Transcript for:
Hawaiian Sacred Sites and Practices

welcome back to hawaiian studies 107. today we are going to conclude unit 3 native religions this is lesson 3. our papa outline for today we're going to begin with a discussion on what is considered sacred according to hawaiian religious beliefs we'll move into an understanding of the heyo which is the religious site of worship we will do some cultural comparison and talk about the marae in tahiti and in aotearoa we'll look at the hawaiian year and how religion played a role in determining our year and certain activities that would or would not be conducted and we're going to finish with a discussion on the makahiki and then we're going to wrap everything up and do a little conclusion and summary and what we've learned with hawaiian religion okay let's get started so i wanted to begin today's discussion by looking at what is sacred in any religion in every religion you often have this discussion on sacred and what that means when we look at the word sacred we might think of terms such as holy important critical blessed all of these types of ideas might come to mind and that is absolutely correct when we're looking at sacred from a hawaiian perspective we very much are talking about everything and anything that produces life or the ability for life to be created for life to be allowed to occur and so when we look at sacred it should be obvious at this point but because hawaiian religion is land based everything that is sacred to us revolves around these islands our resources and protecting that balance that we need and for in order for hawaii our environment to thrive so i have some examples on this side we have kilauea erupting on the island of hawaii the volcano is a sacred place we learned about pelehonuamia so we have a connection to this goddess we talked about lava creating new land and from this new land and this destruction and devastation we have this new soil and we have this new fertility and this new ability for life such as the ohialehua to all start coming about in the next picture i have the kalo and it has the fresh water the rain droplets that have accumulated there so you see that connection to the resources the call of this life-sustaining element for hawaiians you see the fresh water which is by sacred elements down below i have kukaniroko which we learned about previously and we saw this is a birthing site where chiefesses would come to deliver their children and this site was selected specifically on the island of hawaii because it's located in the pico the center of hawaii and so we see a lot of activity there thunder and lightning storms and if you have your child in this area all of those elements of the gods are brought into that birth are brought into that child's being and finally i have this ohialehua picture ohialehua a connection to all of our various plants and resources when we look at the plants we might be able to see uses in daily life the flowers for lay the flowers for medicine the tree stumps for construction material but we also know that this is a kino lao of our god ku and through our god cool we are provided with all of these things that we need to sustain our human lives so we understand sacred in a similar but also a very specific way in hawaii land-based religion means that again the emphasis is on your environment on your resources on your elements on understanding them and best protecting them sacred for us is about life and it's also about a system of respect respecting your environment where you come from ensuring that the activities that you participate in are not going to harm your environment anyway or that specific location's ability again to produce life to produce hola okay so sacred from a hawaiian perspective now in addition to these natural sites that are sacred and resources we also have physical sites that have been created by people and these sites are often referred to as so everyone can say hey by definition is a religious site of worship dedicated to the various gods so we know in hawaiian religious beliefs we recognize some 400 000 different gods well could be very small more like ahu or shrines or little offering areas all the way to structures that are larger than football fields so they varied in size they also varied in the type of activities that would take place on these sites and the gods or goddesses that would be prayed to at these locations so even though we can connect to religion out in vahipana out in the environment at the volcano at kukaniloko we also would erect heyo for specific protocol pulley prayers that needed to take place throughout the year now these hail came in numerous styles and purposes as i mentioned some were very small others were very large the typical building material for a heia was pohakupele which is lava rock but sometimes you would find koa which is coral and other materials also used in these structures especially if you were building one of these structures closer to the ocean so a lot of times they reflected what was available in their natural environment makes sense right architecture of these hail were aligned with rising and setting points of things such as the sun of important dates such as the equinox and the solstice so these hail represent and showcase traditional knowledge regarding events that go on in our year um studying the stars and the constellations and actually taking all of that into account when determining where these here are going to be created where the walls and prayer towers are going to be aligned to so if you've never heard of these terms equinox and solstice before equinox is we have um the equinox is when you have equal amounts of daylight and nighttime hours in the year and this is an important event in hawaiian history and in many cultures it's considered important but a lot of times we would actually align certain features of our hail with the sun on those days and shadows that would be cast on those days solstice is when you have we have two solstices a year you have the winter solstice and you have the summer solstice and this is when in the winter it's the longest night of the year so you have the most nighttime hours of the year and then the summer solstice is when you have the longest day of the year and so what happens is in winter time when we have the winter solstice and we have the most dark hours of the year okay and then we move towards an equinox where you have equal equal daylight nighttime hours in the spring and then we move to our next solstice which is going to be summer and you have the most sunlight out of the entire year then you move to another equinox where they match up again and then it starts again and so we keep doing this cycle and so this was important in our year calculations and again in our prayers and in setting up these religious states of worship so heyo in addition to being these incredible structures that were built and showcase architecture and engineering also showcased that knowledge and connection to science um to things going on in our celestials and everything