Friday, July 31, 2009

Musings: Our Own Backyard

The KKCR radio show that Jimmy Trujillo and I had hosted to promote Saturday’s “Unmasking Statehood” event was pau. We’d covered a lot of territory — the negative impact of statehood on kanaka maoli, America’s desire to possess the Islands for military purposes, the disgusting spectacle of the lei-bedecked USS Hawaii, a $2.5 billion war machine billed as “7,700 tons of aloha,” the critical need to educate people about what really went down to counter the hoopla surrounding the 50th anniversary of statehood.

And our guests had received, and answered, a number of calls posing many of the same questions that are raised whenever the topic of America’s illegal overthrow of the Islands comes up. Wouldn’t some other nation have taken over the Islands if the US hadn’t? [Ben Nihi: Great Britain did, and gave it back. Other nations honored international treaties.] Doesn’t Hawaii need the US to protect it? [Nani Rogers: No. America is the greatest threat to Hawaii.] Isn’t something, like a token land grant or the same status given to Native Americans and Alaskans, better than nothing? [Ben Nihi: Why should we settle for something when all of it is ours?]

We were preparing to leave the studio when the phone rang again. I picked it up, and a man spoke, hesitantly, on the other end.

“I’m calling about the show,” he said. This was followed by a long pause. “I’m not sure I can do this. I’ve never called a radio show before.”

I explained that we weren’t taking any more calls, but that if he wanted to make a comment, I would convey it to the guests.

“I don’t know where to start,” he said, and this was followed by another pause. “I don’t think I can say it. Never mind.”

His voice was full of emotion.

“Are you alright?” I asked.

“No, I’m not alright!” he responded vigorously.

“Maybe you’d feel better if you say whatever it is you need to say,” I replied, bracing myself for whatever that might be.

“Yes, I think I would,” he said.

This was followed by another pause.

“And what would you like to say?” I coaxed.

“I’m a member of the Choctaw Nation, and I just wanted to tell Kane Pa [one of the callers and a member of the Reinstated Hawaiian Nation ], forget about treaties. We had over 750 of them and not one got honored. And that call, the one that said we should give the Hawaiians what we gave to the Indians. Oh, we got something, alright. We got people trying to change our religion, our language, our complete way of life. We got land no one else would live on. As far as people in the world, we’re probably among the poorest.

“So I just wanted to tell your guests, don’t let the US treat you like Indians. Don’t ever, ever give up your fight for sovereignty, and never go with the Akaka Bill or whatever tries to treat you like Indians.

“Because we’ve been screwed forever.”

Later, as I reflected on his words, I thought of the well-meaning, and not so well-meaning, people who urge Hawaiians to “get over it,” move on, forget their dream of independence, accept the crumbs America is willing to share after it’s gorged on the entire cake.

It’s easy for those of us who have not known or experienced the direct effects of imperialism and colonialism to say such things. We’ve had the luxury of moving wherever we like to lay a claim to a better life. But we can’t forget that it’s come at the cost of those who were there first.

So our responsibility is not to assuage our guilt, whether we’re conscious of it or not, by encouraging others to forget the wrongs, but to right the wrongs, and we can start right here.

As the caller noted, “I see all those people driving around with their Free Tibet bumper stickers, and I want to say to them, what about looking first in your own backyard?”

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a sad place to live,Mahalo for speaking the truth. Such different creatures, no wonder the co existence is hard. I'm embarassed to be white. How can they be so cruel?

Anonymous said...

Righting all wrongs of this nature is impossible. There will always be the conflict between "those who were there first" vs "those who are there now".

Should everyone who is "there now" all over the world go back to "where they first were"? Impossible.

Population growth. Demographic shifts to/from rural/urban. Etc etc.

Free Tibet. Nobody cares.

Free Hawaii. Nobody cares.

Not in the grand scheme of things.

You may as well try to stop a tsunami by closing your windows.

I agree that the sentiment of "being overrun" is real...but I see no real solution to it overall.

And I see no real satisfactory solution to those affected people in Hawaii.

You may not be able to "get over it", although many successfully have and gone on to good happy lives, but you will have to "get on with it"...living in the current and forever-persisting future.

Like losing a loved one...one can grieve forever and ruin one's one life (spend one's life?) in the vain pursuit of past joy, or one can eventually move on.

Those are really the only choices to the perminance of death of a loved one, or a loved nation.

Anonymous said...

Go read "Bury Me at Wounded Knee" for the shame of the white man.

Then read accounts of inter-tribal Indian warfare, torture, etc for the same of the red man.

