Kuʻu hae Hawaiʻi, University of Hawaiʻi-West Oʻahu, November 28th, 2017
“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”
I can’t remember the last time I recited these words out loud. It’s been at least a decade (maybe two). But, if made to do so, I’d know every word. In fact, as I write this, the old, familiar lines come back to me:
“…with liberty and justice for all.”
They are imprinted in my childhood memories:
brown hand
over brown heart
under red and whitewashed stars and stripes.
When I think about my early education, standing in classrooms with my peers—most of us from ranching, farming, hunting, or plantation families—I realize that we had no idea what we were pledging our allegiance to. We had no idea what we were committing ourselves to: to the position of subordinate, second-class citizen, still considered “less than,” or too brown, too rural, and too uncivilized that our existence needed surveillance, or needed monitoring and controlling. We were children, and when I think about the many mornings we stood beneath the American flag, palms to chest, reciting the words of unconscious (and enforced) adherence, I question notions of freedom and justice.
How is it that a piece of cloth, attached to ropes and poles, came to have such significance? How did a flag become something worth fighting for, something worth dying for, something worth risking public reputation or social acceptance for? How is it that kneeling before a flag, burning a flag, cutting a flag, or even shooting a flag can be packed with so much meaning? How is it that we can fly flags freely in one place while people in other countries have to hide and risk their physical freedom to fly their symbols of independence?
Last week, these questions and considerations collided with my childhood memories of compliance when two particular events provided me with powerful opportunities to examine our “freedom” flags. The first was on Lā Kūokoʻa, our Hawaiian Independence Day celebrated on November 28th, and the second was on the West Papuan Independence Day, recognized each year on December 1st.
The proximity of these two days, not only in time but in symbolism, made me pause to question what we really fly: hopes and dreams, or something much deeper (and perhaps darker) than we realize?
(I’d like to recognize, at the outset, that this blog may not sit comfortably with some of you. However, what I observed last week pushed me to record these thoughts and observations, and more so, to reflect on myself and my own words and actions. I believe that we must be critically aware and open to critiquing ourselves and structures of power so that we can be more conscious of the messages that we are sending as we fly our symbols.)
Last week Tuesday, I drove to work excited that we would be able to raise and acknowledge our hae Hawaiʻi (our Hawaiian flag) on Lā Kūʻokoʻa. It was the day, 174 years ago, that Hawaiʻi was officially recognized as an independent country by dominant world powers. This made Hawaiʻi, in 1843, the first non-European country to earn such recognition. The day was then celebrated for years (decades even) as a day of independence. Despite later being clouded by incoming holidays, like the murderous American “Thanksgiving,” there has been a resurgence in awareness and with it, a renewed desire to celebrate and continue to hope and work for independence: politically and psychologically.
I arrived at work to find a small group gathered beneath the flagpole fronting our campus. We would raise our hae Hawaiʻi together, sing songs, and chant chants for a restoration of justice. As an Assistant Professor at the University of Hawaiʻi-West Oʻahu, I am considered a “state” employee. Therefore, I was pleased to see that our “state” institution would allow us to celebrate in this way.
When the small ceremony was about to commence our chancellor ordered that the American flag be brought down. It was a small moment of pleasure, a small victory. We then chanted our hae Hawaiʻi into the sky, exchanged reflections and hopes, and sent each other into the day with smiles for freedom. I snapped a photo to capture the moment and even posted it on Facebook and Instagram to participate in a widespread acknowledgement and celebration of the day on social media.
Not an hour later, however, I was terribly disappointed when I walked through campus and saw that the American flag had not only be re-raised, but that the hae Hawaiʻi had been slightly lowered.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag…”
It was elementary school all over again.
I stood still for a second and then became rather painfully aware of my own compliance. When I drove to work, I was happy to be allowed to raise a flag, to be allowed to celebrate our independence, to be allowed to watch the American flag come down. Such “allowance,” however, meant that I was still holding on to my subordinate, second class position, the one ingrained in my heart during childhood, while I held my hand on my chest and recited the words of someone else’s deceptive version of “freedom.”
