Kapu

The girl sat beside her mother and answered, "There was a place for everything, a time to plant and a time to harvest.  Clarity lay as a malia day's ocean, understood as deep the people planted and tended kept the kapu relating to food and restorative cycles; worked while the sun was high and rested when the sun set.  The rhythm of life beat like the pu'uwai, solid and sure." 

"Ah, that is a sweet and simplified version of it girl.  There was more, so much more." Lokahiokamahina was kapu, she was a sacred child, recognized as special and gifted with the sight for dreaming.  While her mother was alive, Lokahi was taught in the old way shown, spoken to, and engaged with the connectivity of flesh, plant-life, lepo(dirt), water(both fresh and salty), air and winds, clouds, stars and the turning and transporting of time and thought.  But, she was uncommonly exposed to the old ways because she was encouraged to question her mother and teacher, at any time.


Kapapakeawe "Keawe" would serve her daughter for fifteen years, teaching her everything she recalled from her own life as wahine kapu.  Her call to return to Spirit would change her daughter's tutelage until one day, a teacher who crossed time as easily as drinking melted sherbert asked, "How is it with your girl, Keawe?"  And the goddess said, "She remains curious and sweet."  

Kaumakalani's office was spacious, though small by comparison.  The observatory, was her real space of study and that was the piko, the central pulse of the college.  She kept the 10x10 office neat, with her large long table along one wall.  A comfortable and supportive chair kept her body at ease when she worked.  Simple folding chairs for visitors leaned against the black file cabinet.  Her laptop sat at one end with a wall covered first with what looked like burlap, but was instead a course-textured kapa she had pounded her.  In sections, she lay a covering that allowed her to create a kind of imagery board tacked with clippings from newspapers, 'olelo noeau (proverbs), pictures of her family, and in the center section, photographs of the sky at different times of the year hung from strands of knotted Hawaiian cotton in the ki pu'u style of cordage.  A three-draw file cabinet and a book shelf equally as high covered the third wall as well and the door to her office.  The fourth wall was glass and looked out over the second level of the pu'u and out to the ocean beyond. 

This clipping from the archives of a local Honolulu newspaper dangled from cordage.  Darkened and circling from age, Kaumakalani have been reading the article when her daugher called telling her about a stray Lokahi had found at the shopping center. Andy said, "Kanaka niho'ole kela."  The man's toothless.  That was nothing unusual, but it was the description of his wool coat and black bowler hat that set the tone for the afternoon.  A time of huli.

Kapu

Extract from an interview with Ruby Kawena Johnson
By Michael Coleman
 
MC: But didn't the change come because Liholiho (Kamehameha II) was just too weak to resist Kaahumanu and Keopuolani (Kamehameha's most powerful wives)?
RJ: No, Liholiho was the freedom fighter, you could call him. Liholiho is the one who did not want the taboo to continue. Present-day writers are always using Kaahumanu and Keopuolani because of the emphasis on women, which is OK.
MC: What was Liholiho's motivation then?
RJ: Well, the captains who were on the boats who took the news around and in their writings, they're the ones who say it was Liholiho's decision, with Hewahewa (the chief priest). They leave the women out. They didn't even mention them. And they say that Liholiho made the decision, and all the priests of every island agreed before they even did this. That's what really happened. But the history books don't tell you that.
MC: So the priests wanted to hang out with women? They were tired of eating separately?
RJ: Maybe there were other reasons for Liholiho's, and Hewahewa's, decision. One of the things, I believe, that caused it to move in this direction was to end the number of deaths from the ritual sacrifices, because you needed 21 to 26 men to go down every time they consecrated or built a lua kini, the big heiau. Also, every six months one of the chiefs had to forfeit his eye, for the taboo on fishing when they changed it from the aku to the akule season. That's the ka hoali'i rite, for all those who were descended from Kane. They were all high-ranking chiefs sitting in council and they would ask ka hoali'i, who was the caretaker, who among them has to give up his eyeball, and they do it. They'll say, "You," and that's it. They take it out right there.
MC: Ay yah!
RJ: They did it all the time. That was one of the things about being the alii. It wasn't so easy on them because they had to do it. Every six months they did it.
MC: They just showed that movie "Hawaii" on TV a few weeks ago, and the queen dies, I don't know which one it was, and then her husband jabs his eye out, and he hits his face on the rock until his teeth get knocked out.
RJ: Oh yeah, that was it. You knock out your teeth to show how much you love your uncle or your father. That's part of the funerary process, bereavement.
MC: So you had a lot of people walking around with one eye and no teeth?
RJ: Chiefs!