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“Aloha” to “Haole”: Reclamation and Appropriation in the Face of Occupation

The cuisine of Hawai’i reflects the ecological and social history of its lands. Hawai’i’s cuisine also reflects its complex history of occupations. The islands were first settled by seafarers between 1000-1200 AD, and were isolated until 1778, when the West made contact. Waves of immigrants arrived to work in Hawai’ian agriculture, and in 1898, Hawai’i unwillingly became an annexed Territory of the U.S., until in 1959, it became a state. Hawai’ian history can be split into three “Eras”. Era 1, from 1000-1778, is Hawai’i pre-contact. Era 2, from 1778-1959, is Hawai’i’s initial imperialism and contact. Katherine Bazore’s Hawaiian and Pacific Foods, published in 1940, sits here. Era 3, from 1959-today, is Hawai’i as a melting pot. Through time, we see Hawai’i’s cuisine move through poi, flour, immigrant staples, Occidental haute cuisine, U.S. army rations, and now, a myriad of these influences. Bazore captures the burgeoning fusion of Hawai’ian, immigrant, and Occidental dishes, thus cementing Hawaiian and Pacific Foods as a record of Hawaiian socio-political food history.

Era One, 1000-1778 AD: Pre-Contact Hawai’i

Traveling to the islands by boat eight hundred years ago, the settlers who would become the Hawai’ians brought staples such as coconuts, taro, kukui nuts, and the knowledge of fishing, foraging, and sailing, thus transforming the once uninhabited archipelago into a thriving, agriculturally independent civilization. Each island was ruled independently, and populated by the common people, the makaaina, and the slaves, kauwa, who were ruled over in succession by the konohiki (lesser chiefs), then the ali’i (high chiefs), and the ali’i nui (paramount chief), who oversaw the entire hierarchy. The ethics of this society were upheld by a series of religious and ecological restrictions called the ai kapu, or taboo, system. Food was the vehicle of the ai kapu. The Hawai’ian religion was founded on the belief that nature was governed by powerful deities, who embodied animals, plants, meteorological and astronomical phenomena, and even seasons. Hence, those associated edible animals, plants, and the seasons were incredibly relevant symbols of power. Agriculture, aquaculture, food processing, and types of foods were very strictly commanded, on a hierarchical, ecological, and sexist level.

Food taboos existed to uphold Hawai’ian society. Food items and those allowed to eat and procure said foods were strictly divided amongst class and gender, and the times in which these foods could be eaten depended in large part upon seasonality and the preservation of fish and plant stocks. Growing and harvesting seasons were marked with religious feasts and rituals, and the actual work of food procurement and cooking was mostly done by men. Every step of daily life, every meal that was taken, was defined by the ai kapu. Small fish and poi, or mashed taro, were the staples of the non-chiefly people and women, while the higher ranks enjoyed religiously relevant delicacies described as kelekele, or fatty and rich, such as pig, dog, coconut cream, bananas, and larger and/or oilier fish. As the greatest gods in the Polynesian pantheon, Ku, Lono, Kane (‘Olelo for “man”), and Kanaloa, were not only believed to be represented on Earth as the chiefly class, and the most luxurious foods, but were also all males. Only the chiefs and men, regardless of class, could partake in the less restrictive food taboos. Women, even if they were the wives of the highest male chiefs, even if they were the carriers of sacred blood via matrilineal ancestry (an incredibly respected, female type of power), were denied all taboo foods under threat of death. Pre-contact Hawai’ian society was incredibly complex, religious, and had built itself up, despite its onerous perceptions both within and without it, as the most complex society in Polynesia. On a culinary and historic level, the cuisine of the original Hawai’ians is oft believed to be the “authentic” or “original” cuisine of Hawai’i.

Era Two, 1778-1939 AD: Contact, Missionaries, Imperials, and Annexation
“Haole” is a word that most foreigners that come to the island may hear from the locals. Haole translates to “foreigner” in ‘Olelo, the language of the original Hawai’ians. Haole, despite originally meaning “foreigner”, has come over the years to mean any Occidental person. The history of haole interference on the islands is long and complex. The first haoles to arrive to the islands began coming by boat in the mid-1700s, visiting at first as merchants and whalers, before starting to settle. The most significant early group of haole settlers were the missionaries. After multiple fruitless attempts to convert the Hawai’ians en masse to an American diet, the missionaries ended up being the ones to convert to eating indigenous fare, while still preserving their own etiquette and techniques. In the face of culinary assimilation pressure, the Hawai’ian monarchy decided to change too.

