Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Hawaiians migrated from Samoa

Did you notice in the Hawaiian community how the debate of where the Hawaiians came from is still brewing?
It has been both funny and silly. If you really read between the lines most wannabe Hawaiians" don't even want the Hawaiians to come from Samoa. So they are now promoting that Hawaiians come from Tahiti and some say from Marquesas and even some say they are from New Zealand. No offense to our cousins from New Zealand, Tahiti or Marquesas, but this silliness from the Hawaiians has gone too far and too long. This theory is primarily promoted by "barely" Hawaiians who don't like Samoans. And because the young "part" Hawaiians have not had a good relationship with Samoans in Hawaii for a while, they are quietly doing a campaign basically saying "We want to come from anywhere but Samoa" mantra.
If you actually interview the real Hawaiians who knows their geneaology (50% to full blooded Hawaiians) they will quietly agree of their migration from Samoa.
If you study Hawaiian language and Samoan language (1800 -1950), they are basically the same language. Several traditional myths and legends of Samoa and Hawaii are basically the same. When I interviewed elderly Hawaiians of their past (1900-1965), they will tell you when Samoans came to Hawaii in the late 1890's to 1940's, they spoke the same language with full blooded Hawaiians at the time. For any migration, the lasting learned aspect that people keep is their language. Pottery, artifacts can be argued but language is kept close to the original island/country where people migrated from. Modern evolution of Hawaiian language is now due to heavy transmigration back and forth of Polynesians, from Hawaii to Tahiti, the French Polynesian archipelago, and Aotearoa to the south.
A Hawaiian University language professor confided to me that, Hawaiian migrated from Samoa, but it is not a popular belief to advance due to social and personal agendas. Meaning, it is no politically correct to promote within the Hawaiian community that Hawaiians originally migrated from Samoa. You get beaten up (no just kidding)!
Right now, it's like telling someone the earth is not flat (at the era when people believed the world is flat). But for now, lets just keep to ourself that the world is round, so we dont have to argue with our Hawaiian cousins.
But can we stop the silliness of- "I want to come from anywhere but Samoa"
Nothing personal, just the facts!
Alofa and Aloha

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