ABSTRACT
Are you familiar with poke? It’s a Native Hawaiian dish of raw fish—kind of a fish salad seasoned with traditional condiments like candlenut and limu. In 2016, a Chicago restaurant chain calling itself ‘Aloha Poke’ trademarked the words ‘aloha’ and ‘poke’ and began sending cease-and-desist letters to restaurants across the United States—including in Hawai‘i—using those words in their name. (Note that both ‘aloha’ and ‘poke’ are Hawaiian words.) I think it’s fair to say that there’s something transparently wrong about this situation. One way of articulating that wrongness is in terms of cultural appropriation: Aloha Poke appropriated a native Hawaiian dish and two Hawaiian words, and sought to restrict their use in Hawai‘i and elsewhere, all for commercial gain.
