Essay

These religious radicals started a domino affect of the Hawaiian religion. The Hawaiians destroyed and burned their feared idols. The people who still held on the old belifes were murdered. This goes to show how a religion can either hold a society together or tear it apart. Henry Obookiah was born in Hawaii. His family was murdered in a war between neighboring islands. He decided to find a new life in America, so he hopped aboard a trading ship and landed in New England. Obookiah stayed with a Christian family and went to a foreign mission school. Obookiah was taught to be a good Christian gentlemen. He told Americans about the religious chaos in Hawaii saying: "Hawaii gods; the wood- they burn. Me go home, put em in a fire, burn ‘em up. They no see, no hear, no anything. We make ‘em. Our god, He make us"(The Hawaiian Islands P. 30). Christian New Englanders were amazed by Obookiah’s enlightenment in America. New England Christians were motivated to spread the faith into Hawaii. The first American settlers were Christian missionaries from New England. The Missionaries came to the Hawaiian shores aboard the Thaddeus on March 31, 1819. The Americans were treated very well by the natives. They were eager to learn from the missionaries. Without the strict supervision of their former gods and superstitions, Hawaiians were celebrating new freedom. They drank, they partied,

The first missionaries arrived to the Hawaiian Islands in 1820 and made a lot of changes to Hawaii when they arrived, both good and bad. When the missionaries arrived to the islands they thought of the natives as savages. They all needed to become converts to followers of Christ, drop their own beliefs and pick up new ones. They also sought out to “civilize” the natives, by teaching them how to read and write, sing and Christianize them. Hiram Bingham and Asa Thurston were the first of many missionaries to arrive in Hawaii. The Queen at the time, Kaahumanu accepted the arrival of the missionaries from New England to teach their religion. Although there were many positive affects of missionary that came to the Hawaiian Islands, there

Counties were calling for a moratorium on western missionaries. It is only obvious why this occurred. The issues once again stemmed around many of the western missionaries attitudes that their ways were the ways for all. The young churches in some of the areas such as Asia, African and Latin America wanted to develop their own ways of doing things. The “missionary go home” movement included receiving money from western cultures. These churches that wanted to venture out on their own without the western control put blame on “missionary racism, paternalism, and colonialism.”

Christian missionaries began arriving in Kauai in the 1800s. In 1820, they set up the first mission house in Waimea. The old kapu system was removed as Christian laws took over. While the reading and writing taught by missionaries preserved Hawaiian culture for posterity, the daily culture of the natives was slowly destroyed.

     The religious situation in Hawaii had changed as well. In 1839, Kamehameha III guaranteed religious freedom to the people of Hawaii. (The World of Royalty Website) Protestantism was no longer a state religion and it was also no longer strictly an American religion. Catholics and Mormons had finally established churches, and the

In 1848, An event called the “Mahele” changed the traditional Hawaiian system of land tenure from communal use to private ownership (Kameeleihiwa 3). Events in the past of Hawaii, like the Mahele of 1848, left a devastating mark in Hawaii’s history; It helped eventually lead to the overthrow of the monarch and still affects today’s problems in Hawaii.

The Hawaiian Islands are well known for their beauty, tranquility, and unique culture that have shaped this state into what we see today. The special bond that the natives have formed between themselves and nature is not exactly one of a kind, but it is something that can truly be admired. Around approximately 300 AD, Hawaii was discovered by Polynesians who arrived by canoe from Tahiti. These migrants brought their polytheistic spirituality and formed a large intricate society with hierarchies consisting of many chiefs. Alongside the ruling of the chiefs, the newborn Hawaiians followed a strict belief system known as Kapu akua otherwise known as the “law of the gods”. The Kapu was a strict set of rules and restraints that dictated all

In 1848, a great land revolution called the Great Mahele came to Hawaii. Foreigners thought that if commoners owned their own land that the commoners would give up their lazy ways. Foreigners saw land division to bring tough works 151 years ago (Borreca). Foreigners wanted land to make sugar since they wanted to make money so, King Kamehameha III wanted to divide the land equally to everyone. The Mahele of 1848 was unjustified since Hawaiians had no money, children were eating raw food, and their land was sold to foreigners before they could even buy it.

