Selling Workshops versus Selling Ceremonies

[Pono Aloha]

A question has come up among some Native Hawaiians that I would like to ask your input on. We understand selling ceremony is not pono or righteous or good. The question is how do you feel about native elders selling workshops? Assuming the elder is putting on the workshop, so all the money goes to them, and that there is no ceremony as part of it? Here, there is a fairly long history of selling hula classes, and more recently selling lomilomi massage classes. Inevitably in these classes they will begin and end with prayer (usually Christian prayer) and some discussion of Hawaiian culture and tradition is part of it. Sometimes they teach traditional oli or chanting. Traditionally this sort of teaching was only passed on to one's family, but unfortunately a lot of young people don't care to learn the old ways. I know of kupuna or elders who specifically have taken Americans or Japanese under their wings to perpetuate what they know. What do you think? Where do you draw the line?

[earthw7]

we have people who do workshop here on the reseavation
too about our culture, history and way of life.
all meetings on the reservation start with
prayer no matter what you are talking about.
So just because a workshop has prayer does
not make a case against fraud.  

[Defend the Sacred]

I think it depends on what someone means by "workshop".

On it's face, it's a neutral word. But nuagers speak a different language than do people from traditional cultures. A workshop by a respected indigenous educator, who is teaching history and other basic things that can be shared with the public, is one type of workshop. But to nuagers, "workshop" usually means they expect to be instructed in ceremony. Most nuage "workshops" include fake ceremonies as part of the experience. Personally, when I talk about "workshop culture" nuagers, I mean the monied non-Natives who flit from ceremony-seller to ceremony-seller, finding their only community in weekend pay-to-pray retreats, where there is no ongoing accountability to elders and peers.

My opinion as a non-Native is that each Indigenous community sets it's own standards for what is considered basic knowledge that can be shared with the public, and what is cultural property that is only to be shared with members of the culture.

[earthw7]

Very true it depend on the information that is given out,
we have a rule that there is certain things

[Pono Aloha]

Thank you earth and Kathryn. The information I have seen given out is "public" information, not the sacred knowledge, but the people who come tend to be nuage workshop junkies. Some or most are disappointed with what is taught because it's not a life-changing-until-the-next-workshop kind of experience--they go back to the plastic shamans. But what I wonder is how other native peoples look open those who sell even the public parts of their culture to non-natives.