We were allowed to recognize our history as long as it was comfortable for the institution that we work for. We were allowed to sing and chant for our freedom as long as it did not disrupt the campus. We were allowed to be and to exist as indigenous people, but with restrictions and time limits: just long enough for university cameras to capture the moment—a moment of diversity, perhaps, or a moment of symbolic “acceptance”—a moment that may find its way to a newsletter, a brochure, or a campus website in the future. We were given allowances while our actions were still monitored and controlled, and worse, while our minds were still made to believe that we had tasted independence all the while being fed scraps to keep us satisfied for the moment.
I would rather eat stones than taste the bitterness of that moment again, for it was in that small circle that we became symbols of complacency, or of being satisfied with mere moments when we deserve lifetimes.
The truth is that flags, while being symbols of “liberty and justice for all,” are also markers of conquest, colonialism, and genocide, and of historical, spiritual, cultural, and physical erasure. Reflecting on the re-raised American flag and the brief—and now brutal—15 minutes or so that we were allowed to see our hae Hawaiʻi fly independently, I remembered conversations had with my students this past semester. Just a month or so earlier, while we discussed colonialism in the Pacific, I had encouraged them to be aware of “white possession” or of the ways that possession is marked in space and time.
I shared with them, as Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2015) argues, that “For indigenous people, white possession is not unmarked, unnamed, or invisible; it is hypervisible…cities signify with every building and every street that this land is now possessed by others; signs of white possession are embedded everywhere in the landscape” (p. xiii). We spoke about our islands, the environments we live in, and the sometimes-unconscious acceptance that we give to the presence of everything from the military (and military discounts and military privilege), to imposed place names, and to other settler structures that do not truly serve us.
And we even spoke of flags.
We spoke about the flagpole fronting our campus, the same pole that I sang beneath on Lā Kūʻokoʻa, and how the presence of the American flag flying marks this space as a white possession, a place taken over and claimed. That pole is much like a stake pushed into the land, like those of the Oklahoma Land Rush of the late 1800s, where white settlers raced to assert ownership over places that were never empty to begin with, places that were valued, places that were already understood as sacred, and places that did not need to be “marked” as human possessions because they were lived with rather than lived on and conquered.
Despite such awareness, however, and despite my efforts to think critically about colonialism, our campus—one that is touted as both an indigenous-serving institution and an indigenous place of learning—was complicit in a settler-sanctioned “moment” for indigenous rights and freedom, one that I now believe may have done more harm than good. The fact that our actions that morning still required permission, or the fact that they had to be sanctioned and then limited, made me question the messages we send our students, particularly our indigenous students, the ones we claim to serve.
What message am I sending when I encourage them to critique dominant structures of power and to recognize the hypervisibility of white possession (or even non-white, settler possession) when I myself participate in actions that only reinforce those structures? What messages am I sending when I allow these things to go unquestioned? What messages am I sending if I don’t point out the absurdity of these acts? What messages am I sending if I fear speaking out because my fear of the system is greater: how smart is it, after all, for the “state” employee to critique the system that employees her?
While my rather deep reflection on Lā Kūʻokoʻa may seem a bit inflated—making too much of something small—I’d argue that we have to make a bigger deal out of these things. In fact, if we use this as an example (and as an opportunity), we can begin to recognize our own compliance in other settler systems, questioning how much of what we do is because we are allowed to.
“You can dance, chant, and have your ceremonies here and here and here.”
But, try to do that on a mountaintop, or a space desired by the settler state, and suddenly you are in the way. Suddenly, your presence no longer works for the dominant system—as a token of difference or a point of acceptable diversity and sellable “culture”—and you find yourself stuck. Act out and take the consequences or keep your mouth shut and be thankful for what you can get: moments of “sanctioned” freedom, which isn’t really freedom at all, is it???
I suppose this blog is proof of the choice I prefer to make. I grew up with many examples of bright, bold, and brave patriots who refused to act within systems of domination, who knew that expressions of self and identity, and yes, true freedom and independence, should not be, and cannot be, sanctioned by the state. I am fortunate to still be surrounded by people who fly their flags everyday—whether on the back of their trucks, or out their windows, or in their front yards—who still carry signs, who still protest and resist, and who still chant and pray on mountaintops, on shorelines, behind fenced forests, and in every other place that has been threatened by colonialism masquerading as the promise for “liberty and justice for all.”
