Huliau - The Return Voyage

Thanksgiving Day.  Ironic, at the very least.

Within a few short days of writing my most recent, Ever Changing Page essay:  “What Would You Do With Your Freedom?”–my husband, a Native Hawaiian spokesman for his indigenous people, is threatened with jail.

The Return Voyage, always and only moved by ancestral guidance, steps up a notch.

To all of you good folk who have attended Return Voyage gatherings during the past two years in Sarasota, Winona, Roanoke, Sedona,  Santa Fe, Baton Rouge, Milwaukee, Farmington, Los Angeles, New York City, and so many towns and cities between:  To each of you who asked, What can I do to help?  To each of you to whom ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani answered:  “When you hear of the changes on the Hawaiian Islands, I ask  that you  offer a prayer for my people.”

Friends:  We now ask  that you step up a notch as well.

In the long, deep, ubiquitous story of freedom denied, of national identity obliterated, of oppression institutionalized:  There have been wars waged, anger and violence righteously uncorked against oppressors.

But there has always been yet another way.  The brave, singular acts of  civil disobedience of  Mahatma Gandhi, who ripped India’s freedom from the British stranglehold without fist or sword.  Nelson Mandela, who freed his South African indigenous people with his hands and feet in chains.  Martin Luther King staged sit-ins–those illegal acts of defiance–against the established laws of  his land.

Each of these men men disobeyed  unconscionable laws; each were imprisoned as a result.  Their actions spoke for them:  “I cannot recognize a law that enslaves my people”.

‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani honors their heroic example.

It has always seemed so small, the substance of the specific disobedience:  A seat in a Woolworth luncheonette; a swim in the local pool.  ‘Iokepa’s  lapse from adherence to the law of the land appears no grander.  The issue at hand is small; the significance of the freedom call is enormous.

For my husband, it is this.  For thirteen years, he has refused to carry any identification that ties him to the United States.  His Grandmothers instructed him:  His sole identity must be Native Hawaiian–a descendant of a 13,000 year lineage that binds him to his aboriginal roots.  His nation is Lahui–the authentic name of these Islands.

When you are Native Hawaiian and your Grandmothers (who died long before you were born) ask this of you, apparently you do not refuse.

Not refusing has meant this.  ‘Iokepa does not carry any official American document:  Driver’s license,  car registration,  car insurance, or social security number–each one of these concessions contingent on accepting the former one.  For thirteen years he has not.

Don’t make this mistake:  ‘Iokepa admires and supports the United States and yearns to see it live the fullness of its potential.  But his Hawaiian blood and  DNA  makes its prior claim.

Two weeks ago, ‘Iokepa was driving his unregistered, uninsured, clean-as-a -whistle, 1998 Subaru station wagon on the streets of Kaua’i–without a government issued driver’s license.  He was stopped (by the rare officer who didn’t know him), ticketed, and summoned to court.

On December 9, he will go, plead not guilty, and ask for a trial by jury.  ‘Iokepa, though faced with fines he cannot pay and with jail he does not seek, calls this,  “An opportunity to raise the consciousness and change the consensus.”

When my brother asked:  “What if he loses?”  I answered for both of us:  “He cannot lose.”

And by that I do not mean that he will not be jailed.  I do not mean that I want my husband shackled–or that my husband wants that for himself.  We are not masochists. We very much prefer sleeping curled together. We savor our freedom.

But when I met ‘Iokepa 12 years ago, he warned me:  “This is not about us.”  And it  is not.  This is about a captive land, an oppressed people–and their freedom.

This small act of civil disobedience is a clarion call from a mountain-top to every one of us.  Nobel Prize winning, author Toni Morrison once wrote:  “The function of freedom is to free someone else.”

Friends, supporters:  Let your imagination be your guide;  please share this small act; retell this oldest of stories–the freedom of a people to live their own culture, to steward their own land, and to speak their own language to the ears of their Creator.

Let the Native Hawaiians teach the rest of us what is meant by Aloha.

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“What would you do with your freedom?”

This is the insistent (not often kindly spoken) challenge that ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani is issued whenever he dares to speak of the future of the Native Hawaiian people–or of their nation. The implied criticism is:  These people would not know what to do with their sovereignty.  The implied solution: Deny them that choice.

‘Iokepa answers the question in a larger way.

He begins here:  Reminding me of a single moment last May.  We sat–just the two of us–snug inside our Toyota Camry at a bed and breakfast parking lot in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware.  We were six months into our second Return Voyage tour, with perhaps three more to go.

We had $100 in our pockets (our access closed, to a Bank of Hawai’i checking account that had been raided with our stolen debit card).  In that single moment we asked one another and the universe:  “Where to next?”

‘Iokepa focuses on that moment of possible anguish and uncertainty to make his point:  “In that parking lot in Delaware, we were free.  There were absolutely no demands made of us. We could go anywhere we wanted to go.”

In that parking lot moment, I chose to go to Maine.  We’d never before been to New England; we knew not a single soul; it simply felt right.  I could not have offered a rationale that would have satisfied anyone–except ‘Iokepa, who like me:  Asks out loud, and then listens. We honor the answer we hear in our heads, our hearts, our guts.

From my impromptu decision to drive onto the Interstate and head for the northernmost state on the Eastern seaboard, with just the barest possibility of gas money, and none for lodging–life delivered abundance.

Oh, the stories I could tell of Maine and beyond:  The out-of-the-blue  cell phone call from Hawai’i–”Maine, my biological family lives there–let me call them”; the dentist who repaired my broken tooth, gratis;  the clarity of purpose that unfolded from this freely-made choice; the satisfaction in fulfilling that transparent purpose.

‘Iokepa says:  “People don’t believe that kind of freedom is possible. They  can’t imagine it for themselves. They can’t fathom that anyone can live a life without external demands limiting their choices. They don’t believe it’s a reality.”

But it is real–for every one of us.  The only demand that matters is the one that comes from deep inside of us.  Every choice is our own–it’s our human default setting.

We are free unless, and until, we agree to hand it over.  We are enslaved only when we give up that freedom on someone else’s say so.   Nelson Mandela may well have been the free-est man who ever breathed–in prison for half  a lifetime.  Alternatively, most of us walk the streets unchained:  We answer phones, take vacations,  and never breathe a free moment in our lives.

The challenge remains:  For the Native Hawaiians, sure–but no less, for every one of us who walk this good earth:  “What will we do with our freedom?”

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