I would be interested to know why the Hawaiians did not practice cannibalism, when so many Polynesian groups did.
American Indian groups were all over the charts with it, from abhorrence, to occasional ritual, to just another kind of meat. I come in part form a group somewhere in the middle.
I do put stock in folklore. I feel there is at least a kernel of fact in most traditional narratives. The problem is - how much? Example, the Donner Party resorted to cannibalism to survive. If that fact existed in the context of a non literate society, it could expand to the claim of generalized cannibalism amongst wagon trains, which was not true.
Skeletal remains do not present a very happy picture of early human behavior, but I don’t have a clue about Hawaiian archaeology.
In any event, the guy BO is promoting for celebration just sounds like another mundane, murderous dictator. He seems to like them.
Kernal of truth is not truth absolute, as you pointed out.
“...why the Hawaiians did not practice cannibalism, when so many Polynesian groups did.”
You have the makings of a part-to-whole fallacy here.
Just because some Polynesian tribes practiced cannibalism doesn’t mean all Polynesian tribes engaged in this practice. We do know that the Polynesians practiced human sacrifice. As a matter of fact, my uncle once told me, in a matter of fact sort of way, that if the Ali’i chose your child to be sacrificed to one of the “Gods”, you felt honored that your baby was chosen. I was in my teens at the time, so I did not want to disrespect my uncle by telling him what I thought of that practice(simply put, it was and is evil).