Hawaiian Culture: The Big Picture
Welcome to the Big Picture: Hawaiian Culture, our collection of videos of the wellsprings of Hawaiian culture. These give you the back story of a culture unlike anything, anywhere. Ours is the product of many countries not just around the Pacific, but as far afield as Portugal and Puerto Rico (and now, nearly everywhere else). Beneath the veneer of urban American civilization lies a local dimension, first populated by immigrants from East Asia who came to work on the sugar plantations. This layer in turn rests upon the bedrock of the ancient Hawaiians, whom some say have been here for 800 years or more, and perhaps forever. At the time of contact with the West in 1778, their numbers were somewhere between 800,000 and 1.2 million. By the time of the first census in 1850, their numbers had declined, through disease and despair, to just 45,000. Today, there are only about 7,000 pure-blooded Hawaiians, and sadly, it seems the race will soon disappear. But its traditions are perpetuated by the quarter-million part-Hawaiians here (and the half-million or so on the mainland) who push forward with the Hawaiian Renaissance.
E Hoomau Maua Kealoha – May our love last forever.
The Big picture
“Aloha ‘Aina: Part 5” (7:06)
“Aloha is Dying” (53:24)
“Ancient Art of Holua Slide” (9:07)
“Hawaiiana | PBS Presents” (56:47)
“Hawaiian Heritage” (17:45)
“Hawaii’s Forgotten Islands” (8:59)
“Ho’omau – Short Film” (15:24)
“Na Aumakua” (7:10)
“Secrets of Hawaii” (43:45)
“Six Sacred Sites of Hawaii” (1:26)
“Traditional Hawaiian Games” (2:07)
pre-contact
war, weapons, and martial arts
“Deadly Shark Tooth Weapons” (8:08)
“Hawaiian Weapons” (1:42)
“Polynesian Martial Arts” (21:19)
“Traditional Hawaiian Weapons” (21:05)
perspectives
other stuff
Untold treasures await you in The Great Hawaiian Bazaar!
If you have a taste for history, we invite you to WisdomMaps: The Future of the Past!