and how that played into our environment and our religious beliefs now i wanted to share with you some examples pictures of hail but actually before i do that i'm going to go back to this slide it kind of excuse me and down below we have this pictorial image of a hail this style is luakini and the lua kini hail i mentioned before when we learned about cool it was believed to have been brought to hawaii with a priest named from the island of tahiti and this is a sacrificial hail and usually the sacrificial hails would be some of our largest heiau because when you're gonna go to war um it was some very strict protocol and rituals that would take place and many men would be involved in these practices so you obviously would need a really large site to hold all of the protocol and so if you've ever been to a hayout today you probably are used to just seeing the rock structures and maybe the wall structures still exist but in the past it wouldn't just be the foundation you actually would have ki so you can see here that we have some ki um these are religious images of all of the gods there's a prayer tower that is erected on the hill there's a ahu where you're going to use as an altar and make various offerings there are a number of structures this is called the mana house and in the mana house typically you would store all of your ki and other religious items when they're not in use for protocol um so that they would be protected and kept there so you actually have a number of structures on the heyo um today we still have a number of hail still in existence around hawaii um some of them are are kind of remnants of the walls that used to exist others are pretty well preserved many over the years have been destroyed as hawaii started to become more western and the religious system was changed we'll learn more about that in later units um but there are these structures that still exist and many of them are still taken care of um and are utilized for various aspects of hawaiian religion so if you do ever visit ahio even if this is not your religion and not your belief system it's always important to show appreciation and respect for other people's beliefs so make sure that you you keep that in mind i would highly urge you to stay off the hail don't take anything from it and just treat it as you would any place that is considered important to a group of people with that type of respect okay and if you can't do that then just stay away from the hail just just don't go there okay let's look at some examples so the first one i have is here on the island of oahu and this is ulupo ulupo is located near casa hospital so if you're driving down the pali highway and castle hospital is on your left and you keep continuing like you're going to kailua you will see ulupo in the left-hand side um behind that area and ulupo today is is a preserved hail it has a caretaker um the caretaker right now is kaleo wong he's also a navigator so again you can see those connections between hail and the knowledge associated with hail and things like navigation especially with the weather and stars and things like that um they do a lot of agricultural work at ulupo a number of hula halau um hula groups actually come here and will participate in various chants and offerings that go on right here ulupo is a pretty massive heyo and if you ever go and visit you'll see that the rocks they're fairly high some of the areas have been destroyed over the years but overall pretty well preserved and today a lot more restoration work going on this is located on the island of hawaii and this is near mahu kona so if you're familiar with hawaii if you are leaving the airport and you're driving out of kona and you're heading towards hamakua area um you will come towards makona and on a hill in mahukuna you'll find and so you will see all of our hail have names and those names are to honor them and to also take into account events that have gone on in this area as well as the natural environment so here a pu'u means a hill and kohala means a whale so if you actually were on the top of this hill when the whales migrate through our waters this is one of the best vantage points to see that event occur so honoring what goes on in these waters right off the coast of kohala right below this hay because this is a men's hail is a haleo papa which is a female hail so like we had different hail based on the various gods we also had hail that were taken care of by men hail that were taken care of by women it wasn't a one-stop shop where you can go and pray to all of your gods and do all of your activities at this site no remember hawaiian religion very specific so we had the various sites locations and events that would take place on them was a sacrificial hail and in fact this is the hail that kamehameha the great who is um probably the most well-known or heard of hawaiian maui in our history also known as kamehameha this is the heyo that he consecrated before he went on his journey to unite all of the hawaiian islands which he was successful at and he was the first ruler that was able to to take control of all of hawaii and keep it like that from that point on so this was a sacrificial heyo um beginning in the 90s i believe it was by the name of john started bringing back cultural practitioners to and they started doing ceremonies and prayers here again so this is a hail that has a lot of activity that goes on um i've never been to the ceremonies that they take place in august but members of my family my mom has gone with the women and the chanting they take care of the hello hello papa my dad my brother is my husband have all gone with their halemua which is their lua group and they have done protocol and different events at this heyo so we do still see that these heyo are taken care of and there are aspects of hawaiian religion that are practiced here no human sacrifice as far as i know recently but um other activities definitely taking place and our final example of a hail this is located on the island of maui it's in the hana ha moa area of maui and pi la nihale is actually the largest hail in the pacific it is two stories high its walls are aligned with the solstice so summer as well as winter the right wall is for the winter solstice which is a dedication to our god kanaloa the left wall is for the summer solstice dedication to our god kane so when you think of that kanaloa is often often associated not only but often associated with the ocean and so when you look at the winter that's when our ocean in hawaii is most active the swells are the largest most dangerous and so winter solstice is a dedication to kanaloa so it connects to what's going on in your physical environment summer solstice is to kane kane is often associated with sunlight and when you think about the summer okay we have a ton of sunlight that's when sun is the most intense um the heat is the most intense and we have the longest hours of daylight so a connection to him the prayer tower is for the equinox so it's aligned with the equinox and that is for our god wakiya who you know