Furthermore, “neither missionary work nor burgeoning exports nor the beginnings of foreign investments called for the extensive [force] of political control” (PDF file)over the Hawaiians. Focusing only on the overall goal of reaching Asian lands, regardless of what the native Hawaiian population wanted, the islands became part of the United States and conquering Hawaii was the first of many steps in developing the American

The arrival of missionaries on the Hawaiian Islands definitely made an impact on Hawaiian society and ways of life. When the missionaries arrived on the islands of Hawaii it was an interesting transition period of Hawaiian history, the ancient Kapu system was abolished and there was an excellent opportunity for the people to be converted into Christianity. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions made their voyage to Hawai’i on October 23rd, 1819. This group contained 17 missionaries with the goal to teach about God’s word and the Christian religion, converting Hawaiian into western civilization, and to teach natives how to write Hawaiian (something that has not been done before by other foreigners). Their journey took 6 months

In 1893, a small group of sugar and pineapple-growing businessmen, aided by the American minister to Hawaii along with heavily armed U.S. soldiers and marines, deposed Hawaii's queen. Subsequently, they imprisoned the queen and seized 1.75 million acres of crown land and conspired to annex the islands to the United States. The businessmen who conspired to overthrow the queen claimed that they were overthrowing a corrupt, dissolute regime in order of advance democratic principles. They also argued that a Western power was likely to acquire the islands since Hawaii had the finest harbor in the mid-Pacific and was viewed as a strategically valuable coaling station and naval base. In 1851, King Kamehameha III had secretly asked the United States to annex Hawaii, but Secretary of State Daniel Webster declined, saying "No power ought to take possession of the islands as a conquest...or colonization." But later monarchs wanted to maintain Hawaii's independence. The native population proved to be vulnerable to western diseases, including cholera, smallpox, and leprosy. By 1891, native Hawaii's were an ethnic minority on the islands.

In fact, soon it was not simply the white people using the Hawaiians to create this new agricultural economy, the “hula girl” and women themselves were becoming the commodities of the land (28 April 2017). Regardless of how long the American Indians were subjected to the whitewashing and implementation of prayer towns, they were still regarded as savages. Cherokee John Ridge went to college and worked to assimilate as best as possible into the white culture, writing to President James Monroe about these injustices and he was still forced to leave his home and most of his people behind (We Shall Remain: Trail of Tears). The Hawaiians culture, on the other hand, was exploited and objectified to the point that the Natives were worried about the perpetuation of it to unrealistic extremes. However it was due to the ability that these hula women were allowed to show their cultures through dance and “steel guitars, ukuleles, and grass skirts” made the desires for the military and “tourist expansion seem benign” (28 April

On the case of the collapse of the Easter Islands, many arguments can be made to try to explain how the once thriving and growing island had degenerated into absolute anarchy, of those arguments the culturalist best explains the collapse. Culturalist theory explains that ideologies of a group or state will become ingrained into that a society, becoming the identifying factor of how a people will differ from other societies. For the Polynesian civilization, their focus was on that of adventure, war and religion; with very little to no interest in reading nor writing. (Keegan, 1993) With the case of Easter Island, their focus on being a seafaring fighting religious people, their religion became focused on the premise of mana and taboo, in which the chief of a

This presents a clear picture of the sheer rapidity of the colonial project. It seems inevitable that much indigenous tradition and heritage will be swept away, resulting in feelings of profound cultural dislocation, and loss of identity.

Kimber, T. R. (2012). The Role of Spiritual Development in the Cross-Cultural Reentry Adjustment of Missionaries. JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY & THEOLOGY, 40 (3), 211-219.