I suppose this blog is evidence that I cannot sit silently about these things. To do so would be to insult the many strong and courageous indigenous warriors who have influenced my life and who have taught me, even in those early years when I was forced to learn and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, that there was another reality, one that we could create and enact and embody ourselves.
They taught me true independence! True freedom. Something worth standing for.
So, I question the system for them and for all of us.
A few days after Lā Kūʻokoa, I posted a blog for West Papua. It was written as a letter to Owen Pekei, a young student who had lost his life for daring to fly the independence flag of his country, the Morning Star. December 1st marks the day, in 1961, that this flag was raised in celebration of West Papuan independence. Eighteen days later, Indonesian authorities called for the mobilization of people into the country, which eventually laid the foundation for the forced and violent occupation of West Papua by Indonesia. Since then, the indigenous people have been victim to human rights abuses, living in a place where flying the Morning Star flag can result in a 15 year prison sentence, or worse, even death.
After learning about the ongoing genocide in West Papua a few years ago, I vowed to help raise awareness for their plight and to raise their flag whenever and wherever I could, knowing that they didn’t have the same freedom to do so. When I posted my blog this December 1st, however, just a few days after Lā Kūʻokoʻa and my experiences at UH West Oʻahu, I started to think quite critically about my own actions.
I voice opposition to Indonesian occupation and raise (and wear) the Morning Star flag regularly without having to fear consequence. I do not live in West Papua. Therefore, my so-called “bravery” comes partly from geography. While I work to cultivate the relationship between our peoples in the Pacific, and hope to strengthened ties, loyalties, and shared responsibilities to each other and to our sea of islands, I also recognize that there is a certain privilege that comes with distance.
Last week made me glaringly aware of the fact that I do not want to be one of those keyboard warriors who is willing to lend a voice to other issues—speaking and writing words for freedom—while being simultaneously unwilling to do the same when the issue is no longer distant, but close, so close in fact, that it waves in my face everyday: conquest disguised in red, white, and blue shades of injustice.
Exactly one week after Lā Kūʻokoʻa, I sit here reminded of the fact that words are not enough. I can write this blog, post it, share it, and help to spread awareness. However, if the act of writing it does not change me internally and does not influence the way I live my life every single day, then they are just words, strung together with meaning, perhaps, but lacking any true power. Words, after all, “whether delivered face-to-face or hurled at us through the Twittersphere [or, yes, even shared on a blog like He Wahī Paʻakai] are worthless unless they lead us toward action” (Gomez, 2017, p. 46).
Thinking about the flags we fly, and the flags we flew last week, I will no longer participate in settler-sanctioned university events that send underlying messages of compliance, especially while encouraging my students to think critically about the structures of power that oppress them. I would rather organize events for education and awareness, inviting students to take part in the creation—and the envisioning—of a new reality, one that encompasses all of their hopes and dreams of freedom.
That is my radial hope and my radical action. And that is indepedence.
References:
Gomez, J. (2017). Not a Moment but a Movement. In C. De Robertis (ed) Radical Hope: letters of love and dissent in dangerous times. (pp. 40-48). New York: Vintage Books.
Moreton-Robinson, A. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
“How old are you and what’s your level of education?”
I secretly wished he had asked me that question. No, I did not want to boast or throw my title at him. I did not want a congratulatory tap on the shoulder, a nod of acceptance, or any sort of smile that might indicate, “Oh-wow-you-are-an-exception.” All I wanted was to take the pressure off of the poor girl in front of me, the one who, before a room full of people, was forced to say:
20. High school, I guess.
The judge had already decided what he thought about her, and in my opinion, what he thought about all of us. We stood in a long line, all there to either plead guilty to our crimes, to contest them, or to discuss further processing and scheduling. I stood behind the young 20-year old. From the moment she stepped forward to have her case tried, she was judged, and I’m not speaking in the legal sense.
She was young. And, she was brown.
In fact, at least 90% of us were. Brown, that is.
I’ve been living in the Kapolei area for a few months now and I must admit that this was one of the highest concentrations of brown people that I’ve seen in one public place: a courtroom. While I may not have been able to determine each and every person’s exact ethnic make-up, the color was obvious. In fact, white stood out.
The poor girl put her head down. I silently wanted to hug her, or to at least stand next to her as the judge pushed further:
“I’m assuming you can read, write, and speak English, right?”
Yes.
