1 - Contending Approaches

Summary

Like eunuchs, they grace the shoreline of Waikiki. Coconut palms without coconuts. Symbols of lost identities. Exotic images as a backdrop for seminaked tourists lounging on the beach.

Coconut palms have grown at Waikiki since the first Hawaiians arrived in their magnificent canoes some two thousand years ago …Coconut palms were much valued then—for the many different uses of their roots, trunks, and leaves, but mainly for their nuts, which provided a reliable source of sustenance. Coconut flesh was scraped and its cream used for cooking; coconut juice was refreshing and nourishing—ideal for a tropical climate. But all that has changed forever, at least at Waikiki, where tourists now reign. There, coconut palms are merely decorative, essential to complete the picture of Paradise—a tropical world of pleasure and personal happiness. To maintain this illusion, coconuts are removed so that dreams of Eden may remain intact.

Vilsoni Hereniko

What we think about the past of Samoa (and its future) is determined by what we are.

Albert Wendt

POINTS OF VIEW

In every community there are diverse points of view on past events and experiences. Clearly there can be no single, seamless history of the many peoples who inhabit the Pacific Islands. The Cambridge History acknowledges the diversity of Pacific voices and the particularity of their experiences, while narrating common patterns and intersections with global events. This is ‘a’ history, not the only possible construction of events affecting Islanders. A composite history told through indigenous genres would consist of oral accounts, related in many languages and taking widely varying forms. Some would explain the origins of gods, humans, plants and animals; others would recount great voyages or the rivalries and conquests of great chiefs. Chanted, spoken, or sung, the narratives might not relate events in chronological order. Some would take the form of genealogies, and crucial details might vary with the teller—and with each audience. Europeans and Americans would figure in accounts of recent times, but the Islanders’ versions of events would likely hold a severely critical mirror to those Western histories which celebrate ‘discovery’ and the benefits of colonisation.