So to me, even when I talk to people about tiki and when I try to educate people on our islands and our land and our people and our culture, if I’m being 100 percent honest, I’m like, “You guys can keep tiki if you want tiki,” but recognize that the cultures that you’ve taken a lot of inspiration from—if that’s what you want to call it—cultures that you’ve taken a lot from to create this aesthetic have modern issues that are seriously threatening the future of our people. MK: I think there’s a distinction that should be drawn between cocktail bars—sort of industry darlings—and bars that are more consumer-facing, where I don’t see as much change as I might see within the [cocktail] industry. Racism, on the other hand, is not evolutionary at all. CT: Even the name is annoying for me because as much as we want to switch it to “tropical,” we can’t actually start the conversations and [reach] the people that we want unless we refer to it as “tiki.” Our main focus is to lead by example, to work with different bartenders from different cultures and kind of be like, “You can create an experience that takes you somewhere else without stealing from somebody else’s culture and community.”. Say white supremacy and many people envision white hoods or tiki torches. A Tiki torch manufacturer is denouncing white supremacists who used its products in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. Here, Tom, Kunkel and Jimenez talk about the problems with challenging tiki’s status quo and what the future of the genre looks like. Modern Tiki has a lot of leeways to play with pop culture ideas, but an authentic Tiki environment should always be recognizable as such. Addressing systemic racism requires talking about white supremacy and white institutional culture. Often the kind of racism that we face in our circles is more causal, more at the level of microaggressions. Pirate culture, which is a hairline away from Tiki Culture, gained popularity, and the two started to overlap in a wonderfully adventurous way. doom tiki, pasifika project, Tiki. SJ: As messed up as it may be, I think there is a little bit of validity to the fact that Polynesian pop and tiki allowed for people to open themselves up to Pasifika cultures… The majority didn’t do it and don’t care about it, but there have been the few that have gone on to do the work to further understand why these things are problematic. It is particularly Heyerdahl’s theory on the settlement of Polynesia, most comprehensively described in American Indians in the Pacific: The Theory Behind the Kon-Tiki Expedition (1952) that has attracted attention. Frantz Fanon's speech (in French) before the First Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in Paris in September 1956 and published in the Special Issue of Presence Africaine, June-November, 1956, remains a classic study of Racism and Culture. So, if you don’t have any sort of truths or real human beings to counteract that … it’s easy to play on stereotypes. The answer can be summed up in four points: However, more importantly, Thor Heyerdahl never portrayed himself as a racist. No, you cannot, but as any complex question it can be qualified and discussed. The main point is that it depends on how you define racism. In the autumn of 2019, a young Norwegian historian, Per Ivar Hjeldsbakken Engevold, published a study of Thor Heyerdahl’s work and theories entitled Thor Heyerdahl and the Search for Atlantis. Here is but a few: Axel Andersson, A Hero for the Atomic Age: Thor Heyerdahl and the Kon-Tiki Expedition (2010, 2nd revised edition 2018). Although people aren’t, generally, shouting “blood and soil” while lighting tiki torches at most Pagan gatherings, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the space is inclusive. His work originated and reflected his view of humanity. It’s not a thing. Tiki’s reckoning has been stewing for decades, bubbling just below the surface of the revival’s most recent wave. … I personally identify as Black and Indigenous. Surprisingly light on the fascinating history of tiki, surprisingly heavy on a self-serving, self-mythologizing narrative that nearly completely obscures the inherent racism of tiki culture and the strange cultural appropriation of it. As if you were living in that time. If you define racism as an impersonal structure, evidenced by which words are used or whether or not a model of explanation is used, that may have originated one or two generations prior, without any qualifications – well, in that case you may find traces of racism in his writings. Both of my parents immigrated here: my dad from Guadalajara, Mexico, my mom from Tula, American Samoa or Tula, Tutuila. 