Sorry for the long response! I’m trying to figure out how to fit into this new PC world, and this seemed to me to be a very good positioning of a discussion about things like this. I like that people are discussing the questions of how American Polynesian pop culture connects and relates to authentic Oceanic cultures. It seems that what first began as an appreciation for the beauty of the Polynesian culture has since turned into misrepresentation, stereotyping, and cultural appropriation. Further, what does it mean when a bar has been labeled a “tiki bar,” but is shying away from both historic Polynesian pop culture and authentic Polynesian culture? Maybe the bar’s owners understand where Tiki comes from, but do the crew on the front lines? Now, they're making a comeback. I highly recommend Nate Chinen’s piece on Exotica music as a companion reading to yours. The beauty came from the humility and open-mindedness. This is taking a moment to wake up from the dream state and take a harder look at reality. I will be sharing Hawaiian analysis through the hula at the Pukiki Tiki Bar in Calheta Madeira between May 23rd and May 28th of this year 2018. Appropriating it without understanding its meaning is seen as an offence. A Call to Critiki Members, New Art at South Shore Tiki Lounge on Maui, http://thegig.typepad.com/blog/2009/09/exotica-takes-a-village.html, The Hukilau 2016 Day 2 photo recap: Savage Jungle Swimshow, Tiki Tower Takeover, Kickoff Party and Tiki Treasures Bazaar, Shag’s SkyLounge, After Party at Kreepy Tiki | The AtomicGrog.com Blog, How to Have Fun In a Crappy Tiki Bar – Critiki News, On Culturally Thoughtful Tiki – Critiki News. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. I also tend to cast a bit of side-eye at particularly cartoony takes on tiki carvings. Cultural appropriation is a term for when members of one culture adopt attributes of another culture. On the other hand, I find artificial fantasies very appealing in lots of contexts: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Swiss Family Robinson, the Mexico restaurant at Epcot… these are pure fantasies about a certain idea that are incredibly appealing. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! Whew. I’m not into the idea of polling Pacific Islanders to ask what’s okay and what isn’t. We were born broken and will die broken. I am Kanaka Maoli. It has become a … Kourtney Kardashian is accused of 'cultural appropriation' for likening herself to Polynesian Disney character in snaps from Kim's controversial 40th island birthday I’m really not into that. Thank you for writing this! This is not to cancel artists. I was particularly fascinated and moved by the tradition of hānai, which gets translated as “adoption” but it’s not, exactly. It will be interesting to see how Disney winds up having this co-exist with the fantastical approach at the Enchanted Tiki Room and the tiki bars found at Disneyland and Walt Disney World. It's also telling that the Enchanted Tiki Room has a bunch of birds singing Big Band hits while doing impressions of Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. This has been a big driver for me to do my “Tiki: A Story for Bartenders” talks. I lived in Hawaii for a short time as a young child. Okay. Whenever people defend tiki as being about general ideas like escapism and fun, I bridle. What I found is that tiki did come from a place of escapism and exploitation. Mahalo for your words of concern. 2. To quote my first writing mentor, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.” But there are deeper questions I'd love to ask that I feel merit some consideration. Obviously, this is something I think about a lot, and enjoy hashing out. Plain copying someone else's tattoo is always disrespectful, because you are stealing their own story. It was by digging into my fascination with mainland Polynesian restaurants that I started to understand how my perceptions of Polynesian dance, music, cuisine, and art had been shaped by decidedly non-native people. What’s more, I simply don’t see how I could possibly deny the value, the beauty, the incredible artistry, I see in midcentury American Polynesian pop culture. Those pollute something the most of us see as beautiful and just want to know more about. Maybe don’t look to me for answers. Tiki & the Cultural Appropriation Debate: Pt. It's the same reason why it's inappropriate for an adult to dress up as a Native American. I am the grandson of Madeiran immigrants to the Garden Island of Kaua’i. These are the people who are the faces of Tiki for bar patrons out in the world, they are the keepers of the stories, and the sharers of factoids, true or false. It seems to me that now adays Hawaiian culture is being honored and revered, not oppressed. This values for Polynesian tattoos as well