American Aloha

1. Cultural brokering is an active intervention that shapes, rather than merely preserves, traditional arts.

Folklife festivals are cultural interventions in that they shape and mediate culture, and they are staged by culture brokers—public sector culture workers who operate between ethnographic subjects, sponsoring agencies, the media, and the public.

Active cultural mediation. Public sector folklore is never a neutral act of preservation; it is an active intervention. Sponsoring agencies like the Smithsonian and the Hawai‘i State Foundation for Culture and the Arts (HSFCA) act as "culture brokers." They select, frame, and present cultural practices, deciding which traditions are deemed "authentic" and worthy of national display.

Institutional influence and hierarchies. This brokering process often establishes a hierarchy of cultural authority. By designating certain practitioners as "master artists" or "national treasures," institutions inadvertently codify and freeze traditions that are naturally fluid. This institutionalization can create tension within local communities, as some lineages are validated over others.

Key dynamics of brokering:

• Selecting specific "tradition bearers" based on institutional criteria.
• Funding and nurturing specific practices through apprentice programs.
• Translating complex, localized traditions for a mass public audience.
• Balancing community self-definition with state-sponsored agendas.

2. Authenticity is a dynamic negotiation in the present, not a static relic of the past.

In folklore parlance, ideas about tradition have evolved away from a "view of tradition as a cultural inheritance rooted in the past" and toward an understanding of "tradition as symbolically constituted in the present."

Symbolic constitution of tradition. Authenticity is not an inherent, unchanging quality of an object or practice; it is a value negotiated and constructed in the present. The 1989 Hawai‘i program highlighted how traditions are constantly adapted to meet contemporary social and political needs. Rather than displaying dead relics, the festival showcased living, evolving practices.

The revival paradox. Many traditions presented as ancient or continuous were actually products of recent cultural revivals. For example, practices like kapa-making or celestial voyaging had been rescued from near-extinction through deliberate, modern interventions. These "revived" traditions are authentic to the practitioners because they carry deep contemporary meaning and identity.

Understanding dynamic tradition:

• Traditions are fluid processes of transmission, alteration, and use.
• Authenticity is defined by community integration, not historical purity.
• Revived practices carry potent political and cultural weight in the present.
• Acculturated forms (like quilting) are as authentic as indigenous ones.

3. Hawai‘i's "local" identity challenges mainland U.S. models of racialized multiculturalism.

Despite having been a student and a teacher of multicultural literature and culture on the mainland for many years, I had to learn from scratch how multiculturalism is constructed in Hawai‘i.

The "local" paradigm. In Hawai‘i, multiculturalism is experienced through a unique "local" identity that differs sharply from mainland U.S. racial categories. This identity emerged from the shared experiences of diverse immigrant groups—primarily Asian and Portuguese contract laborers—working alongside Native Hawaiians on sugar and pineapple plantations. It is characterized by cultural sharing, intermarriage, and a shared creole language (pidgin).

Challenging mainland grids. When the Smithsonian attempted to apply its standard multicultural template to the Hawai‘i program, it clashed with this local reality. Mainland models tend to compartmentalize people into neat, separate ethnic boxes. In contrast, Hawai‘i's "local" identity is fluid and "chop suey," where individuals often claim multiple ancestries and participate in each other's cultural traditions.

Characteristics of local multiculturalism:

• Rooted in a shared history of plantation labor and resistance.
• Expressed through creolized cultural products like pidgin and local food.
• Resistant to rigid, mainland-style racial categorization.
• Centered on Native Hawaiian culture as the foundational "host" culture.

4. Public folklife festivals must actively deconstruct commercialized tourist stereotypes to present lived realities.

My own process of discovery was instructive in understanding how many visitors to the National Mall were surprised by a representation of Hawai‘i that was not in accord with expectations shaped by Tin Pan Alley and Waikiki tourism.

Dismantling the myth. For decades, the global image of Hawai‘i has been manufactured by a powerful tourist industry that sells a romanticized, highly gendered, and exoticized playground. This commercialized "Waikiki" image reduces complex cultures to hula girls, flower lei, and beach tropes. The SFF program aimed to strip away this slick, manufactured veneer to reveal "the other side of the island."

Showcasing everyday life. To counter these commercial myths, the festival focused on the unself-conscious, everyday folklife of Hawai‘i's diverse communities. Instead of professional Waikiki entertainers, the program featured actual taro farmers, saddle makers, and community choirs. This shift in representation challenged visitors to see Hawai‘i's people as active agents of their own culture rather than passive objects of the tourist gaze.

Strategies for de-exoticizing Hawai‘i:

• Excluding commercialized "hapa-haole" music in favor of traditional slack-key and chant.
• Presenting occupational lore, such as the work of paniolo (cowboys) and net-throwers.
• Highlighting the cultural contributions of immigrant groups often erased by tourism.
• Using educational signage to explain the historical and ecological contexts of traditions.

5. Spatial and rhetorical design on the National Mall constructs a powerful, yet highly curated, "Sense of Place."

Creating a Hawaiian site on the national Mall presents quite a challenge...

Spatial storytelling. The physical layout of the festival on the National Mall was a carefully engineered exercise in spatial storytelling. To evoke an authentic "Sense of Place" without the benefit of the Pacific Ocean, designers used natural materials, native plants, and symbolic structures. The site was divided into distinct zones that mapped the relationship between indigenous "host" culture and immigrant "guest" cultures.

The curated landscape. Every architectural element, from the hula mound to the plantation store, was designed to guide the visitor's experience and reinforce the program's master narrative. This curated environment functioned as a "staged back region," creating an illusion of unmediated, spontaneous access to real lives. However, this spatial design also constrained performance, forcing complex, modern realities into picturesque, traditional frames.