It happens everywhere, all the time. It is the nature of man.

Anonymous said...

True...think of all the national shifts in Europe and Africa that keep world maps almost constantly out-of-date.

Countries coming, going, splitting. Cultures intermingling, dying, new ones growing...

What do you think will happen if the global doomers are right and by 2050 a huge portion of livable land in the Pacific is underwater?

That will reduce the "Hawaiian question", which certainly won't be resolved by then except for the Akaka Bill I supppose, to a true tempest in a teapot.

Anonymous said...

What about the King of Maui and his people, overridden by King Kam? Did the Maui King and people appreciate that? They were there first, after all...

What about the introduction of Tahitian cultural practices, including (I think) that fun-loving Kapu system and human sacrifices?

Think the cultural practitioners "who were there first" really appreciated this usurping?

Anonymous said...

Mankind is "bad from his youth up".

Individuals can conquer badness more or less to a degree, but humankind as a whole will never, ever "just get along" in peace and security forever.

Very short periods may exist here and there, but then things will revert to the typical chaos, greed, warfare, conquest, etc.

It is in our genes...

No hoped-for "shift in consciousness" will change that. I'm betting that the future - however much of that we have left - will be like the past.

There's just too much accumulated history to bet against.

Anonymous said...

ya both the UK and france sent in formal troops that shot off firearms and took over something in HI....which is arguably similar to, but importantly different from, the details of 1893


"what about looking first in your own backyard?”

-- totally, and by focusing on pressing social problems (local food, housing, health care, etc) that measurably injure people every day


"I'm embarassed to be white"

-- you would make a good catholic, from what i gather of them


dwps

Anonymous said...

"I'm embarassed to be white"

That's why I'm getting a tan.

Anonymous said...

"I'm embarassed to be white"

-- you would make a good catholic, from what i gather of them

======

Add guilt but subtract some of the embarrassment and you could be a good Jew.

Anonymous said...

just when you think you're preaching to the choir.....you get some out there comments.
it's easy to say 'get over it' when you don't have to. it's easy to point out the other examples of 'wrong'; much harder to 'right' it.
if we want to work towards an equitable and sustainable future we have to understand the issues of justice and pledge to not commit more of the same that has led us to this point in time where indigenous cultures and entire ecosystems are on the verge of collapse and disappearing from the face of the earth

Dawson said...

Like losing a loved one...one can grieve forever and ruin one's one life (spend one's life?) in the vain pursuit of past joy, or one can eventually move on.

It is not like losing a loved one, and grieving, and moving on. It is like fighting a battle against constant assault. Like combating a disease that will never completely go away.

It is not about getting over it, nor about getting on with it.

It is about not giving up.

Anonymous said...

Mahalo Joan for sharing the conversation you had with your last caller. He speaks with his na'au, coming from a lifetime of experience for himself and his elders. For the very reasons he expressed, is why I and many other Kanaka Maoli support independence.

It isn't out of the realm of possibilities...it actually already exists. The Hawaiian Kingdom never ceceded anything, and for Hawaii Nationals our sovereignty is very real, it never left. No treaty of annexation exsists, a domestic law such as the Newland's Resolution has no jurisdiction over another sovereign nation, making it null & void.

The U.S. is infamous for breaking it's treaties with other nations as they did countless times with Native Americans. Treaties with the U.S. aren't worth the paper they are written on. Hawaii Nationals don't want or need the Secretary of Interior of the U.S. telling us what is best for us. SELF-DETERMINATIOM is exactly that.

Anonymous said...

The smart person gives up fights that cannot be won.

Anonymous said...

But the Akaka Bill "treatee" is what you're going to get, most likely.

That will end any hope of any "international jurisdiction" forcing (HA!) the US to abandon Hawaii.

If it lives, it lives only in your minds. It will never live again on the earth.

Anonymous said...

Many of my relatives - grandparents, uncles, aunts - were faced with the "get over it" option. They came out of war-torn Europe with no going back.

It wasn't "fair"...they didn't "deserve it"...but they moved on. Their melancholy never fully left them, but it did subside as they made their way in their "new world".

So, don't tell me it can't be done!

Anonymous said...

This BS reminds me of southerners who still nash their teeth over "the war of northern aggression" and fly their confederate flag and swear that "the south will rise again!"

Hawaii will get it's independence from America the day after the confederate flag flies over the White House and "Dixie" is the tune to herald the arrival of the President.

Anonymous said...

"Many of my relatives - grandparents, uncles, aunts - were faced with the "get over it" option. They came out of war-torn Europe with no going back.

