Waipi’O Valley

Waipi’O Valley
Author: Jeffrey L. Gross
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 544
Release: 2017-02-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1524539058

Waipio Valley: A Polynesian Journey from Eden to Eden recounts the remarkable migrations of the Polynesians across a third of the circumference of the earth. Their amazing journey began from Kalana i Hauola, the biblical Garden of Eden located along the shore of the Persian Gulf, extended to the Indus River Valley of ancient Vedic India, to Egypt where some ancestors of the Polynesians were on the Israelite Exodus, through Island Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Ocean. They voyaged thousands of miles in double-hull canoes constructed from hollowed-out logs, built with Stone Age tools and navigated by the stars of the night sky. The Polynesians resided on numerous tropical islands before reaching Waipio Valley, the last Polynesian Garden of Eden. Due to their isolation on the islands of the Pacific Ocean, Polynesian religious and cultural beliefs have preserved elements from mankinds past nearer the beginning of human history. Polynesian mythology includes genealogical records of their divine ancestors that extends back to Kahiki, their mystical land of creation and ancient divine homeland created by the gods, epic tales of gods and heroes that preserved records of their ancient voyages, oral chants such as the Hawaiian Kumulipo contain evolutionary creation theories that reflect modern scientific thought, and the belief in a Supreme Creator God.

Stories of Old Hawaii

Stories of Old Hawaii
Author: Roy Alameida
Publisher: Bess Press
Total Pages: 144
Release: 1997
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781573060646

Forty-five tales, stories and legends adapted from various sources about the natural history of Hawaii and the customs, crafts, arts and history of Polynesian Hawaiians. Includes one original story by the compiler.

Legendary Hawai'i and the Politics of Place

Legendary Hawai'i and the Politics of Place
Author: Cristina Bacchilega
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780812239751

Hawaiian legends figure greatly in the image of tropical paradise that has come to represent Hawai'i in popular imagination. But what are we buying into when we read these stories as texts in English-language translations? This is the question that Cristina Bacchilega poses in her examination of how stories labeled as Hawaiian "legends" have been adapted to produce a legendary Hawai'i primarily for non-Hawaiian readers or other audiences. With an understanding of tradition that foregrounds history and change, Bacchilega examines how, following the 1898 annexation of Hawai'i by the United States, the publication of Hawaiian legends in English delegitimized indigenous narratives and traditions and at the same time constructed them as representative of Hawaiian culture. Hawaiian mo'olelo were translated in popular and scholarly English-language publications to market a new cultural product: a space constructed primarily for Euro-Americans as something simultaneously exotic and primitive and beautiful and welcoming. To analyze this representation of Hawaiian traditions, place, and genre, Bacchilega focuses on translation across languages, cultures, and media; on photography, as the technology that contributed to the visual formation of a westernized image of Hawai'i; and on tourism as determining postannexation economic and ideological machinery. In a book with interdisciplinary appeal, Bacchilega demonstrates both how the myth of legendary Hawai'i emerged and how this vision can be unmade and reimagined.