8. In fact, many sociologists argue that race is a social construct , no more inherent in our world than the difference between rap and jazz. Its founders, veteran New York bartenders Austin Hartman and Chockie Tom, were motivated by the genre’s persistent issues of cultural appropriation and overt racism. However, this one-time visit is the only contact between the two on record. This means first of all that the figure of the Tiki, in carved and in … To me, there’s no way around it. Was Thor Heyerdahl’s search for a vanished people of megalith builders, with light skin and red hair a racist theory? These conversations are hardly new. If racism is defined as a personal conviction that some races are better than others, then there is absolutely no racism in Thor Heyerdahl’s writings. We, therefore, make it available here in an English translation, despite the fact that the book itself is only available in Norwegian. Kyle Odegard, Corvallis Gazette-Times: A Corvallis restaurant owner is apologizing a week after opening up a Tiki bar downtown and being accused of cultural appropriation and insensitivity. This collection was supposed to tie them over financially until Heyerdahl’s travelogue, which he was about to write, would be published. I just want to help to uncover and amplify real stories, real people and help people understand why some of these things are harmful in terms of, you know, generational trauma and replicating colonization through tiki, and through hospitality environments that are not necessarily very hospitable. And the old school tends to be a lot of gatekeeping, out of touch, appropriative, older white dudes that are like “this is our thing” and “this is our culture” and “the Polynesian people should be grateful that we are aware they exist because we respect their culture and we value them.” But there are also a lot of newer people that are more cocktail-oriented that aren’t into neocolonialism or colonial roleplay or LARPing or whatever. Chockie Tom: My family is Pomo from California and Paiute from Nevada—Walker River to be exact, which is most noted for Wovoka, who was responsible for the Ghost Dance. Some events in Thor Heyerdahl’s life, like his contact with Hans F. K. Günther, is particularly affected by this, leading the author to interpretations that goes far beyond current evidence. When the heavily armed libertarian movement known as the Boogaloo boys began donning Hawaiian shirts at counterprotests following the death of George Floyd earlier this summer, tiki fanatics across the country took issue with their apparel. I care more about that than whether tiki exists or not… At the end of the day, I try not to get too down on it and just continue to focus on the process of educating people about … why these things are problematic. The main point is that it depends on how you define racism. But I’ll be a 100 percent honest—for the Pacific Islands, for Oceania, for Pasifika, the problems that we face in this world are greater than tiki. Culture; Gear; Ideas; Science; Security; Joe Flahert y. The Tiki culture began in 1934 with Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt's opening of Don the Beachcomber. Tiki culture ostensibly began when Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt opened the first Don the Beachcomber bar in Hollywood in 1933, decorated with the souvenirs of his own voyages around the South Pacific. Let’s open a tiki bar and not think twice about anything that we put in it.”, “If it is appreciation that you have for our people, for our islands, for our cultures, for this aesthetic, for our words-then help us. It’s totally unfair to look at it from a hundred-and-fifty odd years later and pass judgement on what those people did without knowing what their values were and what the laws were even. Through my father I am CHamoru, the Indigenous people of the Mariana Archipelago in the West Pacific. It is a force that is engrained in our culture and operating modes. My family is from the island of Guåhan, or Guam. In an ensuing debate, Eirik Stokke and Reidar Solsvik, wrote a lengthy review of the book which was made public by the Kon-Tiki Museum. If we want to change things, I think creating experiential bar[s] is different and that’s worth changing. We already know it’s racist for white Oregonians to make burritos, and now it’s racist for them to open tiki bars. However, for every pharagraph you find that could be interpreted as racist, you will also find a paragraph demonstrating that Thor Heyerdahl did not view ‘black’ or ‘primitive’ as inferior in any way. But even within those communities … there still needs to be a lot of conversations about cultural appreciation and working with each other instead of profiting off of the pain of another group of people. I think there needs to be more of a conscience about how that drink got into your glass. In recent years, critical readings of Thor Heyerdahl’s works claim his theories themselves uses terminology and models of explanation that is racist. Most are well-argued, but some contains many errors and personal interpretations. Could you find racism in Thor Heyerdahl’s theories? And, here, one would hope that the matter could be put to rest, but unfortunately this seems not to be the case. The book purports to be an in-depth study of Heyerdahl’s theoretical framework. This belief was at the very heart of why he studied cultural history. No, you cannot, but as any complex question it can be qualified and discussed. CT: One of the positives I am seeing is, you know, when I’ve given talks, when Sam has