Polynesian Cultural Center

Christianity has factored prominently in the imperial and colonial exploitation and dispossession of indigenous peoples worldwide and has been researched in depth by countless scholars. But a rarely-discussed Christian imperial force in Polynesia is the Church of of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who have exploited Polynesians and their lands for over 150 years. On the North Shore of Oahu, in a region known as Ko’olau Loa, the town of La’ie is often thought of as the bastion of Hawaiian Mormonism. Through their land-managing arm, Hawai'i Reserves Inc., the LDS Church owns most of the land in La’ie, where they have erected Brigham Young University–Hawaii, an LDS temple, and the Polynesian Cultural Center. These institutions thrive in the

One of HRI’s most economically lucrative and tourist-drawing properties is the Polynesian Cultural Center. Ten years before the center opened, the total annual visitor count to Hawai'i was approximately 110,000; after it opened in 1963, over 37-million people had visited La’ie. The PCC opened is a 42-acre Polynesian-themed park and “living museum”. The park consists of eight simulated villages in Hawai'i, Tonga, Samoa, Aotearoa, Fiji, Tahiti, and the Marquesas Islands. The park employs local Polynesians to perform in their respective villages where they demonstrate various arts and crafts from throughout Polynesia for

Aikau writes at length of the Polynesian Cultural Center. She notes that the center is seen as an enormously successful tourist attraction that brings jobs to local Polynesians, many of whom report pride at the opportunity to showcase their culture, learn of others and maintain cultural traditions that are in danger of extinction. However, Aikau asserts that the center reinforces “an image of Polynesians as childlike and in need of saving and protecting from the corruption of modernity and capitalism,”. Aikau also contends that the cultural center leverages Polynesian church members’ faithfulness to the Mormon church as “a mechanism for producing compliant workers”. Aikau’s criticism of the church reaches a climax when she states