Key spatial and rhetorical elements:

• A hula stage surrounded by native plants to emphasize the connection to the land ('āina).
• A radial layout for immigrant crafts to symbolize cultural sharing and interdependency.
• A reconstructed "plantation store" serving as a narrative stage for "talk story" sessions.
• Extensive signage and maps to re-contextualize de-contextualized performances.

6. The "host-guest" dynamic of folklife festivals masks deep-seated colonial histories and political asymmetries.

It appears to be a characteristic of modern times that the imperial flag is so regularly and so firmly planted in the midst of the territory called tradition.

The host-guest illusion. The SFF operates on a conversational model of "hosts and guests," where participants are framed as welcoming hosts sharing their culture with visiting guests. While this model elevates the status of marginalized groups, it can also mask the painful histories of colonization, land dispossession, and economic exploitation. In the case of Hawai‘i, this benign framing risked presenting a depoliticized, harmonious picture that belied the ongoing sovereignty movement.

Erasing the conflict. To maintain a festive, conflict-free atmosphere on the National Mall, the program's master narrative largely avoided contemporary political struggles. The illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, the suppression of the Hawaiian language, and the devastating impacts of military occupation were relegated to historical footnotes. This selective representation allowed the state and corporate sponsors to use the festival for economic promotion while presenting a sanitized version of island history.

How the festival managed political tension:

• Framing Native Hawaiian culture as a welcoming "host" rather than an occupied nation.
• Utilizing the concept of "aloha" as a universal solvent for historical grievances.
• Excluding active political activists from the planning and performance phases.
• Focusing on cultural synthesis and creolization rather than ongoing colonial conflict.

7. Participant agency and offstage spaces subvert and transcend official institutional frames.

The truth is that organizers could not really anticipate how people would operate on their own... offstage they could play whatever they wanted, and what they chose was often not the repertoire they played on the Festival site...

Subverting the frame. While the festival's public stages were tightly curated, the actual performance was constantly negotiated and sometimes subverted by the participants themselves. Once on the Mall, tradition bearers exercised significant agency, crossing the artificial boundaries established by curators. They resisted rigid definitions of "tradition" by performing prohibited repertoires or playing with the audience's cultural ignorance.

The offstage community. The most meaningful aspects of the festival for many participants occurred out of the public eye, in the "backstage" spaces of the hotel and after-hours gatherings. In these informal settings, a genuine, self-organized community emerged. Participants from different ethnic groups and even different festival programs jammed together, shared food, and formed lasting alliances that transcended the official, curated categories.

Examples of participant agency and offstage life:

• "Club Ho‘opi‘i," an informal hotel room gathering place where participants cooked local food and jammed.
• Musicians playing prohibited "hapa-haole" songs in response to community requests.
• Cross-cultural alliances formed between Native Hawaiian and Native American participants.
• Participants using humor and situational ethnicity to play with the tourist gaze.

8. Local restagings of national festivals shift the educational focus from "outreach" to "inreach."

Where the Washington, D.C., version of the Hawai‘i program had been outreach, transmitting what the OFP felt Hawai‘i had to say to the nation about living with diversity, the Hawai‘i version was shifted to "inreach," providing a role model for local cultural exhibition and local education about diversity...

The "inreach" shift. In 1990, the HSFCA restaged the Smithsonian program in Honolulu as "Folklife Hawai‘i." This local restaging shifted the program's educational focus from "outreach" (educating a national audience about Hawai‘i) to "inreach" (educating local residents about their own diverse heritage). It served as a powerful tool for local cultural conservation, connecting younger generations of islanders with traditional practices they had never encountered in their urbanized daily lives.

Adapting to the local context. Bringing the festival home required significant adjustments to the program's structure and interpretive strategies. On Magic Island, the rigid ethnic categories used in Washington were expanded to include newer immigrant groups, such as Southeast Asians and Tongans, who had been excluded from the national program. The restaging also had to navigate local political sensitivities and the complex logistics of state-funded operations.

Impact of the local restaging:

• Providing a model for professional, respectful presentation of folk arts in Hawai‘i.
• Serving as a massive "culture lab" for thousands of local school children.
• Boosting the visibility and legitimacy of the HSFCA Folk Arts Program.
• Fostering new, local networks of traditional artists across different islands.

9. The celebration of multicultural harmony can inadvertently suppress political dissent and historical grievances.

The restaging / Smithsonian productions implied that Hawai‘i and Native Hawaiians, along with other ethnic groups, had transcended politics through culture, but the Onipa‘a created space for political mobilization.

The limits of harmony. The celebratory, harmonious model of multiculturalism promoted by the Smithsonian and the state of Hawai‘i can act as a double-edged sword. While it validates diverse cultural expressions, it can also depoliticize them, creating an illusion of equality that masks ongoing systemic injustices. This tension became starkly apparent when the harmonious "Folklife Hawai‘i" was contrasted with the 1993 "Onipa‘a" centennial.

A political counter-spectacle. The Onipa‘a was a highly political, grassroots restaging of the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, held on the grounds of ‘Iolani Palace. Unlike the folklife festivals, which used culture to promote unity and tourism, the Onipa‘a used traditional chant, hula, and ritual as tools of political mobilization and historical truth-telling. It openly addressed the pain, loss, and anger of colonization, challenging the state's sanitized narrative of multicultural harmony.

Contrasting the two models of cultural display:

• Folklife festivals: Celebrate cultural synthesis, adaptation, and harmonious diversity.
• Onipa‘a: Confronted historical injustice, demanded sovereignty, and honored grief.
• Folklife festivals: Designed to engage and welcome the tourist/visitor gaze.
• Onipa‘a: Prioritized native healing and political mobilization over visitor entertainment.