as for any other. Polynesian Cultural Center: Appropriation and Exploitation - See 9,024 traveler reviews, 5,693 candid photos, and great deals for Laie, HI, at Tripadvisor. Disney has made an unusual effort to be more true to the cultures of Oceania both at Aulani, and in their upcoming film Moana. Independence. But for me, we have to embrace exploration and acknowledgement of that darkness, or we risk losing ourselves in things that are either offensive or uninteresting. But I digress.). I teach in Hilo,Hawai’i, San Francisco, California, Kyoto, Japan and Bejing, China with branches in Austin, Texas, Washington D.C., Denver, Colorado …. Hawai’i is a melding of the cultures of Hawai’i, Portugal, the Philippines, Japan, China, America and a cavalcade of other places. The Real and the Fake: Polynesian Culture and How We Perceive It, Speak Up for 2016’s Best Tiki Bars! I learned what was fake by diving into the fake, not merely by diving into the real. Cultural appropriation is considered harmful by various groups and individuals, including Indigenous people working for cultural preservation, those who advocate for collective intellectual property rights of the originating, minority cultures, and those who have lived or are living under colonial rule. It’s not an oversight that Aulani, Disney’s resort on O’ahu, has no tiki bar. p.s. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Definitely don’t look to me to rubber stamp your ideas of what’s acceptable. I agree that it seemed like a casual swipe at the topic, but that’s very frequently true of a piece of this length. Tiki’s reckoning has been stewing for decades, bubbling just below the surface of the revival’s most recent wave. The self-appointed invading religious leaders told them that hānai was bad and wrong, and this important part of their social fabric was partially lost. The truth, if there is one, is that few of the pioneers of tiki ever ventured that far from the west coast of CA. (Do not even get me started on the “Don the Beachcomber is still operating” falsehood. The Polynesian people saw in that costume a cultural pillage and a profound disrespect by the American brand. What’s fun? In the past, I’ve also had a bathroom dedicated to glow-in-the-dark mockeries of Christian imagery. I fell in love with tiki bars about a decade ago when I stumbled across Hala Kahiki outside of Chicago. ), but they were the exception, not the rule, and even their voices were chosen and filtered through the white men who called the shots. CHERRY BULLET EMAIL for Inappropriate use of Hawaiian music, Thread on the normalized racism and appropriation on twitter, Appropriation of Hawaiian and Polynesian Culture in K-Pop part 1, Appropriation of Hawaiian and Polynesian Culture in K-Pop part 2, More recent appropriation against Hawaiian culture, BTS Email for Hawaiian cultural appropriation, TWICE Email for Hawaiian cultural appropriation, AB6IX and AB4U email for Hawaiian cultural appropriation. You can’t ask a few people to represent and speak for millions of humans, who surely will have a wide range of perceptions and reactions. It was key to cementing connections between families. We never want to cancel, we just want people to recognize their wrongdoings. Yours is different, everyone’s is different. ( Log Out / Anything seen as “cool” will always have its social climbers wanting to be known as “the coolest” like “I’m more tiki than you!” No one mourns our wiped out Puritan culture; it progressed to whatever the heck it is now. View all posts by Humuhumu. The fact that the rum being poured came from another hemisphere than the inspiration of the rest of the bar mattered not. Nate is a music critic for the NY Times but was born & raised in Hawaii, and is acutely aware/appreciative of the issues you identify. My love for Tiki is not where my love for things Polynesian began. ( Log Out / For one, that’s too bland to be interesting. topless hula girls, “fu manchu” mugs, etc. Of course no one wants to talk about the very bad things that are involved with every culture (violence, dictatorship, etc), they only look back at the wonderful aspects. When kids dress up as Moana, they're effectively using the character's culture as a costume, stripping away the meaningful things Moana represents about Polynesian people and their spirituality. My heart is broken on a daily basis living in Hawaii. Starting especially in the ’70s and through to today, native Hawaiians have been speaking up for their culture, and demanding its respect and preservation, something I support. Again: I believe we are capable of nuance. But this felt like a strained command performance for the benefit of the journalist, rather than a thoughtful invitation for marginalized people to voice a considered opinion. This article is the opposite. BTS Email