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Hawaiian Sovereignty
(republished from East Wind, Fall/Winter 1982)
by Poka Laenui
By virtue of my birth, I inherit the right to the human treasures of three sections of the world. My father and his forebearers descend from the Hawaii and European stock, my mother from the Chinese.
In childhood, bits of these treasures would be brought out by the languages in which I would be scolded or cuddled or in the children's rhymes I sung or the food I ate. It was not unfamiliar to wear a Chinese inscription pinned to my shirt while I hunted for the Hawaiian uhaloa herb to cure an ailment or to burn incense for my Chinese ancestors. Later, I would sit at the feet of elders who spoke of gods and goddesses, demigods and spirits of Hawaii, then walk up to the Holy-Roller church and recite bible verses.
But those youthful days were numbered. I was sent through the "educational" system and felt the heavy hand of cultural domination. No longer was I permitted to mix non-English words openly or to weave concepts of three cultures into my expressions. If I did so, I was disciplined with open ridicule from teachers and others who had themselves succumbed to such domination.
When I proudly spoke of noble Polynesians and their feats of courage in conquering the vast Pacific in their humble canoes, criss-crossing it and traveling from island group to island group, touching continents on both sides of the ocean, I was ridiculed and told they were heathens, unclothed and ignorant. I eventually became secretive in my speech and thoughts, retreating to the back of the class where I found other mix-breeds or mix-cultureds.
We were conditioned each morning to pledge our allegiance to the American flag and nation. The "pidgen" English we spoke was pried away through 12 years of standard English training. The religious practices of non-Christians were condemned. Christmas was celebrated with a vacation while the beginning of Makahiki in honor of Lono, a major deity of Hawaii, was never mentioned. We read that Captain James Cook discovered the Hawaiian islands rather than my ancestors. We were told in English that if the United States had not protected us from Japan in 1941, we would today be speaking a foreign language. Indeed, these Americans by now had classified even Hawaiian as a foreign language!
We were drilled to live as white men, coerced into adopting their moral concepts, language, ambitions and God. We were educated with their books and their version of history, trained to measure life by a financial standard and told that we were American citizens. I believed.