Introduction

1In 2019, the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) welcomed over 600,000 visitors, and its President and CEO, Alfred Grace, boasted to Hawai’i Business Magazine that the Center had set a goal of achieving 1million annual visitors in the coming years (Gelber, 2019). Each of these guests, many of whom have little to no knowledge of Polynesian cultures before arriving at the PCC, is invited to “visit authentic villages and mingle with natives from six Pacific cultures as they demonstrate their arts, crafts, and traditions” (PCC Website). In practice, the traditions that are foregrounded at the PCC are those of music and dance, performed multiple times daily by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) most of whom reside in the surrounding town of Lā’ie, Hawai’i.

2Music and dance have long been recognized as a significant part of the tourism imaginary that has drawn millions to the Pacific (e.g., Buck, 1994; Kahn, 2013). The physical space of these “island paradises” is marketed as beautiful sand beaches, palm trees that sway in the gentle breeze, and glistening tropical waters. The island paradise imaginary teaches tourists to expect the people in these settings to be attractive, erotically uncivilized (in a non-threatening, yet titillating manner), and untroubled, almost child-like, as they live their lives in a perpetual “island style” vacation, far removed from the complex cares of the modern, everyday world (Trask, 1999). Two of the most common characters in this narrative are the female “hula girl,” and her male counterpart, the “beach boy,” who can often be found providing music on his ukulele for a spontaneous moment of song and dance (Dolim, 2014).

3At the PCC, these musical elements of the Pacific Island tourism imaginary are the central attraction, and each of the six cultures featured are given their own version of Polynesian song and dance to serve as an identity signifier of their culture for the tourists. In this way, the PCC harnesses musical imaginaries to provide the tourists with a simple way to “read” and make sense of the similarities and differences among the Polynesian cultures portrayed. In this article, we endeavor not just to read the texts presented through song and dance at the PCC, but also to interpret them in the context of both the current landscape of identity politics in the Polynesian diaspora community, and the context of the LDS project of missionization in the Pacific, and specifically, at Lā’ie. To this end we focus on the recent, drastically changed symbolic content of the daily canoe pageant, wherein song and dance is presented on floating, double-hulled canoes traveling around an artificially created performance lagoon.

I. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and The Polynesian Cultural Center

4The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was founded in the United States in the 1820’s by John Smith as a sect of Christianity that accepts The Book of Mormon as a sacred text. One of the tenets of the faith is that the indigenous people of the Americas, to whom the LDS believe the Polynesians are historically related, are descendants of a branch of the Israelites described in the Old Testament of the Bible. For this reason, within thirty years of the religion’s founding in New York, the LDS had traveled to Hawai’i to pursue the mission of converting Pacific Islanders. By 1865 they had purchased Lā’ie Plantation as an economic opportunity for converts, and begun plans to dedicate a temple to serve the growing community (Benham, 2002; Whitehurst, 1989; Bohnet, 1990). The purchase of the struggling plantation and eventual decision to build the LDS Temple were both inspired by divine revelations given to prophets that Lā’ie would become the gathering place for the Mormon community in the Pacific (Webb, 1993, p. 129). Mormon church history records that this was only the first of several prophecies that eventually led to the founding of both Brigham Young University-Hawai’i and the establishment of the Polynesian Cultural Center (Webb, 1993; Forester, 1986).

6The PCC (see Figure 1) is now a highly successful tourist attraction located on the northern side of O’ahu Island, approximately one-hour’s drive from the tourist center of Waikiki and downtown Honolulu. It represents an amalgam of two different ideas in the history of the LDS community of Lā’ie. One was the idea that immigrants from the rest of Polynesia could build a series of small villages near the Temple, each replicating the built landscape of a particular island group, and then students and other church members could live there enclaved with fellow members of their home culture (Whitehurst, 1989). These villages would provide them with familiar surroundings and allow aspects of traditional island life to be perpetuated, or conserved. In the end, the idea of constructing the villages as housing was scrapped in favor of using them as the backdrop of an educational tourist attraction, or living museum (Bohnet, 1990). The centerpiece of that attraction would be the singing and dancing that had proven so popular in the roadside hukilau show. This history highlights the fact that from its inception the LDS was concerned with “preserving” the immigrant Pacific Islanders’ cultural identities through management of their built environment. Fairly soon after this initial plan, it was concluded that the performative aspects of their cultural practices could be monetized by allowing tourists access to these “authentic” spaces.

