[ID1: tweet by Adam Kaewe Manalo-Camp, @adamkeawe , reads: “Missionaries thought Hawaiians were lazy bcus by noon Hawaiians were surfing, doing art, socializing. What they didn’t see was that Hawaiians started the day at dawn&were so efficient&organized that they were done planting, harvesting, and cooking for the entire day by 9am.” /ID1]

[ID2: tags read: “#what’s even the problem with being supposedly ‘lazy’ if there’s no work to do… #like they clearly weren’t starving to death or living in squalor so there was obviously nothing else they NEEDED to do #so why do more??? #i know the answer is ‘the people saying this were christian missionaries’ but still” /ID2]

to add a little more background to this, ancient native hawaiian’s days started at sundown; they measured their days&kept track of time primarily using the moon, so the appearance of the moon, not the sun, marked the day beginnings. this makes the night sleep match up with the break that happened with the peak of the sun in the sky, which would be the worst time to be doing agricultural work. missionaries also wouldn’t have considered many things that they did– pounding kapa to make cloth, for example– “jobs”, those things would have been considered crafts or art. it’s also probably worth noting that located so close to the equator, days in Hawai'i are roughly the same length&temperature year-round, so this schedule never needed to be interrupted or adjusted, for the most part. by the time missionaries came to Hawai'i, they found a system that was fully established&self-sustaining without need to prepare for barren seasons like winter, &that lack of fear+contentment with the land was likely almost offensive to the missionaries who showed up, who were specifically Calvinist Christian.