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UHH
Anthro 499
Spring 2002
hearthstone at myway-com
subject: 499
Indigenous Hawai'ian Culture
and
Ecological and Social Sustainability.

Keywords.
Sustainability, ecological, social,
"ecological sustainability", "social
sustainability", sustainable,
"ecologically sustainable", "socially
sustainable", indigenous, Hawai'ian,
culture, design, model.

Abstract.
The mounting ecological and social
problems that humanity is experiencing
today might force a sincere cooperative
effort in, hopefully, not too a distant
future, in order to solve those problems.
No matter what the results of such a
cooperation might be, for them to be
satisfactory, any such result will have to
be a design of a world that would be
ecologically and socially sustainable.
Most of the knowledge and means
necessary for an actualization of such a
sustainably balanced world is already
available. There is enough known about
ecologically sustainable technologies,
however - only a very few widely known
ideologies that would foster the
establishment of a truly ecologically
and socially sustainable future are
widely enough known today. Such
ideologies will have to be found and
developed. One possible source for
development of such ideologies could
be cultures that used to live in balance
with their environment and with their
neighbors.
This paper essays to find if there are
any explicitly stated ecologically and
socially sustainable ideologies in the
indigenous Hawai'ian culture, and
whether it would be possible to transfer
those ideologies from the context of the
indigenous Hawai'ian culture into the
now pre-dominant global culture.

