Thank you for printing the letter written by Kit Roehrig in your Sept. 4 edition. It helps to clarify how some of the different beliefs involving Hawaiian culture and mythology get manufactured and perpetuated. I would like to correct some
Thank you for printing the letter written by Kit Roehrig in your Sept. 4 edition. It helps to clarify how some of the different beliefs involving Hawaiian culture and mythology get manufactured and perpetuated. I would like to correct some of these misconceptions.
He writes about the name of the mountain saying that he has “learned from the kupuna in Waimea that the correct name for Mauna Kea is Mauna A Wakea.” He continues by saying that the mountain fathered the Hawaiian people. As an attorney, he has the right to believe what he may and even publish his beliefs but, he cannot expect the rest of us to believe it.
The Hawaiians named things as they saw it and even named people as they knew them to be. For instance, Mauna Loa is named for its gradual, gentle slopes while the mountain Hualalai is named for its vegetation. There is a hill in the saddle between the mountains named Puu Huluhulu as the vegetation growing on it makes it look fuzzy from a distance. Mauna Kea was named as being white for the snow that often covers its summit. I doubt that the early Hawaiians, upon arrival, looked at Mauna Kea, fell down on their knees and declared it to be their “primordial parent.” They had no reason to believe that the mountain was a “supreme being” much less a “progenitor,” (biological ancestor). Had they believed that, out of fear, they would not have mined the basalt rocks from its summit to make stone tools.
The early Hawaiians came to Hawaii by canoe. They knew where they came from.
The practice “forever” of transporting the “piko” (umbilical cord) from a child born in Waimea to Lake Waiau on Mauna Kea in the old days is questionable. For one thing, the early Hawaiians were not cannibals. Lake Waiau was their source of drinking water while working the quarry. To contaminate that water with decomposing baby parts would be unthinkable. The very difficult trek to the peak of Mauna Kea before the present road was built would have deterred many from going up there.
If “a substantial number of Hawaiians in Waimea do this today,” then it was only made possible by the road put in place to accommodate the telescope industry.
His quote from the Mauna Kea Comprehensive Plan does not make the quote a fact. Example: Mary Kawena Pukui has been quoted as saying that Waimea means Red Water. The fact is that Waimea means: “there is something unknown in the water.” That “something” (mea) is what causes the yellow/reddish tint in the water.
Leningrad Elarionoff is a resident of Waimea.
Viewpoint articles are the opinion of the writer and not necessarily the opinion of West Hawaii Today.
