Because I have been to Hawaii 3 times, and because I have posted about places in Hawaii, and because I still belong to groups featuring Hawaii attractions and golf, the Facebook algorithm believes that I am interested in anything anyone anywhere posts about Hawaii. Sometimes that is a sales pitch for condo rentals. Sometimes its promises of low fares on Hawaiian Airlines. Today, it was an article from the website Atlas Obscura–which promotes itself as a “local and travel website”–claiming to be about the history of the “shaka”.
For those unfamiliar, the shaka is a hand gesture common in the islands. It’s your thumb and pinky finger extended out to the side, with your middle three fingers curled down to your palm. In Hawaii this gesture means “hey”, “thanks”, “good to see you”, “hang loose”, and “see you later, brah”. It’s just a friendly way to acknowledge another person. I drive my wife nuts by throwing one out there every time she tries to take a picture of me on our trips there.
There are a lot of theories on how the shaka started in Hawaii, so I wanted to see if this article finally came to a concrete conclusion on its origin. The first paragraph was just like my last paragraph–describing the shaka. That was followed by a paragraph on how no one really knows how it started. The third paragraph featured quotes from a surfer talking about how often he uses it. The fourth and fifth paragraphs touched on the various theories on its origin–wrapping up with the story of a former sugar plantation security guard, whom legend has it, lost the middle three fingers of his hands feeding sugar cane into giant rollers on the plantation. When he waved to people going by, it looked like he was doing the shaka–and a tradition was born.
What followed was seven paragraphs–all much longer than the first five paragraphs–on the working conditions of sugar plantation workers, the import of workers from Asia to man the fields, treatment of native Hawaiians during that time, the environmental and ecological damages caused by the burning of the cane fields at harvest time, and how the descendants of those that worked there “still bear the scars of those experiences”.
And then the article wrapped up by claiming we will never know the origin of the shaka–but if you are going to use it, you should remember all the suffering of plantation workers in Hawaii while you do it.
I have to admit, I’m very disappointed in myself. Not because I was giving the shaka without thinking about the working conditions of 19th and early 20th century sugar plantation workers–but rather because I had been suckered into what passes for “historical journalism” nowadays. This was not an article seeking an answer to the question “How did the shaka originate in Hawaii?”. It was an article about how the plantation owners abused their immigrant and native population workers. The author used a flimsy connection to a local legend to draw me (and likely thousands of others) into her bait and switch. Well played, Atlas Obscura. You win this round. Oh, and you didn’t tell me something I didn’t already know from visiting museums in Hawaii, where history was presented in its proper context.
I see the next “recommended for you” article from Atlas Obscura is “One Woman’s Quest to Create Truly Japanese Cheese”. It’s probably about past efforts to keep women from making cheese, how women held no property rights in the early United States, and how Japanese-Americans were held in internment camps in the US during World War II.