II. Tourism Imaginaries at the Polynesian Cultural Center

9Elsewhere, Webb has interpreted the PCC as an example of “highly structured tourist art” (Webb, 1994), pointing out that the “villagers present an idyll of Polynesia that evokes popular preconceptions of the unspoiled, uncomplicated life of the islands where natives still live in grass shacks” (1994, p. 59). He quotes a Samoan employee as saying, “Samoan chiefs from Samoa, they look at [the Samoan village at the PCC], they don’t like it, to tell you the truth, because it’s not authentic” (Webb, 1994, p. 66), and argues that rather than preserving Polynesian cultures, the PCC is in the business of “preserving popular notions of Polynesia” (1994, p. 80), in short, its tourism imaginaries. He continues, arguing that the aesthetic of the PCC is a decidedly Christian/Mormon one (1994, p. 59), that cycles the visitor through tripartite allegories of life, death, and resurrection (1994, p. 84). This religious aspect of the built environment of the PCC, the embodied narrative of a cyclical, revelatory journey to a promised land, is now explicitly echoed in the structure of the narrative of the new canoe show, Huki, as will be discussed below.

III. Music and Dance Imaginaries at the Polynesian Cultural Center

10As discussed above, the origins of the PCC lie in the roadside hukilau, where tourists were treated to a small group experience, far from the big city environment of Honolulu, where it was promised that they would feel transported to a simpler time and place of “authentic Polynesian culture.” In fact, authenticity and intimacy remain an important part of the branding at the PCC, and the Center employs cultural “mentors,” often cultural elders spent their formative years in their Polynesian homelands, who are responsible for seeing that the material culture, song and dance, and hands-on activities in the villages remain “authentic” (see above, and also Whitehurst, 1989).

11Each village represents a specific Polynesian island group and offers visitors experiences that purport to convey the personality and spirit of that Polynesian culture, primarily by showcasing its unique music and dance style. For example, the cultural imaginary presented in the Samoan village draws on the cultural tradition of clowning and humor (Hereniko, 1994). This is embodied by the performers in the stand-up-comedy-style cultural presentation, and an emphasis on music and dance that is fun and rousing. In contrast, the Tahitian imaginary draws on the well-established tourism imaginary of French Polynesia as a land of sensuality and romance (Kahn, 2013; Gravari-Barbas et al., 2017). Visitors here experience a “Tahitian wedding ceremony” that presents a musical imaginary of alternatingly romantic and sexually titillating song and dance. In this way, differences between islands are exaggerated, while differences within the islands are culturally erased. Native bodies are tamed and made available to the tourist gaze, specifically through dance and song (see also Gonzalez, 2009; Desmond, 1997; Buck, 1994).

12Before European contact, all Polynesian cultures had dances of many different types. In every island group there were songs, prayers, chants, and dances that spoke to a variety of human experiences and emotions. There were those that emphasized militarism, strength, and masculinity, others that were playful and cheeky, still others done in serious reverence for the sacred. At the PCC, however, music and dance, along with costuming on the dancers’ bodies, are used to create and reinforce bite-sized (learned in a twenty-minute presentation, recognizable in a two-minute repetition later in the day), stereotyped identities for each of the six cultures represented in the villages. These musical imaginaries draw on deep, historical tropes of racism and colonialism, creating tourist-friendly “musical symbols” of condensed identity for each island group. Happy (perhaps childlike?) natives can be seen in Samoa. Fierce (perhaps cannibalistic?) natives can be found in Fiji. Erotic (perhaps sexually available?) natives can be found in Tahiti. And so on.

IV. Canoe Show: Rainbows of Paradise (2000-2018)

14Rainbows of Paradise is the name of the canoe parade which ran for eighteen years virtually unchanged. It was set up like a “water parade” with a showcase structure. Each Polynesian culture enters the lagoon on its own, labeled canoe, and has a short period to demonstrate its traditional dance style and musical accompaniment. These canoes were specifically designed for dancing and were propelled by male staff members using poles pushed against the shallow lagoon bottom. There was a set of live musicians and singers, in addition to the parade emcee, all of whom were amplified via microphone to speakers surrounding the lagoon.

