Nature as a Unifying Thread in Kiana Davenport's Shark Dialogues
Kiana Davenport’s Shark Dialogues begins with an introduction to a Hawaiian Kahuna, Pono, and her four granddaughters, “hybrids of the new world.” (182) Davenport uses the lineage of the four women to sweep through a century of Hawaiʻi’s history and to introduce the reader to the many diverse cultural influences that have impacted Hawaiʻi over the past century and shaped the social structure in the literary present. Davenport explores a diversity of themes having to do with Hawaiian history, and her characters represent a wide range of beliefs and experience.
A unifying undercurrent to all of this diversity is the importance of the relationships between each character and the non-human environment. Davenport affords lavish detail to the descriptions of setting in the novel, particularly to the scenes where her characters are interacting intimately, or having a spiritual experience involving the land and sea surrounding them. The book is characterized by a heaviness associated with the continued exploitation and oppression in the Hawaiian islands, and the women’s personal struggle to come to grips with their identity. However, in their relationship with nature each character seems to find a sense of identity, clarity, and personal liberation. By elevating nature to such an important role alongside other major themes in the book, such as the evolution of the Hawaiian sovereignty movement, Davenport highlights not only the importance of land rights in the struggle for indigenous peoples’ survival and cultural preservation, but also drives home how deeply the Hawaiian people’s connection to the islands is felt, and how the wisdom of nature surpasses politics, class, and race.
Davenport prefaces Shark Dialogues with an excerpt from the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian Creation Chant, re-interpreted by Rubellite Kawena Johnson. A reading of the creation chant shows how deeply aware native people were of their environment. The chant begins with the creation of life on earth from energy in space, and continues to list in great detail the life-forms that followed, extensively covering those creatures found in the ocean, then moving on to the land. This shows a concept of creation that closely relates to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as other, more recently commonly accepted theories of how the earth and life on earth came into creation. Johnson notes however that “their intent (Hawaiian priests) was simply to relate a newborn chief of high social rank to his ultimate origins in earth’s very beginnings, at a point where all prehuman forms of nature and human life are but common kindred.”
This theme of ultimate union and rightness in nature resonates throughout the entire book. Couples Kelonikoa and Mathys, and Vanya and Simon, find the most peace while living in the wild. Pono and Duke first meet in the ocean and for the remainder of their lives take refuge when they can in the solitude of the leper colony. Pono, the backbone of the entire story, is the most in tune with nature and ancestors, being herself part shark, and despite the many character flaws that Davenport exposes in her in regards to motherhood, she is ultimately the character that represents “goodness and morality.”
While the story is told from a matrilineal perspective, the males of various ethnic backgrounds play essential roles in moving the plot along. It is only in the instances when the characters are immersed in the non-duality of nature that there is a balance between male and female, and the characters are able to be liberated from the racialized patriarchy that oppresses the land and people of Hawaiʻi.
Toward the end of the novel, as Vanya and Toru become increasingly involved in a violent, hypothetical revolution, each character emerges with their own views on the sovereignty movement, perhaps a reflection on the many different perspectives citizens of Hawaiʻi have on the sovereignty movement today. Toru believes that every other non-violent means of resistance has been attempted and hotels and real estate continue to overtake sacred sites, agricultural land, and housing sites set aside by the government for Hawaiian people. He believes that violence is the only option left, and while Vanya initially puts her efforts toward enacting change through the legal system, she eventually comes to agree with him. Pono, and Jess following in her footsteps, interpret resistance as struggling to hold on to and make productive use of the land that they have and help others to do so. They bypass the political side of resistance which is also in many ways about preservation of access to land, and simply do their part to keep land in local hands by tending to the earth.
In any case, land and the ability to live off of it, is the uniting factor in all of the characters views on resistance. In Nation Rising, Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻopua defines a uniting goal and principle of the modern Hawaiian sovereignty movement as ea. “Ea can be seen both as a concept and a diverse set of practices that make land primary over government...ea is based on the experiences of people on the land, relationships forged through the process of remembering and caring for wahi pana, storied places” (4).