“And you haven’t had anything to drink this morning? You haven’t taken any drugs?”
No.
She was there for driving without a license. This was her second offense, and after waiving her right to a pre-sentence investigation, one that would take her background, education, and family income into consideration before sentencing, she simply said she would pay whatever fee was decided.
“You understand that the maximum penalty for driving without a license is a $1,000 fine and up to 30 days in jail?”
Yes.
“You understand this?”
Yes.
I quickly glanced around the room. This was my first experience in courtroom setting like this. (I was there for swerving around a pothole. Yes, I swerved around a pothole and when I was pulled over and asked about it, I did not have my current insurance card in my car. So, I was summoned to court for two traffic crimes: swerving and not having the correct card in my car. Despite taking my card and proof of insurance to the courthouse the next day, I was told that I had to appear in court, in person, if I wanted to avoid a bench warrant for my arrest. My arrest! I’m never swerving around a pothole again! But I have digressed.)
As the judge continued to bombard the girl with questions, I looked around the room wondering if anyone else was as disgusted as I was. In fact, despite my silence I’m sure my face read: “Are you fucking kidding me? $1,000 and 30 days in jail?!? She’s a child. And what a huge waste of government money!”
Those who know me well know that I cannot hide my facial expressions. Therefore, I’m sure that’s exactly what could be read in my scrunched nose, my narrowed eyebrows, and my occasional (or, if I’m being honest, constant) eye rolls. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised that the judge then tried to play games with me when it was my turn (yes, games is what I will call this):
“Since you have provided proof, we will dismiss the charge for not having insurance. However, in regards to your first offense, do you plead guilty to crossing over a solid yellow line?”
No.
“You plead not guilty? You didn’t cross over a solid yellow line? That’s what the officer recorded.”
I will plead guilty to crossing over a dotted white line, as that is what I did. I did not cross over a solid yellow line.
“But that’s what the police officer recorded.”
What he did not record is the fact that he had to have a second offense to write me up for. He even explained to me that he would have let me go if I had my current insurance card. But, he had to show that there was reason for pulling me over in the first place [“other than the fact that I am brown, apparently,” is what I really wanted to say]. So, he wrote that ticket. There’s no law against crossing over a dotted white line.
*quizzical look*
“Well, since there are no further notes here, I’ll dismiss your case.”
And despite my relief at not having to pay for swerving around a pothole that I (just this week) see is now being fixed on a road that is now being repaved (but I’ve digressed again), I was troubled by the entire morning, by the entire experience, actually. Now, you must forgive me if what comes next is a bit far-fetched. Actually, on second thought, no need to forgive. It is a bit far-fetched.
But perhaps that’s necessary.
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander (2011) makes what some may call a “crazy,” “absurd,” or even inappropriate, and yes, perhaps far-fetched comparison between the criminal justice system and (as you’ve probably guessed by now) Jim Crow, or the laws that enforced racial segregation in America since the 1890s. Slogans like “Separate but Equal” and signs blaring “Whites Only” may sound familiar to you. We may not have the signs and slogans anymore. (Note that I wrote this blog one day before the white supremacy march, Unite the Right, in Charlottesville,Virginia, a march that proves there are still people who hold fast to such racist ideologies.) Even after Jim Crow, it is obvious: “America is still not an egalitarian democracy” (p. 1). We may not have Jim Crow, but other systems have taken its place.
(I should pause here to state that an article was published today entitled, “Jim Crow tactics return with Trump’s ‘election integrity’ commission.” It states, “The same sham justifications used to prop up voter suppression tactics during the Jim Crow era—claims that such measures to preserve the integrity, efficiency, and sustainability of elections—are being unapologetically recycled today [as Trump has asserted that he lost the popular vote because of millions of illegal voters].” So you see, Jim Crow really hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s just taken on new names and disguises and new, although not at all surprising, sponsors.)
As Alexander states, “We have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it” (p. 2). Now, I won’t look at all of the points of her argument here, as I would much rather suggest that you take a look at her book and take some time to watch the documentary, 13th, which critically examines the criminalization of people of color in America and begins to expose the racist origins and motivations of the prison industrial complex. Rather, I would like to make a few comments about our context here.
