Dinengdeng & Pinakbet

The Myths That Bind and the Stories Redescribing Our History

Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran | Photos courtesy Gil Keith-Agaran

Myths, the stories we tell and share and accept, are important in any community. Such tales create, describe, and inform shared values and character. In our neighborhoods and islands, they often directly shape how locals think and act. And these understandings get passed down through the generations, making these local myths essential to our individual and collective memories.

My family came to Hawai‘i in waves. My grandfather came in the late 1920s—I’m not sure he finished even one three-year contract with the plantations. In fact, I saw a record where he was fired for arguing with a supervisor and then later reinstated after co-workers vouched for him. I’m not surprised he moved to a job at Kula Sanitorium (he once recalled he got a room, clothes, and shoes while working as an attendant—his only explanation for why he didn’t remain a sugar laborer).

Lino Agaran holds his grandson, circa 1962, Pā‘ia, Maui, Hawai‘i.

My father arrived as part of the final company of Sakadas in 1946 in the midst of the great ILWU strike. He was assigned to Pioneer Mill but “Uncle” Lloyd moved him to Pā‘ia one Sunday morning instead. Growing up, I called many of his friends “uncle”—most came from various parts of Badoc-Pinili and nearby towns, and probably were cousins of sorts as a result (Colomas, Pagdilaos, Labasans, and Bumanglags were all likely kin). I didn’t realize my dad had actual brothers and sisters until I was in high school and they began to arrive from the provinces.
My mother disembarked from the S.S. Wilson to join my grandfather (now working at a hotel in Honolulu) in 1960. She shared barracks-like berths for the weeks long voyage. An only child, my grandmother raised her with her Oasay and Tacub cousins.

My parents married a few years later at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church on Maui. They may have been pen pals “introduced” by her classmate who had married one of his brothers.

In the classic formulation, all three came to Hawai‘i seeking a better life and opportunities than their prospects in the provinces of Northern Luzon. In truth, their ambitions fell short of the quintessential American Dream described by the U.S. Colonial authorities for their “little brown brothers.” They had little expectation to completely fulfill what James Truslow Adams defined as “a vision of a better, deeper, richer life for every individual, regardless of the position in society which he or she may occupy by the accident of birth.” (The Epic of America (1931)).

My father toiled for nearly four decades at HC&S as an irrigator. My mother would work at the Maui Pineapple Cannery. They did want other opportunities for my sister and me (and any additional relatives who would, over the years, get petitioned and summoned to the islands). They managed to send me to college on the mainland and my sister to Honolulu.

My first job was at the Central Maui Dairy Queens during high school.
Working in a fast-food franchise was actually a new thing small kid time. Before MickeyDs opened on Pu‘unēnē Avenue near the fairgrounds, minors possibly could work at a locally owned eatery (my sister worked at Port Town Delicatessen) if the families owning the joint didn’t have enough of their own children and relatives to employ. DQ was one of the franchises preceding the McDonald’s empire.

I was born too late in the year to make good summer money at the Cannery but qualified for a couple of afternoon shifts per week at DQ. I earned my first paycheck making burgers and fries (mustard and ketchup), soft serve with the trademark curls, dipped cones, and other frozen treats, and on Maui only, a selection of hobo lunches (chili, sweet and sour spare ribs, and hamburger steak).
Like Kamala Harris and McDonald’s, I don’t think I ever thought to include Dairy Queen on my resume when pursuing gainful employment after college and law school. I vaguely recall perhaps mentioning in campaign coffee hours about shifting between the Lono Avenue location (burned down last year and currently hosting some food trucks) and the Waiale site (now a Ba-Le Sandwich Shop).
Maui, as far as I knew, was like a small town anywhere in the U.S., except less white than what was shown in the Wonderful World of Disney.

Kahului Shopping Center—one of the first of its kind in the Western U.S.—sometimes offered part-time employment (my sister had a job at Toda Drugs). Ah Fooks and Noda Markets offered some bagging and back-of-the-house jobs for guys and cashier positions for gals. The development of Maui Mall and later Ka‘ahumanu Center offered other retail and market jobs, including large mainland retailers like Woolworths, Sears, J.C. Penny, and island outlets Liberty House and Star Market.

Lino Agaran, circa 1929, Maui.

Otherwise, you went to school most of the year and then worked plantation jobs in the summer at the canneries or in the fields. Some of my upcountry classmates worked year-round on family truck farms (Maui onions and cabbage were big crops). I also recall my father and his relatives working their sugar and mill jobs during the week and then helping weekends during harvest times at “Uncle” Lloyd’s Ha‘ikū pineapple farm.

Growing up, those of us island-born or island-raised faced the tug of assimilation into the local culture (there wasn’t a real haole culture accessible to me outside of attending Doris Todd and its affiliated independent, Bible-believing fundamentalist Baptist Church as a kid—English standard Kaunoa School had closed by the time I started school and except for some Pā‘ia Yankee teammates who were kids of plantation supervisors, most of my peers were local Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Hawaiian and Hapa kids). Back then, we didn’t think of the upcountry Portagee boys as haole, and neither did they—whether their folks worked for the plantation, dairies, ranches, or government, they were locals like the rest of us.