Kamehameha II, the monarch reigning during the initial haole influx, broke the ai kapu, thus elevating and cleaving previously disenfranchised Hawai’ian commoners and women to their chiefly and male counterparts, and allowed the tolerance of missionaries. The missionaries adopted Hawai’ian foods, while preserving their food ideals and etiquette. The Hawai’ians had Western etiquette rules (and some foods such as flour, when travel and recipes allowed) foisted upon them, yet kept their staples. The missionaries viewed their conversion to Hawai’ian food as a sacrifice; the Hawai’ians viewed the application of Western etiquettes and techniques as a tactic to utilize and placate Western pressures. Prospective American and British sugarcane plantation owners, and shiploads of prospective plantation workers from China, Japan, Portugal, and the Philippines began to arrive. Sugarcane had been grown on the islands for a long time, but now, haole capitalist interests began to take notice of it.

As plantation owners, the influence of the haoles on the island grew, and Western foods and etiquette were elevated above those of the Hawai’ians and the immigrant worker diaspora, who were seen as lower on the hierarchy. In response to this, the Hawai’ian monarchy, namely the last king, David Kalākaua, claimed Western dining etiquette and foods for their own gain, to subvert the appropriation of Hawai’ian foods and customs. King Kalākaua was renowned for the sumptuous modernization of the Hawai’ian seat of power, ‘Iolani Palace, and for his glorious banquets. Hosting notable Occidental businessmen, intellectuals, and politicians, King Kalākaua showed off extensive knowledge of “high status” Western foods such as wines and fine sauces, to impress and subvert Western expectations of Hawai’ian “heathenism”. He also served Hawai’ian foods with European and American fine dining etiquette, thus elevating and equalizing Hawai’ian foods using Western tools in Western eyes. Meanwhile, Hawai’ian commoners ate with the immigrant workers of the plantations, generally in public spaces such as work breaks. This sharing of living space and time resulted in a shared “local” culture cuisine; the burgeoning fusions of diasporas meeting islanders. However, despite the political equity gained via gastrodiplomacy, and the unity of the commoners, it was all for naught; Hawai’i’s monarchy was overthrown via a coup, and the archipelago was annexed as a Territory by the U.S. in 1898.

After annexation, the gastrodiplomacy intended by King Kalakāua to elevate and equalize Hawai’ian culture was suppressed, and the Western diet was reinstated on the islands. The cuisines of the Hawai’ians and the immigrant diasporas were further thrown to the wayside of what was considered proper. The anti-annexation Hawai’ian and haole elites and their supporters, mourning their lost monarchy and the overturning of their voices, expressed their grief under American rule with poi suppers. These elites, called the kama’aina (children of the land), with complex heritage (all rich and either Hawai’ian or haole, or “hapa”, both), showed that complexity through the delicate, corporate finger eating of indigenous pre-contact Hawai’ian foods, while dressed in sashed tuxedoes and elegant holukus, or royal Hawai’ian women’s gowns. Although imitating the gastrodiplomacy of Kalakāua and his ancestors, the poi suppers (named “suppers”, not “dinners”, to denote humble New England merchant sensibilities) reflected the anguish following the usurpation of the Hawai’ian royalty. If Kalakāua’s gastrodiplomacy was looking forward, then the poi suppers were lamenting what had already passed.

Era Three, 1939-Today: Post-Annexation (G)localization

Mainland America, sensing a business opportunity post-annexation, sought to “Americanize” Hawai’i, and make it a tourist destination for well-to-do American citizens. Following this train of thought, the elegant poi suppers and reappropriation of Western techniques by the Hawai’ian royalty was appropriated into a vaguely “harmless” mélange of Americanized Hawai’ian and “local” foods for tourist enjoyment (“luau” cuisine), and the burgeoning commoner’s local cuisine as we know it today, then called ethnic cuisine. The cultures and cuisines exposed to tourism as luaus and excursions in the early twentieth century were more exclusively Hawai’ian, and closer to the intimate (and historically accurate) poi suppers of the kama’aina.

Following the World Wars, notably WW II, tourism on the islands boomed, and that intimacy and accuracy were lost. Tiki culture, built off a monolithic and primitivist view of Polynesia and Asia, dominated the tourism and mixology scene with fruity “tropical” drinks and “kitschy” “luaus” intended for mainland enjoyment. American military presence was vastly increased on the island, alienating local and Hawai’ian cuisine with the rise of everyday American cuisine in homes. European chefs and restaurants similarly dominated the hospitality scene; local foods were denigrated, and European foods and foodways were elevated in restaurants and hotels, even while secretly appropriating the recipes and techniques of local and Hawai’ian cooks.

