We’ve already covered Hawaii on this alphabetical 50-state-survey project. See “Official State Crap: Hawaii” (July 8, 2020). But because states keep designating new official crap, and not because I’ve been dragging my feet on the project, posts like this are sometimes necessary.

On June 24, Hawaii Governor Josh Green signed SB 3312/HB2736 into law, making the “shaka” the “official gesture of the State.” I now answer your questions about this important development.

What is a “shaka”? The statute defines it this way:

For the purposes of this section, the shaka generally consists of extending the thumb and smallest finger while holding the three middle fingers curled, and gesturing in salutation while presenting the front or back of the hand; the wrist may be rotated back and forth for emphasis.

The problem here is the word “generally.” If a shaka “generally” consists of that, it could also consist of something else. We are told the wrist “may” be rotated for emphasis, so that’s not a required element. But the “generally” means we don’t know which if any of the others are critical to a properly rendered, state-sanctioned shaka. This is the kind of uncertainty that generates shaka litigation, so I encourage Hawaii’s legislature to delete that goddamn adverb ASAP. But we do know, at least, that the gesture defined above is a shaka.

What does a shaka mean? This, too, is less than clear. The statute, which will go somewhere in Section 5, doesn’t define that at all. The legislation’s introductory language does, but frankly, doesn’t help that much: “[W]hile multiple Hawaii ethnic cultures and resident groups have contributed varying layers of meaning to the shaka, there is a shared agreement in the shaka’s positive sentiments and usage toward sharing aloha, fostering connection, and being pono.”

So it means different things to different people, except that, legally, it can only be used to mean something positive. The reference to “aloha” means we can look to Section 5-7.5, which defines “Aloha Spirit”—but again, not too specifically. Aloha is many things, pretty much all positive, except maybe this: “‘Aloha’ [also] means to hear what is not said, to see what cannot be seen and to know the unknowable.” So if somebody waves a shaka at you, he might be saying, “Hey! Know the Unknowable!”? I guess that’s not negative, but I don’t know what it is. “Okay, you too!”?

Then we also have “pono.” The Legislature hasn’t specifically defined this anywhere, but it is the last word in the state motto, Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono, which the Legislature translates as “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness.” This word, too, is polysemous, a word I just learned from Wikipedia, which cites a Hawaiian dictionary that gives “six meanings and 83 English translation equivalents” for pono. “Righteousness” seems consistent with the view of The Pono Insititute, which says pono “means ‘right,” the “knowing of right and wrong,” or one’s intuitive feeling of “balance, harmony, and alignment.” But they also suggest it can’t really be defined: “You know exactly when you are being pono and when you are not. You are either in the canoe, or out of the canoe.”

On the other hand, the Institute’s founders also say they “are visionaries gifted with multidimensional perception” who have “an extensive background in Energy Medicine” and are trained in quantum physics, so maybe we should not get into a canoe with them. Let’s just go with “righteousness.” So the shaka means that too.

Why make the shaka official? According to the Legislature, while there are “multiple origin theories, …. all theories have the shaka developing within the state.” The bill doesn’t go into these theories, but as far as I can tell it seems generally agreed that this did originate in Hawaii. Some people elsewhere may be trying to rewrite history, though, given what the report says about one motive for the bill: “Some were worried that if Hawaii did not make it an official designation, other states like California would.” Okay, but “some” don’t understand that one state’s adoption of an official thing does not prevent another state from doing the same, which for example is why half the states have “square” as their official dance. I suppose it’s better to be first, though, for whatever that’s worth.

There might be a reason that the bill doesn’t go into the multiple origin theories. I don’t want to ruin this for anyone, so I will claim Atlas Obscura already has, in Sarah Durn’s 2021 article “The Dark History of Hawai’i’s Iconic Hand Gesture.” As she explains, some believe the shaka derived from a gesture meaning “let’s drink,” and others say it’s similar to a Chinese gesture for the number “six.” But the “prevailing origin story,” for which she also cites the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, goes back about a century to a Hawaiian plantation worker. This guy, so the story goes, got his hand caught in the rollers of a sugar-cane machine and—you guessed it—lost his three middle fingers. The company gave him a new job as a security guard, and from then on, “every time he waved, he’d make what’s now known as the shaka hand. From there,” Durn writes, “local children mimicked and spread the gesture.”

Obviously, the meaning of symbols can change over time, maybe the best example being the swastika, which once was a symbol of “good fortune” and “friendship” but now … not so much. Certainly now the shaka seems to have only positive connotations. Even if there is a good chance it was invented by a bunch of kids making fun of an amputee. Just try not to think about that part.

To my knowledge, no other states have adopted an official gesture, and maybe that’s a good thing. As the person who sent this item to me (Tom Harrison) put it: “Some of us are now very curious about the New Jersey official state hand gesture.” That one’s already the unofficial hand gesture of most of America, arguably, so I see no need for legislation.