15The performances during the Rainbows canoe parade very deliberately repeated the tourist friendly, easy to identify, reductive musical identities that had been introduced for each cultural group in the villages. For example, the Tahitian performance included both slow, sensual dancing, with extended arms and sweet smiles, and the fast-paced, extremely rapid hip-gyrating (fa’arapu) for which Tahitian dancing is well-known. In contrast, when the Samoan canoe arrived, it was time for fun (see Figure 4)! The music and dancing were rousing and spirited, including clapping and raucous shouting. As the music progressed, the male dancers would engage in more and more vigorous “slap dancing” (fa’ataupati), and louder and louder shouting. Every afternoon, in every parade, the Samoan canoe was rocked back and forth so hard that one of the dancers would fall into the lagoon, much to the audience’s delight, thus reinforcing their identity as the comedians of the South Pacific.

V. Canoe Show: Huki: One ‘Ohana Sharing Aloha (2018-present)

17Meanwhile, the performers on the passing canoes act out the tale being told by the grandmother, punctuated by appropriate dance and song. The grandmother’s story begins with the demigod Maui pulling the islands of Polynesian up from the bottom of the sea with his giant, magical fishhook, and over the next thirty minutes, weaves an epic tale, set to music, and punctuated by dance. Tourists hear about Polynesian migration throughout the Pacific, the arrival of the Europeans, indigenous conversion to Christianity, and eventually the founding of the Polynesian Cultural Center in Lā’ie. The lyrics to the theme song include the line, “Now you know my story… and why the Polynesians have gathered again in beautiful Laie [sic]” (Foley, 2018).

18For example, as tourists learn about the arrival of Europeans, the music/dance style shifts from traditional Polynesian instruments and singing, to the guitar and ‘ukulele driven music of the post-Contact era. A church choir sings Polynesian stylized hymns as the missionaries arrive (see Figure 5). Later, visitors are treated to a canoe bearing a trio of Polynesian women singing, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” a song made famous by the Andrews Sisters. They are wearing dresses in the American style of the 1940’s and singing into vintage-styled microphones, as though they were performing at a USO Dance for World War II soldiers. There is also a nod to Elvis Presley and his 1965 movie, Paradise Hawaiian Style, partially filmed at the PCC, and which is credited with having caused a spike in Hawaiian travel by mainlanders. By the time the American country music blasted through the speakers and the canoe of cowboy hat wearing dancers had the crowd whooping along, it was clear that this canoe parade no longer existed in a timeless ethnographic present (see Figure 6).

19In a thirty-minute show, the authors observed that eleven minutes were dedicated to traditional, pre-European contact stories, costuming, and music and dance. Significantly, the other nineteen were all focused on events set in motion by Western contact, highlighting Western stylized clothing and Western influenced music and dance. The historical narrative portrayed in Huki is presented as seamless and inevitable, effectively linking these events into a single, divinely ordained, epic journey. In many ways it is the most honest and authentic story spun at the PCC: it is the story that Mormon Polynesians and their colonizers tell themselves about who they are and where they belong. As the emcee says in the finale of Huki, “Now you know my story…and why the Polynesians have gathered again at the PCC in beautiful Laie [sic], for the waters around us do not divide us. They unite us into one ‘ohana sharing aloha” (Foley, 2018).

VI. Analysis: Changes at the PCC and in the Pacific

20Whereas the Rainbows of Paradise canoe parade emphasized the ways in which each Polynesian culture had its own unique identity as encapsulated in its musical imaginary, the Huki narrative emphasizes the shared heritage of the Polynesian past, the similarities in the present, and the unity moving forward into the future. A rainbow is obviously characterized by each of the colors retaining their distinctiveness, and draws its beauty and identity from that fact. This imagery has been exchanged for one in which the similarities of Polynesians to each other, particularly, Mormon Polynesians, outweighs their differences (See Figure 7).