is sky father but more importantly he's about that vast abundance of space that space that is needed for any procreation so nihale as well as all of our other ulupo and the others are a testament to the knowledge of science math and architecture that hawaiian kupuna had and utilized in their everyday life and that was very much a part of their religious beliefs and practices here's another picture of pilani and this is an ariel just to give you a vantage point and to see how massive it is um today pii lanihale is considered a historic site like a state park so it is well preserved they do have caretakers um if you ever visit this area again it's really nice nicely manicured fairly easy to access but again make sure you show that respect it's not a recreational park but it is this traditional site of worship and prayer and so we want to acknowledge that we want to honor that and ensure that we're not being disrespectful okay let's do a little bit of cultural comparison so um when we look at hawaiian religion we've already identified some of the connections that we have with our polynesian cousins when we learned about the gods we saw we have similar gods in other areas land-based beliefs so our hero our religious sites of worship are also very much connected to what we see happening in places like tahiti and aotearoa so this picture comes from tahiti and in tahiti there word for religious site of worship is marai so you can say marai and this is so again you see everything is named naming makes it more personal naming makes it easier to pass on that information and that history and to have a deeper connection okay so is on the island of tahiti and this is one picture of a portion of this marae because actually it's a complex so you have arahurahu which has a number of complexes this is one of the larger ones and when i visited this area they were saying that actually they would have different events that took place on all of the marae but it was all considered one too so certain protocols certain um prayers would take place at the different sites but again you can see a lot of connections it is built out of pohaku pele so rock wall structures you see that dry stack building which means there's no cement no glue no mortar no nails holding holding anything together it's all about placement and gravity holding the structure together and many of these structures are you know 800 plus years old so it just gives you an idea that they were built to last and um they definitely took account that that knowledge of how to put everything together um in kind of a perfect way to hold it as a structure as one foundation now you can also see here the ki the religious images of the gods have been replaced with newer images carved out of wood the older ones probably are no longer around or maybe are in other locations um you can see some foliage we have tea leaf on arahurahu and you can also see their prayer tower their offering area is actually built into the marae one of the differences that i noticed when i started studying the different marae and hey is if you look closely you'll see that the the stones at arahurahu are rounded so you can try and look at this picture and you'll see that all those stones have been rounded um they weren't stones that were found in nature that were naturally round but they actually were carved and they were sanded and shaped to take on that type of that type of shape and that's different than the hawaiian heiau our stones are in their natural state and then are put together like this big puzzle so in arahuruhu the reason in tahiti they started shaping their stones what i was told when i was down there by a woman named hinato murphy that i was studying under and she said a time came in tahiti where the god oro became a paramount god and odo we believe is connected to our god lonno so a similarity of function and role and she said one of oros our word is quinolau physical manifestations in the environment is the sea turtle and so when you think of the sea turtle they've got this kind of narrow rounded head and so what they started doing on their marae is shaping the stones to look like the head of a sea turtle and so that's a connection and a way to honor this god oro so this is something that if you just visited this marae and didn't know that um you might not realize that all these these pohaku these stones that time that care has been placed into creating this structure you might think ah just bypass it don't even look at it or they found round stones you know but really it's this deeper connection to their spirituality their god and honoring this god ordeal okay and this is also an example of a marae a religious site of worship um but this comes to us out of aotearoa new zealand and you can see that their marae is a house it actually looks like a house and it's a complex of structures where they would conduct all of their most important religious ceremonies as well as serve as a bastion of maori knowledge we were introduced to the marae in unit 2 our language unit when we learned about natha mathur the young warriors and how this group of students actually went to the marae and asked the tipuna the elders to teach them anything and everything about maori culture so this is an example um this madai here is tahering and the marais would actually be named in honor of ancestors so if you look at the top of this house there is a carving and that is of an ancestor and oftentimes that would refer to that name of the murai now the entire marae is intricately decorated either through carvings or paintings on the inside um just exquisite i had the honor of visiting tehengawaka while i was living in new zealand back in 2003 um i was living there going to school at the university of otago in dunedin and there was a protest going on and they call it a hikoi and what had happened is maori rights to their foreshores their ocean resources was being jeopardized and so there were big movements going on throughout the country to fight for those rights to collect resources to feed their families and so forth and so i with two other hawaiians that were living in new zealand at the time um decided to go and show our support for our maori cousins and so we attended this hikoi um with our university and other students um from otago and this was on north island so it was quite a trip from the bottom of south island up to north island um about an 11-hour trip we went by car and by ferry and we ended up in the city of wellington and wellington is where tahereh is located and they actually hosted us at this marae so we got to go there and and participate in poffidi ceremonies which are their religious ceremonies and sleep at this marae while we were going to the heat boy and participating in the protests so um this madai is really special to me for those reasons and for that connection that i had to it um when you look at it again i said every part is intricately carved and these carvings are connections to stories and ancestors values lessons and histories which is why they often say in new zealand