Before doing so, however, a few clarifications: I am not implying that the situation for Hawaiians and other “brown” people in Hawaiʻi is at all like those of African Americans in the continental United States. We have a different history. On top of that, I am not trying to take anything away from the overwhelming discrimination and racism still experienced by African Americans. I simply use some of the arguments made in those contexts to begin to think about our own. I also use the word “brown” knowing that it is problematic, especially when you consider ethnic diversity in Hawaiʻi.
However, I will say that data regarding incarceration does not lie: Hawaiians have the highest rates of imprisonment in the islands. And that was reflected in the courtroom I stood in. I heard it in the names being called and I saw it in the faces of those around me, faces of so-called “criminals.” Seeing those faces pushed me to investigate further, to dig into a system that although I often assumed was corrupt, I never examined fully. (And I’m saying this knowing that I have only begun my research and have so much more to learn.)
All I knew, as I stood there, was that the idea of a 20-year-old girl going to jail for not having her license was not only ridiculous to me, but also highly ineffective. So many people are convicted of small crimes everyday, and once that goes on to their records, they are labeled. This can impact everything from their ability to get a job to their ability to vote. In more extreme cases, they become those second-class citizens—those with less rights and less opportunities—that laws like Jim Crow once made sure of. It’s not a system of rehabilitation. It’s a system intended to keep certain people down in a country that continually perpetuates the myth, yes the myth, of freedom and equal opportunity.
Suffice it to say that there is certainly so much more at play when you look at a room of people and see one color (with a few exceptions, of course). Popular rhetoric used in conversations about incarceration emphasize poverty and education (over race) and try to persuade us that those are the only factors, or at least the most important ones when it comes to crime and incarceration. What it does not explore is the system at work: the one that has resulted in certain populations of people being undereducated, impoverished, unhealthy, and yes, imprisoned. (You really should watch 13th.)
Institutionalized racism is a thing. And although people don’t always want to talk about race in a country where some have bought into the fiction of “colorblindness,” we have to talk about it. Otherwise, we will continue to, as the documentary outlines, use words like “criminal” to cover up what is very much a conversation that needs to be had about race and equality.
Now, I will fully admit that I am new to writing about this topic. Therefore, any mistakes or generalizations are entirely my own. What I know, however, is that as I continue to think about everyday social injustices—like those witnessed in the courtroom as a young girl was “judged” in every sense of the word—I will continue to write about them, if not to bring a bit more justice to the world, then to at least start a conversation about it.
References:
Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New York: The New Press.
Ruth Aloua at Pōhakuloa (permission to use photo granted by Hāwane Rios)
I do not have a knack for science.
I’m directionally challenged.
I lack common sense.
And I still use my fingers to complete simple math problems (mytoes too).
So, when I’m encouraged to play the “scientific” game, or to speak in terms that powerful entities can understand (and respect), I feel insufficient.
I have a knack for words.
I find them in corners and silences.
I see them in colors and try to smell and taste them when I can.
And I still cry when I write my words down (each and every time).
So, when I’m told that my heart words are not enough to argue for justice, I feel like I am not enough.
A couple of months ago, I submitted a letter to the U.S. Army Garrison-Pōhakuloa (USAG-P) regarding the continued abuse of our land. The recipients of my letter did not know how to respond. It was well articulated and crafty, they admitted, but did not leave any room for negotiations or compromise.
I tried to explain that my poetics were meant to catch their attention, to point to the absurdity that there could even be compromise, and to highlight the fact that asking the public for complaints about “noise” marginalizes all other complaints.
I wanted to speak about more than noise.
I wanted to uncover hurt and make them feel it.
I wanted to unbury voice and make them listen to it.
I wanted to expose truth and make them eat it.
I wanted them to feel my words, our words, and cry with us.
But, I had to change. I had to start speaking in a matter-of-fact way.
I had to put my tasty words on the side and converse with them in terms they could understand. I had to attempt to engage in scientific discussions that I do not have the mind for.
I’ve written back asking about Depleted Uranium (DU), asking about a Hawaiʻi County Resolution that called for the suspension of live fire training, asking about when the military would honor the requests of the public—the public who has a right to know how they are being impacted.
With my limitations, I’ve tried to ask meaningful questions, questions that use their language, questions that they may see as worth answering.
And I have been told, time and time again, the same things: that DU is not dangerous, that there is monumental evidence to support this, and that if it posed any serious risk, they would not be there.
