Preface
Аннотация
Every book is a destination of sorts, and once in a while I find myself both amused and surprised to think of the road that led me here.As is also the case when looking back, I realize how many fortunate circumstances and people have lent support to my efforts.I want to acknowledge these events and people here.First, the events.... In the spring of 1978 I was a high school teacher and drug education coordinator in Guam.Along with a small group of educators I visited Hawaii to observe drug education programs.Our purpose was to garner whatever insights we could to assist in curriculum development appropriate for Guam's multicultural community.During the trip I met a woman who gave me her personal copy of Nana I Ke Kumu, a book of Hawaiian mental health practices that had descriptions and anecdotes about a problem-solving process called ho'oponopono.As were others in my group who read the description, I was struck by the simple elegance and common-sense ideas of the process.Although thoroughly Hawaiian, ho'oponopono seemed to express many of the underlying values and beliefs that were also prevalent on Guam in the Chamorro culture.We returned to Guam invigorated and began our curriculum project with a few ideas on how to make it more Pacificoriented.After an exciting and successful year of developing and testing our pilot drug education program, I still had some doubts about how successful we had been in making it truly appropriate for use in Guam.Had we simply taken a mainland program and dressed it up in culture-garb?It seemed as if much more needed to be done, but I did not know exactly what it was.Graduate school at the University of Hawaii seemed a likely place to investigate the issues.During the next two years I focused my studies on cross-cultural com-