that the marae is the best place to learn from and this is where you have thousands of phds all of their dissertations that can easily come out of these structures because that's where all of the knowledge has been housed so um at tahereh when we were there what they do is they have a pophiri ceremony and it's like our pule and our aha and our protocols that take place in hawaii and as you can see in this picture there's a grassy area so typically in front in front of the marae you'd have a large paw a large field area and in aotearoa they actually divide their communities into iwi which are tribal affiliations so in your iwi you have your marae so there's a number of them throughout new zealand and the people of that tribe take care of their marae and so what would happen is let's say visitors like from a different university visitors from a different tribe is they would stand on the outside and the protocols would begin with the women and the women would do what are called and they would chant and pray and to one another and so the guests would chant and ask permission and the host marai would respond and after these these prayers are conducted then the group the the guest group would enter into this grass area um and the warriors would emerge first and they would kind of show their strength and their might and we would get a good sense of at that point if this is going to be a friendly meeting or not so friendly a meeting um after that takes place then the elder men would do what's called the faith which are all of the stories and basically it's all of these accounts of their ancestors and their histories and the amazing things that they did and they kind of go back and forth and share all of these story stories and after this occurs then you have kanoa and all of that sacredness that kapoor and those strict protocols are lifted and usually what happens is people share food and that's one of the way to just kind of lift all of that that heaviness that just happened of all of the protocol that they had to go through and so i got to experience poffidi here at tehengawaka at a few other marae as well while i was in new zealand and it was really an incredible experience and beautiful to see that these maintain those traditions and taking on those roles and um both the women and men and and the younger generation learning and really learning about themselves also through all of those stories that are are being offered and all of those um kind of events that are taking place here so that's their profile ceremony um one of the connections i've made between aotearoa and hawaii was that we learned from a hawaiian perspective that our women make spaces sacred and we're the holders of the potential and i explained that in our last lesson so i really see this the pophili ceremony and the women starting with their chants and prayers as very much a connection to that and that same type of idea they're opening up the space they're paving that way they are holding all of that potential for everything that's going to come they're making it sacred and then the protocols all start as well so i found that connection i think it makes sense and again on a different on a you know different types of events going on but very much still rooted in those those types of beliefs and values okay um if we were to go into teheringawaka again you would see that everything is carved and painted and what i learned while at this marae is that the floor represents the roof represents rangi so earth mother and sky father so it's all that story in the construction of the marae the poles that hold the roof up from the floor are the which are the post of tane because tan is the child that propped the father up into the sun into the sky and created that land for the living for eventually people to be created so they recount and honor that story in the construction of the marae and then all of the posts throughout the marae in this one they had paintings and carvings and i learned that it was from past all the way to present and they were genealogies that they were preserving and so when a maori person enters into a marae they will look at all of the images and they will find an image that is connected to their story and to their genealogy they use the word whakapapa and they'll go and set up their bed there and they'll sleep there and what it represents is from past to present that living legacy and so when i learned that i just thought that's so beautiful how cool so me and my two friends from hawaii um we're not maori so we stayed on the side and all the maori students found their places to sleep and afterwards we found an area that no one had set up under we asked permission we set up our bed there and we ended up sleeping under this story and getting to be a part of it and um i'm a pretty terrible sleeper but i kid you not i had one of the best sleeps of my life into hitting a waka on the floor with like 80 other people but i really believe it was just because that sense of identity and culture was so palpable and you couldn't help but be comforted by it and just become completely consumed in it so pretty cool okay so this is the mud eye now i want to tell you just one final story to give you an idea again of of everything that is is housed and we can learn from the murai and its sacred role in maori society if we look at this picture you can see there's one door in and out right above the door you can see there's like a wood piece and that's called the putty and it would be carved or painted on all of the different mud i and this pade represented the goddess society is the goddess of death okay and you might think why would you put something that represents the goddess of death right above your doorway well it's it's deliberate and the reason is people need to realize that no matter what one day you will belong to him there's no way you can overcome that so it is your job right now and should be your purpose to do everything you can to honor your ancestors to prepare for the next generation to lead a good and fulfilled life so when you do go back to hinewitz um there's no regrets and it's it's appropriate we can't escape that so we want to prepare for that as best as we can and so i thought that was that's pretty interesting you know that that reminder that you're never going to overcome it it's always a part of your life and what's going to happen so just prepare for it as best as you can and how do you do that from a maori perspective from a pacific island perspective honor the past prepare for the future take care of your environment now the reason maori go deeper right and there's a reason why all people are mortal and must one day return to hinanui to pull and in one of their stories they talk about the demigod maui and so maui is a demigod that we see all over polynesia and in some areas outside in the pacific further into the pacific um in hawaii maui is often talked about as fishing up the islands and this person who slows the sun and was able to reveal the secret of fire and he does all these amazing things that are