I’ve been told that they have nothing to hide.
I have been told that the County Resolution was non-binding, without the force of law, and that although they do not need to honor it, they do follow Federal laws.
I have been told that the Army is committed to the goal of transparency.
And yet they cannot see what is so apparent to me, or to us:
Their lies.
Bombing Must Stop. Period.
And still I try to read and comprehend the files sent, the websites referenced, the reports offered, those citing figures, presenting graphs, and making claims with jargon I can’t seem to “get”. And I wonder why they cannot make the same effort.
I engage in their game of science because they’ve already dismissed my heart. They want me to prove the injustice. They want me to prove the abuse. They want me to prove—with numbers, graphs, pictures, and scientific distractions—that bombing our land is wrong.
They don’t want to hear about Papa.
They don’t want to know her.
They don’t want to taste her.
They don’t want to feel her, to smell her, to touch her.
They don’t want to cry.
Meanwhile, that’s all I can do: stumbling with my science, gathering my words from corners and silences, trying to bring them together with tears.
And despite the fact that they do not know what to do with these words, I write them anyway, and will continue to do so.
Until they can move beyond mundane attempts to understand them with the mind and can begin to feel their pulse and,
The following speech was delivered at the 2017 Hawaiʻi Island EdTech Collaboration (HITC) conference that took place on March 31, 2017 at the Kamehameha Schools Hawaiʻi campus in Keaʻau. The conference focused on the blending of Hawaiian culture based education with 21st century skills and technologies. I decided to reproduce it here, as a blog, so that I can share it with the people who inspired the many stories shared in this piece. May it be nourishing for us all.
This keynote was inspired by a conversation with my Tūtū, my maternal grandmother.
Now, before I proceed, I should mention that I never met my Tūtū. She left the world before I came into it. Therefore, our interactions exist only in my dreams, in the memories that I’ve heard about her, and in the imaginings I’ve created with her, around her, and at her side.
A few weeks ago, I sat at the place where her iwi are buried, stared up at the Koʻolau mountains, and sent whispers into the wind for her. It was the first time in months that I had come to feel a sense of grounding, a sense of true belonging. You see she was my connection to ʻāina, to place.
Let me explain.
I currently live on the island of Oʻahu. But, I’ve always been grounded here, on the Big Island. Thus, after relocating, I found myself somewhat adrift: not rootless or anchorless, but instead somewhat uncertain of the ground I was treading upon, feeling like a malihini, or a stranger, in a place not completely new to me, but also not completely known
So, I went to visit Tūtū.
It was a late afternoon and I could smell rain approaching. I knew I only had a brief moment before I would be drenched. So, I sat with her and greeted her presence, deeply rooted in the land beneath me. And in that small moment, after reaching down and putting my hands to the earth, I looked up to see a landscape drastically changed. What were once unfamiliar mountains and streams became those that Tūtū would have gazed upon, those that Tūtū would have undoubtedly loved, those that would have sheltered her, taught her, and guided her when she had children, and those that would have soothed her soul when she was in pain.
In that brief and quite moment, her world became my world. When I stood up to leave, I knew that my ancestral connection to Oʻahu had been reawakened through her: through her story, through her life, through her memory in and of ʻāina. I could walk away feeling a bit more rooted, having been reminded that I never traverse this world alone. For, as the great poet Maya Angelou once said, “I go forth along, and stand as ten thousand”, with every grandmother at my side.
I share these reflections because, for me, they tell a story of culture, experienced in moments carved out for connection. And as I hope to share in this keynote, these types of reflections provide the space for nurturing relationships, something that I believe is central to any culture-based education. My conversations with Tūtū form the foundation of this address, one in which I will weave in and out of memory, story, analysis, and indigenous theory, one that will be rooted in ʻāina.
Before I do so, however, I should note that ʻāina is not merely the land upon which we walk, dance, sing, and shout, or the land in which we plant. ʻĀina is that which feeds. Yes, it is where our mea ʻai, or food, comes from. But, on a much larger scale, it is also where all of our physical, spiritual, emotional, and cultural nourishment comes from. Thus, ʻāina can be land. However, it can also be sky, ocean, river, and mountain. It can also be heritage and culture. It can be any source that feeds.
