Cultural Practitioner (and husband) ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani pondered aloud over his morning’s coffee.
“We have defined our cultural activism too narrowly - limited it to what we regard as solely Native Hawaiian issues. That’s confined our struggles against the rapacious state, federal, and commercial interests to: burial grounds, ceded land, heiau and, of course, the Mountain - Mauna Kea. We have fought long and hard for the freedom to teach our language, to dance our prayers, to speak our truth to power.
“But we’ve accepted someone else’s version of what’s a ‘Native Hawaiian’ issue. That has to change.
“We’ve allowed their defining restraints to become our own. In sum, there is a vacuum of Native Hawaiian opinion on (just off the top of my head) gun regulation; abortion rights, state government corruption. These are not “American political issues” to us - these are conversations where our very cultural values are being trampled.
“If we believe (and clearly most of us do) that these Islands are our singular homeland - occupied, exploited, and painfully abused - than the answers must lie in our ancient values. Those values don’t begin and end with our sacred heiau or the Salt Pans.”
Now I join the conversation.
Native Hawaiians have for thousands of years lived a culture that embraced the sacredness of human relationship to both ka ‘aina and one another. They defined “freedom” quite differently from modern Americans - far less selfishly, far more communally. Any and all difficult decisions began and ended with ho’oponopono - that matriarchal mediation circle. These are the very attributes that the state tourism office still sells to visitors, “The Aloha State.” So tell me how, for example, people walking the streets with guns on their hips becomes culturally insignificant. And that’s just for starters.
I understand the well-meant argument for focus, as in, “choose your issues” - the argument that prioritizes the specific wrongs to issues of value only to Hawaiians. But I’d argue that drawing boundaries around what’s of vital Native interest has only emboldened the abusers - as it historically always has..
‘Iokepa gets the last word.
“There’s an absence of Native Hawaiian opinion on wide areas of cultural infringement. We allowed our collective voice to be narrowed to what we might imagine is do-able in an American state or colony. It’s just not enough..”