articles and when you [Mariah] give talks, I see a lot more people tuning in than I expect … even tried-and-true so-called “tiki personalities,” so that’s a very positive change. MK: You have the whole culture as costume situation, which impacts many people, indigenous people especially. More recently, the matter has been addressed by Victor Melander, in his 2019 paper David’s Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Reception of Thor Heyerdahl’s ‘Kon-Tiki Theory’. This book is an in-depth study of how Heyerdahl’s most famous expedition became one of the founding myths of the post-war world. “The events of the past couple of months have put the focus on individual racism, but when you put the Tiki torches away, we’re still left with longstanding structural and institutional racism that affect families of color every day,” Ben Hecht, president and CEO of Living Cities told Colorlines. SJ: I’m a big believer in the idea that for any culture to survive, it has to adapt and it has to evolve… so I tend to believe in the good in people in that sense, and in the good in people nowadays to move forward with new knowledge and to try and do better. The famous writer Shelby Foot, author of perhaps the most popular book on the American Civil War, once said the following about the writing of history: And that’s the way I think history should be written. But they actually perpetuate racism by simply becoming "a receptacle for potential and actual abuse," instead of examining their racially-biased behavior. Günther’s wife was a friend of Liv’s mother and the young couple wanted an insider’s help to sell their collection of zoological specimens and ethnological and archaeological artefacts. Leading the charge in reexamining the genre’s place in modern cocktail culture are Chockie Tom, co-founder of Doom Tiki, a non-appropriative pop-up series, and Mariah Kunkel and Samuel Jimenez, founders of Pasifika Project, an organization by and for people of Oceanic descent working in the hospitality industry. CT: Right now, we’ve got this changing thing… There’s the old school and then there are the newer people. In the 1920s, when the Klan was four million people and 10 percent of the state of Indiana, that era is characterized not only by what you would expect now, meaning White supremacism, racism, nativism, and violence, but also by 1920s cultural markers. Since this paper corrects some basic facts relating to Thor Heyerdahl’s connection with Hans F. K. Günther, and details some of the evidence found in Heyerdahl’s writings, pointing to him not holding a racist view of cultural development and prehistoric migrations, we make this paper available in a translated and slightly rewritten version: White Gods, White Researchers, White Lies, by Eirik Stokke and Reidar Solsvik (2019). That was one of my favorite things when I was little and now actually unpacking the attraction itself, where you have four narrators—a German bird, a French bird, a British bird and a Spanish-speaking bird—it’s like this colonizer phantasmagoria. I think we should start with introductions: I was born and raised in California, I’ve been in the spirits industry for approximately seven years, most recently as brand development manager for Banhez artisanal mezcal. It is extremely uncomfortable to see photo after photo of white people decked out in other cultures’ garb. This review contains new information on a key event in Heyerdahl’s life, and comments many of the general accusations leveled against his research. I have an enjoyment of the mid-century Americanized tiki theme stuff. For critics of tiki, it was an ironic turn of events, offering an opportunity to engage in discussion about the ways in which one group’s appropriation of another group’s aesthetic might similarly incense individuals from the aesthetic’s originating, parent culture. Originally used in ancient Polynesian and Hawaiian culture, Tiki masks are hand-carved, wooden decorative masks intended to represent deities and bestow specific traits upon the setting in which they're placed. Something that felt good, something that encouraged actual representation and input from the people whose cultures are being taken from. MK: I think because our numbers are not quite as great as perhaps some other cultures, that sometimes … people [only] encounter our cultures through a lens of media, like Peter Pan cartoons, or Lilo & Stitch, you know? Is that just something that I’m supposed to deal with? Because at the end of the day people are trying to create these wonderful bar experiences, [yet] I noticed a sort of creeping dread when I would have to go into these types of [tiki] bars for the brands that I’ve worked with in the past. Auditors, they have an important task to get done — to make sure our organization accounting is up to par and in accordance with federal and state mandates. “In my heart of hearts, I would love for something entirely new to be constructed. Same Racism, Different Generation As much as I detest early Tiki culture, at least Trader Vic’s had the decency to change their problematic ways. Some paragraphs in. ... Ward-Schur said Elders have long maintained culture is key to positive self-esteem. In 1936-37, Thor Heyerdahl and his first wife, Liv, spent a year on the island of Fatu Hiva in the Marquesas. We are experiencing an error, please try again. Through my mother I am a descendant of the people enslaved at the plantations of Mount Vernon and Arlington House. Our cultures, our languages, our islands may be lost to climate change. 