None of us were self-aware enough to realize we were all settler colonists (except for the Hawaiian kids), propping up the imperial American structures and erasing the native culture.

Over the years since, I heard some of the terms and read some of the articles and papers—it’s a healthy field in anthropology and sociology, and spreading to other academic areas, and perfect for academic discussion.

It’s a different way of thinking about the interaction of American and Hawaiian culture and history, and the meaning of local culture and history in the wake of that confrontation.

Obviously, I’ve lived my life as part of Americanized Hawai‘i. I attended the public schools here that fostered and supported pride in citizenship and civic virtues, and the notion we’re a nation of immigrants (with the metaphor shifting from a familiar and comfortable melting pot to a spicy, multicultural stew). We read the U.S. had a manifest destiny to expand across North America (or Turtle Island in settler colonial shorthand) and the imperial duty to take over territories righteously seized from Spain (including Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines).

At Doris Todd, we were introduced to the historical faith and truth of John Winthrop’s covenantal City on a Hill in the New England colonies.

We accepted this country was founded on Thomas Jefferson’s familiar formulation: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

I worked in both State and County governments and served on various boards and commissions. I’ve been a member of the Jaycees, chambers of commerce, Kiwanis, and other non-profits and service organizations. I played youth sports. I’ve attended Christian churches—large and small, fundamentalist, neo-orthodox, and liturgical, charismatic and liberal, denominational and not. I attended college on the East Coast and law school on the West Coast. I’ve been a State legislator (appointed and elected) and I am still an attorney licensed by the Supreme Court of Hawai‘i. I use Amazon Prime, stream Apple+, Disney+, and other platforms, posting, doom scrolling, or simply trolling social media accounts, and remain a big fan of the Cincinnati Bengals, San Francisco Giants, and Golden State Warriors.

I’ve generally bought into the America that is and can be, despite its flaws and historical problems, and contradictions.

Decolonizing (in the classic sense) Hawai‘i isn’t very practical. I suppose when the post-Statehood 65-year federal leases of government lands end, the State could decide not to renew them or only approve new leases at better terms than a dollar a year. But as long as Hawai‘i is one of the fifty States (and whoever is in the White House doesn’t mistake the islands for Kenya and cede them to some East Asian power), the U.S. military leaving Pearl Harbor and its other island holdings seems unlikely when China and North Korea remain primary threats to the stability of the Pacific region and American interests.

Manuel Coloma with his children at the beach, circa 1965.

But decolonizing at some level short of independence does still raise additional challenges for locals who consider Hawai‘i home (sorta like the Dreamers who may have never set foot in their parents’ homelands).
Some of the implications of viewing local history through an Asian settler colonizing lens are troubling. The myths handed down to my generation are the triumphant and just story of the returning Nisei Veterans and the largely Filipino farm worker unions. Together, they overturned the oligarchal rule of largely haole kama‘āina Republicans and their allies, the plantation owners and managers, and local residents brought into the government and institutions of Territorial Hawai‘i ahead of equally qualified Asian immigrants. In sum, it was an honorable, justified, and principled revolution consistent with American tradition.

Under at least one version of settler colonialism, local culture arising from the shared plantation experience of the various groups brought to work the fields and factories reduces to a plot to indoctrinate generations of useful idiots facilitating the continued eradication of the native culture. The visitor industry that began to replace the agricultural enterprises extended bastardizing island culture and history to fit the fun in the sun image luring tourists to our shores (probably largely true).

It’s a tough premise for folks and the children of those folks who came seeking better lives without any intention to displace or oppress the native population. They did not intend to be tools of the settler colonial powers-that-be, fed hook, line, and sinker the largely illusory and ultimately false promise of the American dream. In the academic formulation, whatever opportunities provided were little more than bait or even bribes to keep the indigenous population down.

Frankly, for most people, life in the U.S. and Hawai‘i is a lot better than living elsewhere (short of a more accessible and cheaper healthcare system). Settler colonialism as a governing assumption doesn’t figure into everyday survival and making the islands a good place to live, work, and play. Much of everyday living is firmly planted in American ideas and promises without the luxury of colonial settler guilt. It’s stupid to expect every descendant of an Asian Settler Colonist will transplant to the Turtle Island (perhaps Las Vegas) as long as the Star-Spangled Banner still waves over public buildings. But don’t be surprised if your children come home someday and accuse you of just falling for Asian settler colonial tropes.

 

Gilbert S.C. Keith-Agaran attended the new Maui High School last century. He attended and holds an American Intellectual History degree from a college on Turtle Island that has ties to the New England missionaries who came to Hawai‘i in the 19th century. He practices law in Wailuku.