Joshua D. Nielsen

Majors: History and English

Honors in History

Supervisor: Dr. Tammy Stone-Gordon

PARADISE PRESERVED: THE POLYNESIAN CULTURAL CENTER

This Departmental Honors thesis focuses on the preservation of Polynesian culture and how the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) acts as both a cultural preservationist and disseminator. Throughout the twentieth century Polynesian culture was commodified, which challenged traditional Polynesian heritage. The American media, advertisements, and Hollywood all helped in creating a pre-visit narrative that often distorted visitors’ reality about Polynesia, which further complicating Polynesian identity. However, the PCC, which opened in Laie, Hawaii in 1963, has dedicated itself to the preservation of Polynesian culture while concurrently benefitting from its sale. Although the center is a rather unassuming cultural preservationist, the PCC nonetheless conserves culture through disseminating it to visitors while simultaneously keeping it alive though indigenous cultural performers. These performers are students at adjacent Brigham Young University-Hawaii, which is under the direction of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints. While this may seem like a strange dichotomy of religious teachings and cultural preservation, the PCC prides itself on transmitting culture to both indigenous Polynesians and visitors alike. Similarly, the duality of the PCC as both cultural preservationist and purveyor places the center at a liminal crossroads where culture is both sold and preserved. However, I attempt to demonstrate that the preservation of culture in the modern era relies on the commodification of authenticity, which in turn can then be preserved. As Oahu’s number one visitor attraction with over 33 million visitors to date, the PCC has proven that it can use the marketability of history to both sell and preserve Polynesian heritage in a modernizing world that is hungry for authentic culture.