07.16.2014 06:30 AM. I think this is also part of a big conversation in the whole entire industry that needs to happen around the stereotypes and racism that we find even within agave spirits and Mexican drinking holidays… We need to create a greater awareness so as things trend in and out, people will be inclined to be less terrible about it. How the Cable Car Became a Modern Classic, Mastering the Espresso Martini With Patrick Smith, Without Filipino Bartenders, There Is No Tiki, Most Imaginative Bartender Canvas Project: James Socci. Every year a group of fresh faces moves into the park board offices for several weeks. Graham E.L. Holton’s paper, Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki Theory and the Denial of the Indigenous Past (2004), is often credited as the first in recent times to make these accusations. Mariah Kunkel: It is really nice to be able to talk to both of you at one time, because I have a lot of experience working with each of you, but not necessarily together. CT: There needs to be cultural exchange, not appropriation. 3. Then care about our issues… Pay attention to our peoples, pay attention to our diaspora, pay attention to the issues that we have going on right now. Those invested in tiki culture are in it for a kitschy cultural fantasy — an imagined lifestyle associated with Jimmy Buffett and piña coladas garnished with tiny umbrellas. As Indigenous People's Day/Columbus Day just passed, I couldn't talk about racist and sexist Disney examples without talking about Tiger Lily and the Red Man in Peter Pan. Such images may generate headlines, but white supremacy manifests in other ways that are far more insidious and damaging. SJ: If it is appreciation that you have for our people, for our islands, for our cultures, for this aesthetic, for our words—then help us. Our islands may cease to exist in the next 10, 20, 50, 100 years. While Tiki style is based on a fantasy, it is not a free-for-all of exotic influences. Engevold did not do proper research on the subject he purportedly scrutinized. MK: You have to consider tiki has been sort of this trend that has had waves that have receded, gone away, and then come back again. These theories are highly debatable propositions and understanding what is going on with Tiki culture is a perfect example of their flaws as a framework. And glorifying that worldview, how does that play out in hospitality? Link to White Gods, White Researchers, White Lies, by Eirik Stokke and Reidar Solsvik (2019). However, as Holton himself points out, allegations of an inherent racism in Heyerdahl’s theories can be traced back to the 1950s. The book is riddled with the writer’s personal assumptions and is affected by inadequate research. It claims that all his various theories of cultural connection and migrations are connected in a hyperdiffusionist’s search for a white master race. CT: Part of the reason that we like to cause problems by using satanic iconography [in Doom Tiki] and are kind of disrespecting your religious iconography is because we want to provoke people into actually having to think about what’s problematic. Is the mid-century pop culture tiki theme considered offensive to native Hawaiian people in any way? Tiki bars are hot these days: you can enjoy a fruity tropical drink while surrounded by faux-Polynesian décor in most major cities around the U.S. and elsewhere, with new tiki spots opening every month. The perceived co-opting of their group’s attire by individuals who shared neither their values nor views enraged them and, frankly, hurt. But in the current climate, in which racial inequities and personal accountability are put under a microscope, tiki’s history of appropriation and cultural insensitivity are receiving overdue attention. This meeting has stirred the interest of various biographers and researchers, who, perhaps, anticipate a connection between Heyerdahl’s white race of culture bearers and his connection to a Nazi raciologist. The Bizarre Rise and Fall of the Tiki Bar. On their way home to Norway, the couple visited the German race ideologist Hans F. K. Günther in Berlin. CT: I think a good general rule is: Don’t be an asshole. It’s not oriented around any of the people that are on this call right now. Design. I always come back to the Enchanted Tiki Room [at Disneyland]. From time to time writers and researchers make this claim. Tiki’s reckoning has been stewing for decades, bubbling just below the surface of the revival’s most recent wave. Victor Melander represents the most recent research on the subject. Past societies were different, and they will never fit if we try to interpret them with our standards. 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