Who has been listening to the warnings of the indigenous peoples - now, or for how many generations? Who’s been listening to Native Hawaiians in particular? What have we heard? How have we answered to what we’ve heard?
Our backs have been turned, not just to the warnings for a couple of decades of scientific “discovery.” We’ve turned our hearts and minds from all that our own ancestral, cultural roots scream in our waking and sleeping dreams. We know; we’ve always known.
“We all come from tribal communities,” Hawaiian cultural practitioner ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani said. “We carry their knowing in our DNA.”
There is not a shred of temptation to say, “I told you so” in either ‘Iokepa or his brethren - but oh, their daily pain. And it’s a pain that does not wait for a hurricane or a tornado or a forest fire or a heat wave to strike their own back yard.. Because his - and all indigenous backyards - are inseparable from what is happening in yours. There is but one Earth for humans, and it is neither separated by map line nor bank account - not separated from every single other living species..
We have heard this. It is not new to our ears. Yet, we have lived (continue to live) as though sapping this Earth’s precious water, oil, gas and coal from it’s core - and as though our human desire for comfort and ease and riches - is solely ours to claim. We no longer think of multiple bathrooms or plane travel as optional - they are our right.
It has been a slow, but increasing assumption of “personal rights” over the collective good - a narrowing of our caring for those outside of the circle of family and outside the circle of humanity. And now - in our faces - the results.
‘Iokepa assesses the damage, and in his desperate moments, he privately voices them: “We have ruined our Earth, and now they ask us - the indigenous, who’ve decried the assault on our planet forever - now they say, “It’s your turn. Fix it.”
But ‘Iokepa is a man of deep faith - not just in his Creator and the powerful wisdom of his ancestors. He is a man of deep faith in the rest of us. He believes that we are a community capable of remembering. Remembering our responsibility to the hawks and the whales and the soil - and each other.. And he knows that the entire purpose of his small life - the very soul and heart of it - is to remind each of us of who we truly are, and what we were born knowing.
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