important and we learn lessons from him well maui is also important in aotearoa and in aotearoa one of the stories is that maui encounters hirano itapo and he knows that she is the goddess of death and he wants to become immortal he wants to live forever so he devises a plan maui is a shape-shifter and he decides that he's going to transform into a little mo a little dessert and while she's sleeping he's going to crawl up inside of her and crawl out her mouth and somehow i don't know how don't ask me but somehow by doing this he will become immortal and so that's his great plan and one day he's watching him anyway to pull and she takes a nap and so he transforms into a lizard and he starts crawling up on her thigh and he crawls up inside of her and he's making this trek to immortality and he's feeling really good and he's super excited and all of a sudden hinanui tepo wakes up and she feels this slight tickle in her and she squeezes her thighs together and squishes maui and he dies and because of that people are mortal okay so i love that story that comes to us from aotearoa new zealand don't try and overcome the goddess of death it's not going to work out in your favor instead just take care of your kuleana now do what you have to do now okay so sacred sites religious sites of worship we have the heyo in hawaii we have the marai in tahiti teaching us so much about ourselves about our environment about our understandings and what we're going to do with all of that information all right let's move on i wanted to now talk about the hawaiian year so hopefully what you've seen so far in this unit on religion is that religion is all encompassing instead of just focusing on one aspect of religion like the gods and prayers my goal was to kind of expose you to a variety of elements of hawaiian religion so that you can take away from this unit that religion was daily life it was societal structure who was going to be the ruler what our kuleanan roles are going to be it was an understanding of pule and prayer it was an understanding of things like resource management when we're going to utilize certain resources when we're going to refrain from others it was all of our daily practices and understandings of the elements okay so i've been trying to give you lots of examples so that hopefully you can appreciate and really take away from this unit that again our religion was infused in every single thing we did okay and the foundation of society was a sacred eating when you take in food from the environment you're actually consuming the body forms of the gods this is a divine act and this is our most important responsibility to protect that relationship which means to malama aina all right so even our year was dictated by religious beliefs the hawaiian year was based on the lunar calendar and so we're not the only culture that uses the moon for our calendar um today one of the cultures we often hear about is chinese culture utilizes the lunar calendar which is why in places like hawaii we celebrate chinese new year it's a big deal and it's never same time as regular new year january 1st according to the gregorian calendar and we're talking about the earth going around the sun um usually chinese new year can range from you know end of january beginning of february sometimes even mid-february there's this range because it deals with the lunar cycle so we're talking about the lunar cycle we're talking about roughly about a 30-day period of time from the moon going from nothing to becoming full to again returning to nothing in the sky and it has to do with that moon and the phases that we see when we're looking up to the heavens okay and the impact that the moon is having on us so hawaiians we use the lunar calendar for our scheduling as well and this was also based on religious beliefs for us the sun is kane hoalani it's a male element the moon is a female element and this is where our goddess hina actually resides and we'll learn more about that in a later unit our seasons are divided into two main parts based on religious beliefs a season that is dedicated to our god who god of war politics procreation and prosperity and a season that is dedicated to our god lono god of peace and agriculture a time of fertility and relaxation so these gods would not be the only gods prey to during these periods of time but they kind of serve as like our paramount thoughts so their values and characteristics are going to be some of those like foundations for that period of time and most important so let's start with the season dedicated to cool okay um we've learned about who before in this class and here i have a list of some of his many forms so we have kumokuhali who's spreading over the land of dry farming the snatcher of the islands who pulling together the earth another reason why we recognized 400 000 gods because even one god had multiple forms and environments in which you could connect to this god and request assistance okay so these are some of whose different forms whose season lasted about eight months out of the year from around march to about october and the reason i have to say about is we're trying to connect different systems right the lunar calendar is different than the sun the gregorian calendar so it's an approximation activities that were permitted during the season of cool included work war sacrifice prayer so these were all regular activities that were allowed to happen so what was work work is building house work is making canoes work is going out fishing work is cultivating your color fields all of that was work and this period of time is when we took care of those activities if you had a problem so let's say we have two chiefs um that are in neighboring moku districts and they have a big problem with one another during the season of coup this is when you are allowed to go to war and if you go to war this requires sacrifice human sacrifice so these events were permittable during this period of time now there were periods in our history where we learned about many wars that were going on and unrest there were also periods of time where there were long periods of peace it depends often on the island and the period the context that you're looking at and what was going on during those years or during that that ruler that that chief and what his or her objectives and desires kind of were but war was not something that happened on a daily basis yeah sacrifice wasn't something that was happening by thousands of people um it was specific and it is also very true that hawaiians tried to avoid war when possible and typically one of the best ways to avoid war was by discovering genealogical connections so let's say we're arguing we realize that we're family members okay we're going to put a rest to it and genealogy was that important that it could serve as that mediator that would actually end battles sometimes before they even started or if a battle is going on and it looks like there's it's going to be very difficult and you know we're losing resources we're losing people um sometimes the genealogists would