When ‘Iokepa wrote the original words on the homepage for our website, he wrote: “If you have a single drop of Native Hawaiian blood, we invite you to join the conversation.” The aboriginal Hawaiians never judged their relationship between one another by the amount of indigenous blood that had – or had not – been diluted by intermarriage. You were Hawaiian even if you were born red-headed, blue-eyed, and aboriginal – if you claimed it, accepted responsibility for it, and lived it.
We are in Southwestern, Virginia, and for me--who reared young sons in Roanoke from 1986 to 1994--it is a coming home. Nowhere are people more compassionate, less likely to erect barriers to intimacy--or more falsely maligned--than in the heart of the old Confederacy. I was guilty of just such regional accusations and stereotypes--until I lived here. My small family came to depend on the kindness of total strangers in those vulnerable years, and we were never disappointed. I yearned to bring 'Iokepa "home" with me. He (with his long silver hair and his brown aboriginal face) has yet to meet a stranger here.
It did not feel good,” Maxine Hong Kingston wrote in Hawai‘i One Summer, “To be a writer in a place that is not a writing culture, where written language is only a few hundred years old.”
The rich oral traditions are lost to our Western world. We’ve made false idols of the written word. We assumed that what was written carried a weight, that what was spoken did not.
We have been in New York City for the past week, and we are loving the concentration and intensity of creative energy on this other Island. A new friend, in casual conversation, brought up the historic and current plight of the South African people. Her intention was to gently mitigate the seriousness of the aboriginal Hawaiian losses.
Perhaps, nine years ago now, we were camping (actually, living in a tent) at Kaheka--the Salt Pans Park-- on Kaua'i, when we met Lou. Over these past ten years, we have met hundreds of visitors to the Island, at that particular park. Some were there for a quick swim by day, others were camping for a week. They were vacationing from Germany, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan, and every part of the United States.
We first met John Talley at an Eastside Portland coffee shop. He was sitting one table away and couldn’t help overhearing ‘Iokepa speaking with an old friend. John was intrigued by what he heard, introduced himself, and apologized for eavesdropping. ‘Iokepa, for his part, was drawn immediately to the seventy-six-year-old Iroquois with the powerful face – etched deeply along strong native features – and the gentle voice. They agreed to meet again.
