Role of Religion in Healing:

This image from an 1843 Geography textbook, with the idol looking like Satan, shows the kinds of negative representations of Hawaiian religion that too often came with Christianity and the dominant culture.

“We struggle as native peoples with these introduced religious concepts that really fragment us from who we were,” Keola Chan explains. “We really have to honest and look at those beliefs. While there are some really beautiful pieces to it, there’s some detrimental stuff to it too. Like ‘These things are here because God placed them here us to do as we wish, to take as we want.’ There are certain behaviors that come out of any religious beliefs, even for Hawaiians, that we should be looking at, that we have to be critical. And I think we’ve lost that ability to think critically about what is happening to us, that we just allow it to seep in without saying ‘No, we don’t want that. Stay out there.’

“It starts with the individual. It is happening to us because of our own defenses are not up, our own immunity to those things is not built up yet. Like your kino, you have to rebuild the spirit. You have to rebuild those emotional stability, the mental capacity to really take on physically what we are dealing with in our world. You got to take people back.

“For certain circles of our Hawaiian community, spirituality is maybe a touchy subject. The religious spirituality is something that our organization confronts because we’ve recognized there’s one thing about doing these practices. And if you look in our community, the practice of our culture is really being revived in many different areas. Farming, fishing, hula, mele, language—all these things are coming up. But the next level is that spiritual enlightenment. So to be ahead of the game, you have to realize that you only can do this work to a certain level or expertise. To take it on to the next level, you really have to engage the unseen, because we cannot see the future.

“Our kūpuna understood we cannot see the future. We only know our past. We can only see those things that have happened to us. If I’m looking into the past, this is my view. I know what happened, I know those individuals, I’m greeting the present right here, and everything here in the future cannot see. But if you engage with those ancestors, your akua, your gods that can have the ability to see beyond, they give you that insight. They give you that foresight to greet the present in a way that is healthy for you.

“I really challenge my students in my classes. You can be Christian. You can be whatever you want. All I’m saying, in my space—because this is my space for the next four hours with me—we’re going to delve into looking at other things. And then at the end you make your decision. I’m not here to change your mind but I’m here to bring a perspective that made the people healthy.

“If it made them healthy, and those beliefs and concepts were birthed out of this place, then why are we trying to put something else here that wasn’t developed here? It doesn’t mix. The two are not mixing, obviously, if you look around, those beliefs and concepts are not working for us right now.

“And so, us engaging and reconnecting with those individuals who live in Pō, who live in the realm of our ancestors, when you engage in them and they engage with you, they have your best interest at heart as well. They want you to be thrive. They want you to be the best you can, because in doing that, it raises the mana of not just you, but them and those that will come after you as well.”

Pacific Worlds > He‘eia, O‘ahu > Health > Spiritual Treatments