A Curriculum of Aloha? Colonialism and Tourism in Hawai‘i’s Elementary Textbooks

Abstract

In this article I question the efficacy of (post)colonial Hawai‘i’s seemingly progressive Hawaiian studies curriculum by proceeding through a detailed textual analysis of the curriculum’s core textbooks and instructional guides. Building upon Foucault’s work in discourse genealogy and new historicism’s technique of reading a text alongside an unlikely partner from another genre, I demonstrate how the images of Hawai‘i and Hawaiians represented in the Hawaiian studies curriculum are strikingly similar to the images that were first projected upon Hawaiians by early colonial voyagers and have since been perpetuated through Hawai‘i’s visitor industry. By juxtaposing the school texts with documents used for the training of tourist industry workers, I explore how the material interests of the visitor industry are expressed in a curriculum that attempts to interpellate young Hawaiian students as low-paid tourist industry labor. In giving an example of how a well-intended curricular inclusion effort has had unintended, paradoxical effects, I raise difficult questions about the inclusion of underrepresented minority groups in the school curricula of (post)colonial societies in which colonialist economic- and psychodynamics continue to exist. Turning the logic of visibility politics on its head, I send a warning to all indigenous and disadvantaged groups engaged in parallel struggles across the globe, cautioning them to think closely before lobbying for inclusion in area studies curricula that may ultimately do more damage than good.