortes landed in Mexico, but an ingrained system.
Hawaiians would see an influx of Europeans and Americans at first, drawn by the profits to be made from sugarcane farming. Following the expansion of the sugarcane and pineapple industry there, Asian immigrants (mostly of Japanese descent) would be enticed in to settle the island with relatively lucrative farming jobs and provide a much-needed labor force that the smallpox-ridden Hawaiians simply couldn’t provide. This further diluted the population and crowded out more of the island’s native population from a say in their rapidly changing world.
In the intervening time, the Hawaiian government was torn apart by settlers. A group of businessmen, which included Sanford Dole of the Dole Fruit company, would lead a rebellion against the Hawaiian government and institute their own. Much like in Texas a half-century before, this was done with the ultimate goal to incorporate Hawaii into the United States. Not even a book entitled “Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen” could restore Queen Liliuokalani to her throne.
At first, its new colonial neighbors might not have seemed to have been a threat to the Po’ouli. Yet, it was not the Europeans who stepped onto the land that would pull the Po’ouli out of its island, but the traveling companions, food provisions and stowaways that the Europeans brought with them that would do so. European swine was brought along as livestock. Rats would stow away on board the ships of Europeans and depart onto the islands of Hawaii upon arrival. Birds would be brought as pets, and inevitably some would escape or be let go to live on the island.
The introduction of pigs and rats and foreign birds were the smallpox to the Po’ouli’s existence. The dense undergrowth it thrived in was prime territory for feral pigs to root in. This rooting up of the forest’s foundation would provide habitats for mosquitoes where they hadn’t existed before, spreading diseases amongst the native animals of the island more easily. Foreign birds competed for food in ways that the Po’ouli had never experienced before in its small and enclosed ecosystem. Rats would also fight off Po’ouli for precious food supplies in the remaining undergrowth.
Maui, and Hawaii as a whole, will likely survive climate change, just as it has survived colonialism and industry alike. Its high slopes will weather the rising ocean currents and its diverse ecosystem will limp its way forward through the eradication of its species. The amount of Native Hawaiians has rebounded significantly in the last 100 years – though at an incalculable cost to their culture and their sovereignty.
And the Po’ouli. The last Po’ouli was seen in 2004. At the time, there were only three known to be alive. In 2018, the species was declared extinct. Its death was at least a hundred years past the height of colonialism, yet it was direct effects of colonialism that killed it. The Po’ouli didn’t bring the pigs and the birds and the rats that killed it. Yet kill the Po’ouli they did. The Po'ouli was fated to suffer the consequences of our past.
Hawaiians would persist through colonialism. Yet the archipelago is nothing like it once was. Thousands and thousands of natives were killed by smallpox. Hawaiian culture was forever changed in ways to suit the conquerors; and like any minority people under a government much larger than them, the residents of Hawaii have had to adapt and change to the demands that colonialism brought down upon them. The native Hawaiians were fated to suffer the consequences of our past.
Colonialism, at its root, was greed manifested – taken out on a world ill-equipped to deal with a whole new one. James Cook, in the grand tradition of conquerors, was nothing more than an extension of this greed, a manifestation of the desire to exploit the exploitable for as much as could be justified while still sleeping relatively easy at night.
And now, the effects of this greed plague the planet. Increasing carbon emissions, kick started by the industrial revolution, which was in turn kick started through the vast wealth exploited from colonialism, now permeate the atmosphere. Melting glaciers, rising oceans, warmer temperatures, and increasingly severe natural disasters now threaten the planet. Two choices remain: to adapt and survive or to perish in an increasingly hostile and changing world. People today didn’t kick start the processes that have lead us down this path, but the echoes of colonialism now threaten the future.
We are fated to suffer our past.
Sean Morge is a 21 year old college student attending Northern Arizona University. He is a triple major in English, History and Film. He one day hopes to make enough money off writing to afford lunch, or perhaps a coffee.
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