for Hawaiian cultural appropriation TWICE Email for Hawaiian cultural appropriation But if you’re game for taking a bit of time to open your heart to what’s underneath, I think we’ll all be better for it. After that I dove deep, and have made half the drinks in Beachbum Berry’s Total Tiki app, read his masterpiece _Potions of the Caribbean_, filled multiple shelves with rum, listened to hours of Exotica, and visited a few establishments like Seattle’s Rumba, Tacoma Cabana, and DC’s Archipelago (mentioned in the piece). Appropriation of Hawaiian and Polynesian Culture in K-Pop part 1 Appropriation of Hawaiian and Polynesian Culture in K-Pop part 2 More recent appropriation against Hawaiian culture. Posted on December 12, 2016 December 13, 2016 Categories Cultural Appropriation, Hawaiian Legends, Indigenous, Indigenous Peoples, Marginalization, Movies, Polynesian, Polynesian Culture Tags Cultural Appropriation, Disney, Maui, Moana, Pacific Culture Leave a comment on It’s Just a Cartoon for Kids Cultural appropriation—co-opting specific elements of a culture that is not your own—is the term used to condemn these offenses. In the early 2000s, about 70 percent of the total population of Polynesia resided in Hawaii. We’re kinda the blind leading the blind here, stumbling through some tough terrain. I’m not a fan of claiming “you can’t appropriate my culture”, except that when it is an obviously oppressed culture there are accommodations that should be made. Today is the day! To make a market out of it for profit is hurtful. If I were to shun the history of tiki bars in America, if I were to completely discard the cultural contributions of people who were lifting ideas and imagery from marginalized people, I would be trading one ignorance for another. So are protests against cultural appropriation. No, of course not. Do you know how the United States came to own Hawai’i? 'Moana was a person of colour!' A couple of articles about cultural appropriation and tiki have made the rounds in the last couple of days. They might even exercise their brains while they try to pronounce one of the faux-inspired drink names on the menu, meet some new people and have a verbal conversation. I’ll keep muddling with you! Are you going to boycott Dole products, 150 years after the fact? Voted #1 Oahu attraction, Polynesian Cultural Center brings to life the spirit of Polynesia through its six Polynesian villages, luau, and evening show. Me and my family will die not know what is like for our people to have the right to our own destiny in our homeland. Sometimes the only way out is through. I’m not looking to take your escapism away: I love this stuff as much as you do. A piece from NPR asking if tiki bars are “harmless fun or exploitation” started making the rounds yesterday—it’s good timing, as I’ve had an article brewing in my head for a while now and was hoping to get a chance to write it down. So this is what we’ll call it in this article, to avoid confusion. Cultural appropriation is a fact of life and history. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. This is not to cancel artists. Rum was the ingredient of choice because it was the best value spirit those bars could pour, the fact that it came from far away places was a bonus. As an expression of America’s own cultural experience of the South Pacific, Tiki is not an appropriation of Polynesian culture, but an authentic piece of … As one might guess, it has to do with the racial problematics and the assumed crime of cultural appropriation, but even as this is delivered in a somber tone of seriousness one thing is apparent; the pearl-clutching authors are rather oblivious to the details. Today, we love our Dole Whip—but read up on Sanford Ballard Dole and James Dole and see if maybe the rose tint falls away a bit. Cultural respect, it may not be my strong suit. We never want to cancel, we just want people to recognize their wrongdoings. ... And Tiki is known as Polynesian Pop because it was a creation of American pop culture (which is usually inauthentic) that had Polynesian cultural elements. Michelle, are you aware that Eden and Angelo Villagomez are super prominent, active members of the CNMI community? Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. These are the names of white men, not of Polynesians. Change ), Creator of Critiki “Cultural appropriation,” Kaʻili told The Huffington Post, “is when a dominant group takes on the symbols, rituals and practices of another culture ― especially a less powerful minority or marginalized group ― and uses it with little understanding of those symbols or culture.” But it is our job, as decent people, to be thoughtful and considerate of others. It depends on how you approach Polynesian art and, ultimately, culture. 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