Yet, despite this mainlander obfuscation and appropriation of historical Hawai’ian and local foods in the mainstream, the locals and Hawai’ians didn’t die out or retreat into obscurity. Hawai’i’s commoner population was incredibly racialized and stratified, and this delineation was noted even in everyday life, but there were the beginnings of cross-cultural fusion.

Bazore, landing right at the beginning cusp of Era 3, lists every culture as separate cuisines and groups in Hawaiian and Pacific Foods; her descriptions of dress, foods, and locations are all distinct. Local unity did not exist in her time yet, or as far as she knew. Yet in her recipes across Indigenous Hawai’ian and Pacific, and diasporic cultures, there are marks of amalgamation; the uses of flour, rice, taro, seaweeds, and Hawai’ian fish are used in some way in every culture’s section. Yet there’s also a Westernization of foods and culture in her work. Her descriptions of the non-white populations of Hawai’i can be described as misguided at best and diminutive at worst (a symptom of her experience and knowledge as a haole woman in the 1930s-40s), and many of the Hawai’ian recipes are reminiscent of missionary influence, with the additions of oil, spinach, and flour.

The stratification of race and the more blatant Westernization of Hawai’i continued in effect until the 1950s, after Bazore’s time, when the descendants of the plantation workers voted as a bloc and gained political power over the traditionally Republican descendants of the kama’aina hapa haole elite.  This prompted a unification of non-Western, commoner peoples, and cuisines, under one name; Local. A local, considered both in colonial times and to this day, is anyone who was “…born, raised, or educated…” on the islands, who is not Caucasian, and claims heritage to either Hawai’ians, and/or the large immigrant groups of Hawai’i, either Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Filipinos, and more recently, Southeast Asians.

What Comes Next?

Defining Hawai’i’s cuisine is much harder than one might think. Hawaiian and Pacific Foods attempts to at least list an indigenous Hawai’ian cuisine, but ultimately gives most of its paper to the diasporic, non-local and delineated cuisines. Throughout this paper, multiple terms and differences have come to light. “Hawai’ian” refers to an indigenous Hawai’ian person. A “haole” is an outlander, typically white, either living or visiting on the islands. A “local” is a typically non-white person descended from either Hawai’ians or a member of one of the large diasporic groups, or a combination of all of them. All these parties’ decisions, values, traumas, and appropriation, reclamation, and occupation of the lands have defined the foods of the islands. We can see the influences of all these parties in today’s foods, in modern Hawai’i’s eateries, hotels, churches, markets, restaurants and more. In turn, Hawai’i’s cuisine acts as a lens into Hawai’i’s political and social history. Through the evolution, appropriation, and reclamation of foods grown and prepared here, then eaten all together, we can watch the evolution, occupation, and reclamation of the islands on a sociopolitical level. We know Hawai’i’s culinary and political history are complex. But how do we move forward, through that complex history? How do we reconcile what Hawai’i should be, who the islands belong to? Can we decide this through food? Is it poi returning in full mainstream swing to local tables, outweighing bread and rice? Is it the use of French and Western techniques on Hawai’ian fish and post-contact produce? Or is it the SPAM musubi, poke, butter mochi, and shave ice, the hands of locals bringing foisted military staples, ancient Hawai’ian dishes, missionary wife baking, and the commoner capture of luxurious imported ice into the mainstream, breaking the hegemony of post-war Occidental resorts on Kalakāua Avenue?

For Further Research:

Bazore, Katherine. Hawaiian and Pacific Foods, a Cook Book of Culinary Customs and Recipes Adapted for the American Hostess. M. Barrows, 1943.

Kashay, Jennifer Fish. Missionaries and Foodways in Early 19th-Century Hawai’i, Food and Foodways. Food and Foodways, Taylor & Francis Group, August 25^th, 2009.

Laudan, Rachel. Homegrown Cuisines or Naturalized Cuisines? The History of Food in Hawaii and Hawaii’s Place in Food History. Food, Culture & Society, Taylor & Francis Group, September 5^th, 2016.

Lukas, Scott A. A Reader in Themed and Immersive Spaces. Carnegie Mellon/ETC Press, 2017.

O’Connor, Kaori. The Hawaiian Luau – Food as Tradition, Transgression, Transformation and Travel. Food, Culture & Society, Taylor & Francis Group, April 29^th, 2015.

Yamashita, Samuel Hideo. Hawaiʻi Regional Cuisine : The Food Movement That Changed the Way Hawaiʻi Eats. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2019.