come in and say hey you guys are actually family members so stop and everything would stop another thing that was sometimes done is if two chiefs were very much having difficulties with one another but let's say one sheep had a daughter the other had a son they might decide to have their son and daughter come together and procreate because now guess what we're family and we have this mo no we have this grandchild in common and we all know grandparents want to do everything for their grandchildren so oftentimes that also could end wars from happening but in the event that war was necessary or war was something that was going to occur this is the season when it was allowable so prayer also not only to cool but to all of our various gods occurred during this period of time which was majority of the year in hawaii now the other part of the year was dedicated to our god lono and lonna you've learned about as being this god of peace and agriculture his season was about four months begins around october november and goes through about february march so again about because we're talking about the moon calendar lono is honored during this period of time to ensure peace and prosperity and this season is specifically known as the makahiki okay makahiki this is also the wetter season in hawaii so when you think about our islands come october november this is when we start to see a lot more rain coming through our islands this is when our earth becomes much more palupalu much more kind of um damp and easy to move around this is when we see the biggest surf coming into hawaii some of the most dangerous treacherous conditions for being up in the mountains this is our wet more kind of tumultuous season in our islands and so during this period of time it actually begins with the rising of a star constellation and this star constellation is called makalii also known as pleiades or the seven sisters if you've ever heard of these terms and so activities that are gonna be different than what we saw in makahiki that what we saw in the season of cool first of all no work so no house building no farming no fishing all of our work is gonna be paused no war no sacrifice so if two chiefs have an issue with one another makalii rises we enter into makahiki they have to put those disputes on the back burner and in four months maybe everything will just resolve itself and makahi can actually avoid a war from happening um if there's no war there's also no sacrifice prayers are abundant as our offerings especially to ensure productivity and fertility in the upcoming season of work and a ton of festivals and games and these festivals and games very much are utilized to help develop skills to keep our community engaged and focused and to just really enjoy this period of rest and relaxation so let's look at a little bit more deeply these activities and think about them so no work so what this means is typically around august august is a very busy time in traditional hawaiian society this is when you'd be drying a lot of fish preparing all of your harvest prepping everything making sure your houses are all secured so that you can go on this period of break rest from work so everything has to be done during august and september so it's a really busy period of time in hawaii um the reason we didn't work was for people to have a little bit of a break and rest but also because when you think of the environment in hawaii what we just talked about from october november through january and february it's our wet it's our rough ocean it's our the mountains are full of missed period of time so we shouldn't be working we should stay close to home to protect ourselves do you want to send your men out into the deep sea to go fishing when the waves are maybe 20 feet high probably not unless you don't want to see those men anymore so you know what let's not go out there we're going to dry our fish we can live off of that do we want to be planting new babies into the earth to grow when there could be downpours and torrential rain would come through those crops no because then all those babies are just going to get washed away and it's for hordes for nothing so the reason we participate in activities and refrain from others during the period of time has to do with what's going on in our environment yeah hawaiian time is all about the environmental cues and what we should or shouldn't be doing um and it has these connections to our gods and through our gods and learning about our gods we better understand what's going on in our home okay so let's look now at some of the other activities that go on during makahiki since we're not working and some of you are like oh makahi sounds great let's bring back this system i know sounds awesome right to not have to work for four months to kind of enjoy your family to yeah it sounds awesome to me too okay so ho our offerings offerings were made in abundance to the god um festivals would take place during this period of time swimming in the moonlight rituals and prayers dedicated to prosperity in the upcoming year feasts and a lot of games to again hone in and practice develop our different skills so we don't lose them during this period of rest now a little disclaimer even though maki sounds great in this time of rest i do have a very close friend and she's not a big fan of makahiki because she loves the sun and so once smoking he starts coming she's like oh my gosh all the rain is coming and she's like me and lana you know we kind of butt heads a little bit so everything in moderation and so we even see that in our year right we have this balance we have eight months where we can work and do all these things and we have this four months of rest and our environment is telling us let's replenish the soil now you guys take a break and we keep that balance going on some of you might think but eight and four that's not equal equal remember pono is not about equal equal it's about harmony it's about balance so even in the season of cool even though you work we don't work all day every day we would work a few hours here and there there were some days that you would rest so it all creates this system of harmony let's look at some of these games some you may have played especially if you grew up in hawaii our first game that was played in the makahiki is called ulumaika which is disc rolling and you have this hockey puck looking disc it's called urumaika and it's made out of pohakupele lava rock sandstone different materials and what you'll do is you take this this disc and you would roll it through two sticks that are in the ground about a fist length apart and as you are learning this game you start close as you get better you'll move farther back and so a game like this you might think oh okay cool you know that's what they play during makahiki well a game like this can teach you some very important lessons for example understanding the environment yeah if you're on a really flat surface the ulumeka is going to roll a certain way if there's little pebbles here and there it's going to change it so i used to go