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Of Plants and Passion: The Gendered Politics of Plants in Hawai`i
Monique Mironesco, Ph.D.
University of Hawai`i, West O`ahu
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Introduction
With this project, I hope to gain a clearer picture of the relationship between
women and plants in Hawai`i. I am interested in how that relationship has changed both
the plants and the women who have tended/harvested/worked/used/thought about/taught
them. In Hawai`i, women have long had an interesting and varied relationship to plants.
This is not to say that women in Hawai`i are more closely tied to plants than their
Western counterparts; or that women in similar cultures, such as other Polynesian
cultures for example, are less tied to plants. Rather, there is a rich history of plant
ancestors and their human descendants altering the history of Hawai`i with their use of
plants. For example, there are many portions of the Hawaiian cosmology and
genealogies that include female goddesses as protagonists (such as Pele, Hi`iaka, or
Hina). Indeed, most Hawaiian legends have multiple meanings. As Isabella Abbott
describes in La`au Hawai`i, “legend traces the origin of `ulu [breadfruit] to the god Ku,
who turned himself into an `ulu tree during a period of starvation in order that his wife
and children could live…. [`Ulu] was not used sacrificially and was not kapu to women.
`Ulu appears in several other Hawaiian legends as well. In one, the graceful tree
represents Haumea, one of the goddesses worshipped by women” (Abbott 1992: 36).
Thus, as we can see from these two differing legends that trace the genealogy of the same
plant, `ulu, both men and women, gods (male and female) and humans (both male and
female again) figure prominently in the cosmology.
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