Native Hawaiian healing to treat substance misuse: history through the looking glass

Colonial Regimes of Mental Health, Substance Use, Drug Treatment, and Recovery: A Locally Contextualized, Anticolonial Response

“…The contemporary form of mental, behavioral, and addiction treatments is often dominated by experiences and training that emanate from colonial societies and consider their “best practices” as “proven” and normalized to a colonial culture and society (Williams, Rezentes, et al, 2021). Ultimately, this becomes another attempt to impose a set of values and beliefs—a morality—on the Hawaiian person.…”

“…Successful adaptation to the conditions of State-sanctioned incarceration is contingent on self-preservation or a highly selfish survival-oriented morality. For example, State-subsidized drug abuse treatment programs and the State’s criminal justice system work in tandem to coercively compel Hawaiian people into abstinence-oriented lifestyles and regard any substance use—whether for spiritual reasons, communal bonding, cultural revitalization of indigenous psychoactive drug use, or motivated by other intent with therapeutic purpose such as a response to unknowing cultural loss, oppression, historical trauma and generations of forced assimilation (e.g., Coomber & South, 2004; Edwards et al, 1983; Pokhrel & Herzog, 2014; Williams, 2016; Williams, Makini et al, 2021; Williams, Rezentes, et al, 2021; Williams, Davis, et al, 2021)—as problematic social activity that is emblematic of failure, worthy of treatment termination, and warrants a suspension of free will. Kalant and Kalant (1966) underscore the so-called “bad” effect of drug use:…the traditional view of Europeans and North Americans would be that such an effect is bad because it impairs useful work, diminishes productivity, and lowers the material standard of living of a large number of people who may become charges upon the rest of society.…”