to these um ceremonies we still have them all around the islands and the men in my family would participate in a men's tournament out in kualoa and so these games are played by both men and women but sometimes you would have men's tournament women's tournament co-ed tournaments so this one is a men's tournament and all the men would go out and play and participate and you would see in the field before umaica games like all these men walking around barefooted taking their feet and kind of rubbing it across the ground and it looks really odd and if you don't know what's going on you'd be like what are they doing out there but what they're actually doing is they were kind of scoping out the landscape like okay the grass is comfy here so the roommate is gonna roll like this okay get plenty dirt here so it's gonna hold it up i gotta throw it harder you know and they're making their game plan so understanding the environment is critical in everything we do in hawaii so even games can help you to develop that and appreciate it accuracy hand-eye coordination all starts to come in play with ulumaica so if we take this and relate it to everyday practices think about fishing and spear diving in the ocean so does the fish just stay still and you're like okay i'm gonna eat you now and poke this fish no it's swimming and it's moving so if you're gonna spear this fish you have to have good hand-eye coordination you gotta kind of understand where the currents are coming from where the fish is moving so games like ulumaica are starting to develop those abilities in our community members and especially in a time of rest we don't want to lose those abilities so we can continue to perfect them is hawaiian checkers and in konane you've got a board it's got all these little divots you've got black and white pebbles and how this game works is you'll remove one pebble and then the only way to move is to jump over your opponent's pebble and then you take that and the person who wins at the end of the game is the person who has the last move so it's not about the most moves it's about the last move okay and so a game like this is gonna teach you strategy so again kind of forward thinking it's about intelligence and kind of working out where your opponent is likely to go what you're going to do as well as patients not just doing what's what first comes to mind but kind of thinking things through so this was important skills that we wanted to develop in our community members as well one of the ways we can see this type of forward thinking um in practice is rock wall building so all of the rock walls that were built in hawaii dry stack masonry we looked at the heyo today they all had to do with that forward thinking and that process i used to work at hey fishpond and once we brought in uncle billy fields a renowned dry stack mason builder and he told us that when you're building rock wall you always gotta think three rocks ahead so if i'm setting my stone here i need to be envisioning the next three stones and where it's going and that's kind of hard to comprehend but the reason he told us this is if you're not thinking ahead and kind of knowing where the stones are headed you could end up building your wall and ending it and you can't add on to it and you want everything to be interlocking so that forward thinking very important in things like our structures our low e our walls our fish ponds our hail and a game like konane can help you to develop those types of ways of of looking at situations around you okay another game we have actually a classification it's all of our different boxing games like hakoko hakamoa um these games that really are meant to test your physical endurance and strength but in addition to help you build strategy balance agility um understanding of your opponent as well so a good example of a game is let's talk about hakamo hakamo is the chicken fight and what you have is you have a circle you have two opponents each opponent enters and each opponent will hold one leg behind their back so you're hopping around on just one leg and you don't have use of your arms and what the purpose of the game is to knock your opponent out of bounds okay and so um at those makahiki ceremonies that koala i told you about um all the men in my family participate and in order to participate you have to be 14 years old that's the minimum age and so my youngest brother i remember when he made 14 and he was able to participate for the first time he was really excited um but he was also kind of tiny you know especially compared to some of these guys he was going to be competing against and the rule of of makahiki at kualoa is that you have to play every single game you cannot pick and choose and sit out and at the end of all of the games the man who has won the most games and has the most points is crowned makahiki champ for the year okay and so my husband won makahi champ three years that's why i married him just joking no not really it is why i married him so anyway in one of these tournaments my youngest brother he's not 26 but he was only 14 at the time he enters and my sisters and i were there were like oh yeah but we're also like oh my gosh he's gonna get i hope he doesn't get hurt you know and it was how come one time and he was playing against some pretty big guys and my brother though was so smart what he did is he he's a cross-country runner so he's got great endurance and he was a tiny target so he just kind of bounced around that arena like this energizer buddy and these guys that were much larger and and physically stronger than him they had a really hard time and they would bounce around too and try and hit him and he just kind of wiggled around and be this tiny target and they couldn't get a good good arm on him and he would wear them out to the point where these guys would come in real hard because they're so tired and he just kind of nudged them and they'd fall out of bounds and my brother ended up winning hakamura that year and we were like oh my gosh you won and he looks at us like you guys are surprised we're like no no we knew you couldn't win all along we had no idea but he taught us again about the importance of these games it's not just about physical strength but it's about understanding yourself and what types of skills abilities do i have that i can use to my advantage and what are my opponent's weaknesses and how am i going to use that against my opponent so we can learn these skills these ways of thinking from games such as the mokomoko and finally i got one more example this is lele pali so nepali is cliff diving and some of you may have participated in cliff diving in hawaii this is nothing new this sport has been going on for you know thousands of years in hawaii purpose is to dive off a cliff into the ocean and to survive to tell about it um lessons that you're going to learn from cliff diving a big one is environmental awareness so you'll see all of these have to do with awareness especially with your environment so if you're going to jump off a cliff a lot of times people think it's