Davenport chooses this passage from the Kumulipo to emphasize the male/female dynamic:
Born was Kumulipo in the night, a male
Born was geneology in the night, a female
Male for the narrow waters, female for the broad waters
....Born a shark was my god
Born a shark in the month of Hinaiaʻeleʻele
Accordingly, romantic love plays a large role in the development of the story. The sexuality of the characters and the romantic relationships between partners are another example of the natural overcoming such societal constructs as class and race. This happens however, only in situations in which the two lovers are both Kānaka, as in the case with Pono and Duke, or when the lovers abandon the structures of society in totality, as is the case with Vanya and Simon and Kelonikoa and Mathys. The two white males who are essential to the plot of the story are Mathys and Simon, and they in some ways mirror each other, both serving as representations of the patriarchy, but also as examples of the latent humanity underlying these social roles. That the story begins with Mathys and Kelonikoa in the wild, both fugitives of the patriarchy, and ends with Vanya and Simon in the wild, also fugitives of the patriarchy is in itself a circular plot pattern reminiscent of the cyclical patterns in nature. In both cases the men represent, in their maleness, whiteness, and occupational background (Mathys as a whale hunter and Simon as a mercenary), the system that the female and non-white characters, most specifically native Hawaiians, are resisting and being oppressed by.
For both males an enormous amount of guilt characterizes their feelings towards the wrongs they commit for the sake of their occupation. In this way Davenport, while by no means excusing the men’s complicity with the wrongs of the system, establishes them as individuals with a sense of morality themselves trapped in the system. While they, by virtue of their race and gender are representatives of the system of oppression, they themselves are not that. Mathys bears witness to the majesty and spiritual intelligence of the whales even as he prepares to kill them. “Mathys felt a strong urge to stroke its side; something akin to touching the mind of god,” (32). Mathys meets Kelonikoa as he is on the brink of death, she, herself a fugitive of a patriarchal society, and much more adept in the ocean and jungle than Mathys is, saves him and nurses him back to health. Here, stripped from the societal constructs of race, the two fall into a genuine love. When they move back into civilization however, Mathys becomes financially successful and becomes progressively more complicit in the oppression and exploitation of the people and land of Hawaii. Kelonikoa’s love for him fades as he once again comes to represent the Patriarchy, and she dedicates herself to resistance to the unlawful overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom by the American government. Vanya and Simon’s relationship has the same characteristics but follows the opposite trajectory, Vanya only comes to truly love Simon when disease and the wild have leveled him of the privilege that an unjust system has afforded to him, while in the same blow attempting to deny her of her rights to land, culture, and identity. When Simon and Mathys are removed from the system of patriarchy and dominion, and live in nature according to the laws of nature and the culture and values of Vanya and Kelonika, they are loved and treated as welcomed guests by the two women. When however, the men are back in society and show complicity with that system, they become the object of vehement distrust in the eyes of the women they love.
The entire book chronicles its characters’ search for identity. Jess finds it in her long swims in the ocean, Vanya finds it when she is immersed in the jungles of Waipiʻo. Goodyear-Kaʻopua provides a definition of belonging to the Hawaiian identity as this: “Kanaka refers to the autochthonous people of the Hawaiian archipelago. The original people who emerged from this place. These terms indicate our genealogical relationship to the lands and waters of our islands and distinguish us from other residents.” When Simon challenges Toru’s legitimacy in the resistance movement, Toru responds by saying that what makes him Hawaiian is his relationship with the land, his having worked and lived on the land since birth. While he may not be Hawaiian at the same depth that Hawaiian people are, he still derives his sense of identity from the place that has become a part of him. Throughout Davenport’s novel the power and wisdom of nature, and the ability to maintain a respectful and working relationship to the land are given the utmost importance, and are portrayed as the ultimate sources of potential for unity and liberation.
Citations
Goodyear-Ka’opua, Noelani, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaika’ala Wright. Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements For Life, Land, and Sovereignty. Duke University Press. 2014. Print
Davenport, Kiana. Shark Dialogues. Peguin Books. 1994. Print
Kawena Johnson, Rubellite. from: Kumulipo: The Hawaiian Hymn of Creation. (A Translation with Introduction). UH Press. 1997. Print