Text.
That humanity as a whole has
become the enemy of itself and of most
other life around on the Earth has
become axiomatic, - one only needs to
see the vital statisticcs and follow the
news to see this. If quality of life might
be said to be improving, this might be
true only in some localities and for,
proportionally, a very small number of
people, and it can be shown invariably
that this happens at the expense of
other parts of the whole Earth system.
If the trends observable today in the
world could be taken as indicative of the
world's future, then the future of the
world would be one of increasing
misery for most life on Earth. Any
hopes to the contrary would be
unfounded. Any measures meant to heal
the plight, either currently implemented
or contemplated, can only result in
slowing down of the destruction,
because the ultimate goals of any such
measures are not the achievement of a
true environmental and social balance,
but only to achieve a temporary, limited
relief. Only by aiming for a true
environmental and social balance (those
two go hand in hand: there can be no
social balance without living in a
balanced ecology - the anxieties about
resources would not allow it, and there
can be no ecological balance without
having resolved intergroup conflicts -
people who fight do not have the leisure
to bother with environmental problems)
on Earth can any effective and lasting
results be achieved. Since different
people have different ideas about what
the ideal future of the world should be,
they have to overcome their differences,
sit down around a virtual round table,
design a world that would be
ecologically and socially balanced (a
world that would be ecologically and
socially truly sustainable), and proceed
to find ways that would result in
achieving of such a world.
The knowledge and the means for
doing so is mostly available, and if not
available such knowledge would have to
be found. There already is a great
amount of knowledge concerning
ecologically sustainable technologies.
However, as of now, there are virtually
no widely enough known ideologies that
would foster ecological and social
sustainability and state so explicitly,
even though there were many (or,
perhaps, there still might be some,
marginally surviving) cultures that might
have lived in balance with the ecological
processes and in harmony with other
peoples. The purpose of this paper is to
try to find any such ecologically and
socially sustainable ideologies (that
would be stated explicitly) in the
indigenous Hawai'ian culture, with the
hope that those ideologies could be
adopted in designing of a sustainable
world.
Since anything connected with the
production of this paper is constrained
by the very short time-span allowed
(this current semester - Spring 2002) the
methodology employed is very simple:
a several individuals presumed to have
some knowledge of the indigenous
Hawai'ian culture were approached by
the means of electronic mail, the results
to be briefly analyzed for the purposes
of this paper and then used in farther
research. The message to those
randomly selected informants-hoped-to-
be (from various lists of Hawai'ian
organizations and from people known to
the author) was as follows:
Dear people!
I am an
undergraduate
at the UHH,
my Major is
Anthropology,
and my main
interest is the
Design of
Ecologically
and Socially
Sustainable
Communities.
I am
interested in
finding
ideologies
that would
support the
establishment
of ecologically
and socially
sustainable
communities.
I would
appreciate if
you would
read the
following, and
see if you
could help me
in any way. I
will be
interested in
any
constructive
input. With the
increasing
degradation of
the world's
environment
and with the
decreasing
quality of life
of most of the
world's
humanity, it is
only a
question of
time that
really
effective, and
really sincere
solutions for
the problems
of the world
will have to be
sought. The
most
expedient
solution to the
most of
world's
problems
would seem to
stop creating
problems, and
start undoing
the damage
done in the
past. The
simplest and
easiest way to
accomplish
this could be
for humanity
to strive to
live in
harmony with
the ecological
processes of
the Earth and
in harmony
with the social
processes - to
live
ecologically
and socially
sustainably.
There is
already a fair
amount of
knowledge of
ecologically
sustainable
technologies,
however - as
of now, there
are only a few
philosophies
that would
foster
ecological and
social
sustainability,
and state so
explicitly.
Maybe there
are such
explicitly
stated
philosophies
still surviving
in cultures
that used to
live in
harmony with
their
environment
and in
harmony with
other peoples,
and maybe
those
philosophies
could be used
in the present
day need - the
members of
the now
dominant
global
cultures are in
many cases
many
generations
distant from
the times
when those
cultures might
still have been
living in
harmony with
their
environment
and in
harmony with
other peoples,
and have, by
now, no (or a
very little)
memory of
those distant
times. I
understand
that there
might be
many
sustainable
(ecologically
and socially)
ideas in the
indigenous
 Hawai'ian
culture that
are implicit,
however - are
there any
ecological and
social ideas in
the
indigenous
Hawai'ian
culture that
would be
explicit, so
that it would
be, perhaps,
possible to
transfer such
ideas into
other cultures,
most
importantly -
into the now
prevalent
global culture,
without the
need to
transfer the
whole of the
indigenous
Hawai'ian
together with
those ideas?
Thank you,
sincerely - Mr.
Jan
Hearthstone.
The message that I emailed to the
various individuals and organizations
that I presumed to be knowledgeable
about the indigenous Hawai'ian culture,
brought a very little response, and not a
single person who replied would come
with an idea that would be possible to
use out of the Hawai'ian cultural
context. This lack of positive results
leads to many speculations, which, in
turn, might form a basis for further
research. Some of those thoughts and
speculations:
1) It is possible that the difficulty in
answering my query lay in the
vagueness that the terms "ecological
sustainability" and "social
sustainability" evokes. A better, more
practically useable definitions of
"ecological sustainability" and "social
sustainability" should be formulated.
The term "sustainability" has a wide
range of meanings to different people,
and thus elicits a widely disparate
responses. This should not be
surprising, - to date there have been
rather too many attempts at defining the
term, especially when the term is meant
to be used within the context of human
ecology, and many of the definitions are
being formulated on ambiguous and
arbitrary basis. It is obvious that unless
a definition of "ecological sustainability"
is arrived at on more satisfactory basis ,
one that would be based on some
universal, axiomatic, widely acceptable
ecological principles, no meaningful
progress can be expected to start in the
field of modeling of an ecologically (and
socially) sustainable world.
2) It is possible that the need for
global-wide solutions to global-wide
problems is not widely enough
perceived. It is conspicuous that
although the globally expanding culture
is effecting progressively more and
more aspects of everyone's life in the
whole world, the response to this
culture negative aspects is not globally
coordinated. It could be said that there
is a lot of local response to the negative
features of the global development, but
no global ideology that would make the
local responses globally united for them
to be really effective. Thus there are
many locality based groups that profess
an opposition to global expansion,
however - most (if not all) of any such
locality groups operate on principles
that basically can never threaten
"globalization" seriously. There are
many movements for political and
culture independence among peoples
who were formerly exploited by
colonizing nations, however - their
agendas (for most), if not all) are based
on gaining political independence, while
the issue of becoming also ecologically
sustainable (something that would mean
real independence) is absent. Witness
all the formerly colonized nations that
are now "independent" politically, while
in reality they are fully depend on
outside commerce and handouts.
Closer to home - in Hawai'i the
independence movements do not
promote any ideology from the past that
would stress the tie between land and
the people who live on it (read -
ecological sustainability) in any clear
detail as much as they stress the
importance of gaining political and
cultural independence first - something
that does not challenge economical
dependency of Hawai'i on international
power brokers. To mind comes the
ancient dictum of "divide and conquer" -
there are many groups in the world
today that actively support the powers
of globalization by depending on its
economic support, while struggling for
political and cultural independence.
This observation is supported by the
absence of any detailed models of an
independent Hawai'ian nation that would
show any degree of ecological and
social sustainability (an indicator of real
independence from the global
economically dominant powers).
Conclusion.
In order to be able to use any ideas
from indigenous cultures that might
have been ecologically and socially
sustainable in designing of an
ecologically and socially sustainable
world model, it would be necessary to
find experts on indigenous cultures that
used to be sustainable ecologically and
socially, experts who would also be
interested in designing of a sustainable
world model, and who would see the
necessity of a global approach to global
problems that globalization presents.
There, no doubt, might be such experts
somewhere, but I failed to find them in
Hawai'i. I myself am not qualified to
decide whether it would be possible to
use any ideas from Hawai'ian
 indigenous culture in designing of a
sustainable world model.

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