about courage right endurance swimming in the ocean yeah that's important it's a part of it but getting the courage to run and jump off a cliff into the ocean and once you've done it awesome but now how are you going to get out of that situation so that's even more important because that's where you get into that kind of life or death situation so what you'll see is these expert cliff divers really addressing learning about their environment studying the swells where does the water push you where is the current pulling where is the best place to climb out of the ocean once i'm in it and taking all of that into a couch um we have some stories of amazing cliff divers kamehameha one of them we've got chiefs like alapai um chiefs that were said to die from cliffs that were 600 feet tall just unbelievable but it was a part of their training of their lifestyle and the sports that they played here in hawaii and very much respecting their environment and doing so the reason why today we have um so many issues with cliff diving around our islands is because it's not taken as seriously as it should often times and people fail to realize that again it's not just about the junk it's not just about the courage to jump in but assessing that situation there are times when you shouldn't jump off a cliff um the ocean is too rough the swells are too big they're gonna push you under then maybe not today tomorrow's a better time doesn't mean you're afraid it doesn't mean you don't have the courage to jump off it means you have that respect for your environment saying the environment's always gonna win so i gotta respect it come back another day now i have a really cool story about cliff diving that kind of brings everything we've been learning about with religion full circle and this is a story of kamehameha and captain vancouver so captain vancouver came to invite you really early and in fact he was a captain who was responsible for introducing the first cattle to our islands and that was in the late 1770s and captain vancouver and kamehameha had many encounters and discussions with one another and there was a time it was said that vancouver was kind of you know telling kamehameha you know you should look at christian religion as a possibility for hawaii for yourself and your people so kamehameha was a man who according to our stories was he was very interested in western technology um he felt that guns and cannons and things like that were incredible and could be really useful in our islands and in fact he used a lot of western technology as he went on his mission to unite all of the islands but in other ways he's what we would consider a devoutly hawaiian man he had no interest in um certain things that westerners had to offer he felt hawaii was fine and in some respects our traditions and ways of living were more appropriate for these islands so he was open to suggestion but not willing to give up everything that that we did as kanaka and so vancouver was like hey you know coin religion is pretty complicated you got all these guys you got all these protocol you got all these rules that you have to follow you know you love western technology maybe you'd be interested in in western religion too you know and it could kind of simplify some of the things that go on and and we don't have to worry about so many things that right now you're taking into account and kamehameha told him no thank you he said if you want to talk about war and weapons let's do it um otherwise i have no interest in learning about your religious beliefs and vancouver kept kind of pushing the point and finally what kamehameha did is he walked up to the edge of kealakekua so they were at keller kikwang island of hawaii where you have these sheer coastal cliffs hundreds of feet high and kamehameha looked over the edge of the cliff and said i'm gonna jump off this cliff and i'm gonna believe that my gods will protect me and i'm gonna be fine and then you vancouver you're gonna jump off the cliff and you can believe that your god will protect you and vancouver walked up to the edge of the cliff he looked over and he said you know what never mind and he never brought up the topic of religion with kamehameha again and so i really love that story because number one i mean kamehameha played him because i've grown up his entire life jumping off cliffs knew these waters um and vancouver you know probably had very little um experience with the ocean especially the pacific and these cliffs and this idea of jumping into the ocean because you want to and so come on come here played him but commitment was also trying to prove a point and his point was i have all of the faith in the world in my gods i know them i live with them i respect them they protect me do you vancouver have that same type of faith in your god and if you don't why would i ever trade in my beliefs and my gods and my religion for something you yourself aren't fully committed to so kind of an interesting story all right so in summary of makahiki it was the time of peace and relaxation but also this time of training as we see with the sports that were played development of skills crafts practices that were needed in society makahiki illustrates pono or balance in our hawaiian year but more importantly it showcases the understanding of ideal times and best practices based on what based on environmental wisdom the ocean is rough stay out of the ocean it's going to rain every day have your houses built already and secure so that understanding of best practices based on what's going on in hawaii right here and that is the essence of hawaiian religion it's land-based and it gives us those skills and deep understanding of what's going on in our environment how to live in respect to those events how to protect it as well so hawaiian religion in summary is an understood system of knowledge specific to hawaii you cannot take our religion and apply it anywhere and everywhere it's not going to work it was built up based around these islands our gods are found in all natural elements and these elements dictate life here in hawaii the gods are named for their specific actions and information is thus retained and respected in this way religion is a daily part of life and influences every single aspect of culture from societal rank to our year to all of our environmental practices and so forth okay guys that's it for this unit i hope you've enjoyed learning a little bit about hawaiian land-based religion about our gods and about our protocol and really being able to understand my big takeaway for all of you is i want you to understand how environment was this foundation of everything that occurred in hawaii and through respecting the environment and utilizing that knowledge in our everyday life for us that was the basis of religion and we took all of that scientific information and wisdom and classified and categorized it in the form of gods and connecting to those various gods okay so that's it for today that's it for our religion unit have a good rest of the day and i will see you all again soon aloha