Figure 7: Comparative Semiotic Analysis of PCC Canoe Shows

2000-2018 Canoe Show		2018-present Canoe Show
Title: Rainbows of Paradise             Emphasis on unique “colors,” or cultures, of the islands		Title: Huki (to pull, to gather, in Hawaiian) Subtitle: One ‘Ohana, Sharing Aloha Emphasis on Polynesians (and Mormons) as one family, gathered together in Lā’ie
Live band with live Polynesian emcee speaking through microphones Emphasis on immediacy and authenticity		Pre-recorded with professional actors’ voices, mix of lip-synching, pre-recorded, and live music Emphasis on “slick,” professional production values
Music, costumes, dance privilege pre-contact indigenous cultures Emphasis on “authentic” pre-contact island identity depictions		Music, costumes, and dance privilege post-contact, colonial and Mormon culture Emphasis on shared colonial and religious history among islanders
Each island separated/featured in a showcase style, canoes labeled with specific cultures Emphasis on specific music/dance signifier for each island group		Overarching narrative structures the canoe show (a story is told), islanders appear in mixed groups Emphasis on connections between and among Polynesians and Mormons

21Huki means to pull in Hawaiian, and lau means leaves. When put together, hukilau is used to describe a method of fishing in which the members of a community come together to pull large fishing nets (traditionally with leaves tied on) through the shallow water of the shore to catch fish. It has powerful symbolism in this PCC narrative because Maui pulled the islands of Polynesia into existence, and the first hukilau performances pulled the struggling LDS community in Lā’ie into financial solvency (see discussion above), and set it on the path that allowed it to develop into a sacred landscape anchored by the Temple, the University, and the Polynesian Cultural Center, a powerful triad of recruitment, education, and funding (Webb, 1994; Whitehurst, 1989).

24Arguments over how to educate the younger generations on identity issues is one of the battlegrounds in the global diaspora of not just Polynesians, but other emigrant communities, too. Morton Lee (2003) has found that second generation Pacific Island immigrants to Australia are split on whether to primarily embrace a panethnic identity or not. Second and third generation emigrants to multicultural settings are increasingly likely to be of mixed-descent, and in practice identify with multiple island culture heritages. Panethnic terms can give these youths a sense of belonging, and present a more inclusive linguistic alternative to “either/or” identity terms that force a single-identity-moniker choice. However, as mentioned above, panethnic terms are frequently assigned by outsiders as a convenience for hegemonic control of immigrant minorities as a means to gloss over differences and create a single demographic to be more easily managed. In particular, schools often become “hot-button” sites of negotiation regarding how to refer to Pacific Islander immigrants, as these are spaces in which the older generation (parents/grandparents), establishment (government created curricula), and younger generation (youths) find themselves in daily contact (Burnett and Bond 2020).

25Mackley-Crump, in his study of Pacific festivals argues, that music and dance performances also serve as important spaces in which “dynamic, fluid, multilocal identities” are being negotiated by diasporic communities (2015, 204). Similarly, Condevaux (2015) found that in interviews with young cultural performers in New Zealand, some embraced a multicultural model, while others preferred to stress “the uniqueness of the Māori culture” as central to their identity, distinguishing themselves from other Polynesian immigrant communities with whom they share an earlier cultural heritage. This can be politically strategic when competing for limited resources from a majority-White government with a colonial mindset, arguably, like that of the LDS. It is worth noting, however, that McGavin (2014), writing as an Indigenous ethnographer, argues that Pacific Islanders use their agency to play with cultural stereotypes in tourism performances, potentially creating panethnic identities that “construct diasporic Islanders situated either between host and guest or as simultaneously host and guest” (McGavin 2015, p. 288).

Final Thoughts on Significance

27Scholars have documented music and dance as a site of active cultural identity negotiation, construction, and embodiment throughout the Pacific, whether in tourist-oriented contexts or festivals and performances primarily organized for the benefit of the indigenous participants (Bendrups, 2016; Condevaux, 2011; 2013; 2015; Mackley-Crump, 2016; Kole, 2010). There is no question that the Huki narrative both strives to tell a story of the past, and to create acceptance of that narrative in the present. LDS performers, largely students at BYU-H, potentially perform the narrative of “One ‘Ohana [Family] Sharing Aloha” up to two hundred times per year. While it is beyond the scope of this paper, it is worth noting that Polynesian cultures are known for their performative identity philosophy; in other words, one is the identity that one embodies/demonstrates/performs in their praxis (e.g., Linnekin and Poyer, 1990). At the PCC, in the afternoon canoe show, the community is united in telling the story of their divinely ordained shared destiny to come together at Lā’ie.