From Hawai‘i to the Fighting Sioux

By Dennis Stillings

Since earliest times, Native Hawaiians have had a mystical relationship to, and deep concern for, the land and the earth—the ‘aina (pron. EYE-nah). This feeling for the land is memorialized in the state motto: Ua mau ke ea o ka ‘aina. i kapono. (“The life of the land is preserved in righteousness.”) The ‘aina is not just rocks and soil, it is the land in connection with the people.

This relationship and feeling is shared, in varying degrees, by almost everyone who calls Hawai‘i home: some appreciate the climate and beauty of the islands; others add a concern for restoring and preserving the environment; and a few feel a deep and immediate mystical rela-tionship to the soul of the land. As Rita Knipe recounts in her book, Water of Life:

“When my husband and I landed in Hilo, I placed one sandaled foot on the ground and was instantly aware of a definite beat. There was a pulse or drumbeat within the island itself that precisely matched the pulse inside my foot.  Even through the shield of shoe leather, the beat demanded recognition. I turned to my husband and said, ‘I’m home’.”

For the next few weeks, I felt, saw, heard, tasted, and explored. Everything I touched was foreign, and yet familiar. The sense of familiarity was one I had never experienced before, as though I had known this place outside my personal life history.

I doubt Rita would deny being highly intuitive, but such experiences may be more than just subjective impressions; they may arise from a deeper source. I certainly believe that some people are born in the wrong time. Others may be born in the wrong place, or both. (At least if it’s the wrong place, there’s a chance to find the right one; if you end up in the wrong time, things are more difficult.) Perhaps, in a sense we shall explore, Rita’s soul had found its “true home.”

My own ‘aina is North Dakota. I was born and raised here, and even when I lived far away, I found it a virtual necessity to return from time to time to kick a few cow pies and climb over some barbed-wire fence. Something in this land has a powerful influence on me. As I have already noted, I believe that these feelings and experiences are not merely subjective.

Early in this century, a prominent anthropologist of the time, Franz Boas, published a major study that appeared as Report of the Immigration Commission (Senate Document No. 208), entitled Changes in Bodily Form of Descendents of Immigrants.  In this massive (573 pp.) report, Boas asserted that:

“[t]he investigation has shown much more than was anticipated.  There are not only decided changes in the rate of development of immigrants, but there is also a far-reaching change in the type—a change which can not be ascribed to selection or mixture, but which can only be explained as due directly to the influence of environment.  This conclusion has been tested in many different ways, and seems to be amply proved.  It has been stated before that, according to all our experiences, the bodily traits which have been observed to undergo a change under American environment belong to those characteristics of the human body which are considered the most stable.”

One discovery made by Boas was that there was a change in the shape of the head of the second generation of children born to immigrants to the United States. Boas concluded:

“In most of the European types that have been investigated, the head form, which has always been considered one of the most stable and permanent characteristics of human races, undergoes far-reaching changes coincident with the transfer of the people from European to American soil.”

Franz Boas did not speculate beyond the existence of some unknown environmental influence. Others, however, did.

Among those others was Carl Gustav Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist. During a visit to the United States, as Jung observed workers leaving a factory in Buffalo, N.Y., he remarked to a companion that he would never have thought that there was so much Indian blood in the local population. The companion replied with a laugh that there was probably not a single drop of Indian blood in the whole crowd.

What might we make of this?  Is it the ‘aina, the environment itself, that acts upon genetic material to profoundly alter the bodies—and very likely, the minds as well—of immigrants? Or are the souls of the indigenous dead perhaps reborn in the children of newcomers to the land? In making reference to American ideals, Jung writes:

“The progressive tendency of the [American] unconscious, as expressed for instance in the hero-motif, chooses the Indian as its symbol, just as certain coins of the Union bear an Indian head. This is a tribute to the once-hated Indian, but it also testifies to the fact that the American hero-motif chooses the Indian as an ideal figure. ...The hero is always the embodiment of man’s highest and most powerful aspiration, or of what this aspiration ought ideally to be and what he would most gladly realize. …In the American hero-fantasy the Indian’s character plays a leading role. In everything on which the American has really set his heart we catch a glimpse of the Indian.”

His extraordinary concentration on a particular goal, his tenacity of purpose, his unflinching endurance of the greatest hardships—in all this the legendary virtues of the Indian find full expression.”

Writing in 1930, Jung considers the immigrant change in the attitude toward sports (Please pardon the politically incorrect language of the time).

“It is inevitable that the heroic attitude [of Americans] should be coupled with a sort of primitivity, because it has always been the ideal of a somewhat sporty, primitive society. And this is where the real historic spirit of the Red Man enters the game. Look at your sports! They are the toughest, the most reckless, and the most efficient in the world. The idea of mere play has almost entirely disappeared, while in other parts of the world the idea of play still prevails rather than that of professional sport.”

Jung goes on to remark that:

“Certain Australian primitives assert that one cannot conquer foreign soil, because in it there dwell strange ancestor-spirits who reincarnate themselves in the newborn…The foreign land assimilates its conqueror…[T]he North Americans…could not prevent the souls of their Indian foes from becoming theirs…[H]e who is rooted in the soil endures.”

If one is of a mystical bent, one might well believe that there is a deep connection between Native Americans that gives rise not only to the level of competitiveness, but to the impulse to use Native American names and mascots in our world of sports.

It might also be noted that, in the old children’s game of Cowboys and Indians, the Indians might lose to the overwhelming firepower of the Cowboys, but it was no shame for a boy to take the part of the Indians.

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