That Pele and other ancient gods sustain contemporary connections to stones and rocks informs the proliferation of “Hawaiian” stories that take the powers of stone as their subject. Some of these narratives concern ancient histories and spiritualities, some concern the miraculous feats of Kamehameha I and other Hawaiian royalty, some concern current convictions about such lithic objects as Oahu’s so-called “wizard stones” or “Stones of Life” (re)installed, on a lava rock platform with a new lava rock altar, near the beach at one end of Waikiki by the Department of Parks and Recreation of the City and County of Honolulu in 1997. These stones purportedly contain spiritual powers invested in them centuries ago by four powerful ancient Tahitian kahunas or healers. On the day of my visit there, someone had left a lei offering.
Among the most widely circulated contemporary articulations of the “spiritual” power of Hawaii’s volcanic stones is the description of Pele’s curse. According to this tradition, anyone who removes a volcanic stone (a part of the goddess herself, or her creative “property”) from the islands invites bad luck. The sources of information about the curse are many. Tourist guidebooks are first among the media that prepare travelers to face with some trepidation the potential acquisition of a lava rock souvenir. HVNP receives many packages of lava rocks each year, returned by travelers from abroad, hoping good fortune will ensue if they send Pele’s stones back to Hawaii. Volcano Gallery, a division of Rainbow Moon, in Volcano, HI, has made an enterprise of lava rock return, an activity that might be interpreted as a kind of goddess “repatriation.” Volcano Gallery’s website tells beleaguered travelers how to return volcanic rocks to Rainbow Moon which promises to perform appropriate rituals on the former tourist’s behalf. Specifically, employees of Rainbow Moon will make each rock an offering to Pele. They will wrap the rock in a Ti leaf for good luck, place the bundle in a respectful location “close to the home of Pele,” and add an orchid, a petition for the goddess’s “forgiveness.” This distinguishes them, Rainbow Moon reports, from HVNP, whose employees will simply toss returned rocks on a pile of similar objects behind the Visitor’s Center. For their ritual service, Rainbow Moon welcomes voluntary donations of $15.00. They also invite their clients to send testimonies, which have, over time, facilitated the assembly of an archive of lava rock stories. This site, and the information it disseminates, contributes to the choreography, and economy, of spiritual performance at HVNP and elsewhere in the islands.
This short essay has taken as its subjects volcanic stones and the various “spirits” understood to permeate them, lava rocks and the sacred” landscapes they constitute, as well as the deployment of spiritualities concerning these objects and places by the NPS and other Hawaiian agencies or agents. The work accomplished in this latter maneuver, and especially by the NPS, is multiple and various, situated against the backdrop of immensely complex histories of American imperialisms (political, religious, cultural, commercial). Against this backdrop, NPS parsing of the spiritual calls into the conversation issues of possession, questions about whose gods, whose spirits, whose interests are in this land. In ceding ground to Pele, the NPS acknowledges Hawaiian “spiritual” ownership of the land. It also appeases possible complainants and wards off litigation in a period of amplified native claims and Hawaiian nationalist activism.
This land is spiritual, the NPS signage declares—and its spirituality is “Hawaiian.” But this signage, the “property” of the United States Department of the Interior, also claims custodial authority of the land, and its native Hawaiian spiritualities, for the United States. As custodian, the NPS officially suggests, imposes, an attitude of reverence on the part of tourists and visitors, mandating the appropriate mode of approach to the “soul” of these things and places. This is an “off-limits,” or kapu mandate that requires specific behaviors, a zone of respect with which no reasonably minded person can quibble. In “one fell swoop,” the NPS offers, and asserts, connection and atonement as well as appropriation.
Spiritual ownership, the United States government knows from historical practice, is not about actual possession or property—spiritual ownership is a qualified ownership falling “outside” of a capitalist land economy. In narrating “spirituality” rather than religion, the NPS manages to carefully orchestrate its implicit packaging of property rights. Spiritual ownership by one party coexists with property ownership by another.
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