Transforming Hawai‘i and its Children through Technologies of Adaptation

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which technologies such as literacy, picturebooks and feature films have appropriated Hawai‘i, its mythology and folklore and its indigenous people from early Western contact to the present. The article is divided into three parts: the first explains how the historical introduction of English literacy transformed Hawaiian mythology and folklore into a Western possession. The second describes the ways in which different genres of folklore and mythology in post-plantation-era children's picturebooks counter, extend and complicate that initial adaptation. The final part situates a critical reading of Disney's Moana within this longer history of appropriation. While most critical reviews of Moana have focused on specific aspects, this article situates key parts of the Moana narrative within the colonial and post-colonial story of Hawai‘i that Western adaptations have written from historical times to present.