Polynesian
Cultural Center (PCC) was founded by the LDS church
in 1963. PCC is one of the most popular touris facilities in Hawaii. Each year
twenty five million tourists visit, about seven hundred students who attend Brigham
Young University-Hawaii were employed.
Haunai-Kay Trask
criticized tourism relies on their gendered racial bodies to sell race to
tourists. PCC can be seen as a racial project that relies upon sterotypes of
the “ happy native.” Contrary to expectations, employees who worked at PCC have
strong senses of faith. It is a paradoxical situation. An ideology of
faithfulness is used to garner the consent of the community members to freely
give their labor to this capitalistic project.
Through the former
workers interviews, the author realized PCC was more than just a cultural
tourist attraction that sells race. The PCC has been selling an image of the
happy native to tourists for nearly fifty years. The PCC has a mechanism of control
their workers. The mechanism is ideologies of faithfulness. This makes compliant
workers.
Faith
is also used as a mechanism of control that obscures the structures of
inequality and the capitalistic motivations of the church. By analyzing tourism
from the perspective of workers, an alternative narrative culture emerges. Aikau
tried to expose the ideology which enables Hawaiians to cooperate in harmony. 
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