Post #464373 by Tiki Shark Art on Wed, Jun 24, 2009 7:19 PM

We have made "Tiki" better.

Screw being culturally sensitive to old Hawaiian religion. I love Hawaiian culture, but the old "Tiki" religion was not all hula and surfing. It was a reign of terror.

Do I need to remind the tiki tribe that the old Hawaiian religion was not a good thing? It is referred to as the "Kapu" system. It was an ever increasing number of religious "laws", called Kapus, that grew with each generation of Ali'i and priests. It got so complex that each village had to have one man to keep track of the ever growing number of Kapus and warn everyone not to break them.

It was Kapu for men and women to eat together. It was Kapu for a woman to eat a banana. It was Kapu to, even accidentally, step onto the shadow of a member of the royal family. AND....there was only one punishment in the Kapu system: death.

Any relegion that enforced the death penalty for eating bananas, (I think women should be encouraged to eat bananas myself, but I'm getting off track) cannot be a good thing.

And, then there was the human sacrifice.

The Kapu system was officially broken not by American missionaries, but by a member of the Royal Hawaiian house hold- by Queen Ka'ahumanu, favorite wife of King Kemehameha. After King Kemehameha died, she was not about to loose all her power and go back to the way things were before she was the late king's favorite wife. She had the new king, King Liholiho, (son of King Kemehameha by another wife) sit with her and eat a formal meal.

She broke the Kapu system. Hawaiian people ran to the temples and pulled down the tikis and burned them. Back then, the tiki represented a very cruel and oppressive religious system.

Queen Keopuolani (Liholiho's actual mother) is known for saying "Our gods have done us no good, they are cruel."

This all happened before the first official missionary showed up. Europeans were living on the big island, but no European religion was being forced on anyone ... yet. Likely, the Hawaiian people saw the europeans living with out following the opressive Kapus, and figured out something was wrong with the whole "tiki worship thing".

Now-a-days, Tiki represents fun, drinking rum, hula, surfing, and going on vacation to the great state of Hawaii! All the hula with out all the killing! Yipee!

Mo' better I say!

[ Edited by: Tiki Shark Art 2009-06-24 19:21 ]