It wasn't "fair"...they didn't "deserve it"...but they moved on. Their melancholy never fully left them, but it did subside as they made their way in their "new world".

So, don't tell me it can't be done!"

Hawaiians don't need to "move on". They're here and their land is intact. Its the colonizers that need to move on, like they've already done in many places throughout the world. So don't tell me it can't be done!

Dawson said...

The smart person gives up fights that cannot be won.

The smarter person knows when the fight is longer than his lifetime, and that no one knows if it cannot be won.

Anonymous said...

If it can't be won in my lifetime, it's lost to me...therefore, I move on.

Anonymous said...

Ah, the hope of the hopeless...dreaming that the USA would actually let one of its states go.

We'll have Starbucks on Mars before that happens.

Dawson said...

If it can't be won in my lifetime, it's lost to me...therefore, I move on.

Ah, the hope of the hopeless...dreaming that the USA would actually let one of its states go. We'll have Starbucks on Mars before that happens.

There's that Western mindset again: "if it exists outside my personal [life, family, culture, commerce, religion, political party, nation], it is of [little, no, sub-] importance."

The fight against Western cultural imperialism is long term. The fighting is in rounds -- there have been many, and will be many more.

Not that anything ElseWhen from "Me, Mine and Now" matters much to the Western mindset. Which is, of course, its greatest weakness.

Anonymous said...

OK...I've goaded this ox as much I can and extracted sufficient humor to sustain me until the next windmill to be tilted at.

We all have our different beliefs...none of which will come to an end in our lifetimes...so I'll just continue to enjoy the high life 10 years into my 3.5 decades of retirement and poke sticks into the anthill that is Hawaiian separatism and other weird cultural practices as it amuses me.

Disneyland ought to buy Kauai...at least then development would be controlled!

Anonymous said...

among people with a good understanding of these things, it is pretty well known that the US is likely to acquire more states by unsolicited request / petition. the probability of states leaving is not even a serious question. being a US state, an affiliated of the US, is desirable. an notice how persons worldwide seek US citizenship. similar dynamics. not hard to grasp


dwps

Anonymous said...

"We all have our different beliefs...none of which will come to an end in our lifetimes...so I'll just continue to enjoy the high life 10 years into my 3.5 decades of retirement and poke sticks into the anthill that is Hawaiian separatism and other weird cultural practices as it amuses me."

If I can amuse just one self-satisfied jerk its all been worth it.

Anonymous said...

Then you can consider yourself a happy person. You (in the plural sense encompassing all like-minded people) have and still provide me with endless entertainment.

Come on now...one more verse..."Dream the Impossible Dream..."

Tomorrow...Tomorrow...You'll still be whining about independence....Tomorrow...

Anonymous said...

And now, for something completely different (but connected):

Score another one for the good guys:

Kauai County, Coconut Beach Development LLC and Canyon Capital Realty Advisors win directed verdict against 1000 Friends-Native Hawaiian Legal Corp.

http://planetkauai.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

And some of you rail against govn't keeping tabs on protests and anti-establishment organizations.

==========
Report: Al Qaeda May Have Infiltrated British Secret Service

MI5 (UK's version of our FBI) is facing allegations that it mistakenly recruited Al Qaeda sympathizers who were trying to infiltrate the British secret service.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,536081,00.html

=========
"They" (you too?) are trying to infiltrate govnt orgs and data (Freedom of Info Act; ACLU; clandestine measures).

We need to continue to do the same.

I'm 110% behind MI5/FBI; MI6/CIA; thousands of CCTV's in all public spaces...

Dawson said...

...I'll just continue to enjoy the high life 10 years into my 3.5 decades of retirement and poke sticks into the anthill that is Hawaiian separatism and other weird cultural practices as it amuses me.

Some boys are similarly amused by pouring salt on snails, pulling wings off flies, and other demonstrations of incipient cultural sociopathy. Most grow out of it. Some carry it to their graves.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Sure...sure...you can't defend your position with anything more than "hope springs eternal" so you resort to ad hom attacks at me.

That's OK. Knowing my position on the issue is correct is sufficient.

The comment by dwps on August 1, 2009 8:39 AM backs me up.

I'd never bet against it.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Aw...too bad those last 2 comments were deleted. I love hearing from my most ardent fans.

Anonymous said...

Now I'm off to a place where they understand and accept me (for a hefty fee)

Anonymous said...

That has always been my consulting mantra:

"You will know the truth, and the truth will set my fee"