—
In the weeks prior to visiting Tūtū, I had a craving for something from the ʻāina. I had an intense craving for ʻulu, or breadfruit. I knew that we were not quite into ʻulu season yet. However, something in me wanted it. Something in me needed it. So I visited every farmers’ market I could think of, I searched between the branches of every breadfruit tree I passed in ʻEwa, and as a last and desperate resort, I thought that if I could even find processed ʻulu flour that I could finally satisfy this hunger. Weeks of searching, however, turned up empty until a dear friend gifted me a gorgeous, round, and perfectly plump ʻulu just a few miles away from where my Tūtū is buried.
So, with breadfruit in tow, I went to visit her, to sit at her side. And as I got there, I knew where the cravings had come from.
She had been trying to nourish me: my grandmother, whose name was ʻUlulani. My own heavenly breadfruit. You see the fruit was my way back to her. It was not the physical food that I needed, but rather the connection, the story, the relationship that it embodied. She wanted to connect me to ʻāina.
I’m sure of it.
—
Now, you may be thinking that this is a bit of a stretch, or that to link these experiences to one another is a far reach from anything realistic, practical, measurable, verifiable, or even commonsense.
That, I would argue, is precisely what a good Western education would tell me.
And that, I would argue, is why Hawaiian culture-based education is essential.
You see I believe that our people understood themselves in relation, never in isolation. There was no separation between themselves and the land, themselves and the sky, themselves and the ocean. As one of my dearest mentors, the late Teresia Teaiwa, once said, “We sweat and cry salt water, so we know that the ocean is really in our blood” (qtd. in Hauʻofa, 1998, p. 392). Our people understood themselves as part of the natural world.
Everything existed together because it had to. And the space between any entity and another was a space that connected. This is what Samoans and Tongans call the vā, the space between, not a meaningless or empty space, but one of potential and one of purpose; it is a space to be nurtured, a space of relationship.
—
Each one of us in this room, for example, is connected, perhaps not physically or even ancestrally. But we are here, each contributing to the energy of this space. We are here, each bound by what we are hearing and seeing and learning and tasting. We are here, each bound by the potential to form relationships with people, with place, with knowledge, and with story. And we are here, each connected by our dedication to aʻo, which is the reciprocal process of teaching and learning that must inspire our students.
Therefore, in an attempt to feed that potential, or that space between each one of us in this room—between the content we will explore, the lessons that we will teach each other, and the stories that we will share—I will offer some thoughts as a point of connection, something that we can think about, and chew on, as we get a taste of what Hawaiian culture-based education can mean for us today.
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Of course, any attempt to do so, however, must begin with culture. Culture, as Samoan novelist and poet, Albert Wendt (1976), argues, is not fixed. It is not stagnant. Culture cannot be pinned down or captured. It cannot be frozen behind a glass in a museum. Culture, he proposes, is as fluid and flexible as the ocean we come from, the ocean that we call home. It must move and shift to survive. And our survival depends on our ability to move and shift with it. In fact, “The only valid culture worth having,” he argues, “is the one being lived out now,” the one moving with the current rise and fall of the tides (p. 76).
Now, his words have certainly caused a stir, particularly among those romantics of culture, or those caught up in notions of tradition and authenticity. Whatever the reaction, however, it is hard to ignore the fact that his words have power. His words make us creators of culture. His words make us those with the agency to make choices about how we will live our lives each and every day, dedicated to our people, to our customs, and to our indigenous knowledge. His words give us the mana to choose, every second, to be indigenous and to act upon that indigeneity.
We build on the past—on our values, on our core beliefs, and on our practices—and create culture so that we can extend the lives of our people into the future, ensuring that our children and grandchildren can survive as Hawaiians in a contemporary world. We build on the past and create culture to ensure that they will always have that same opportunity, or that same space to shape culture for themselves, a culture based firmly in their ancestral heritage but one that meets the needs of today. We build on the past and create culture, becoming the grandmothers who will stand alongside our descendants by the thousands, even if or when they don’t know we’re there.
Why? So that we can help them to satisfy that craving for ancestral belonging when it comes.
And it will come because our children and our students live in a world that continues to try to distance them from who they are; that continues to try to distance them from ʻāina, or that which feeds; and that continues to try to distance them from a true sense of nourishment and satisfaction, rooted and cultivated in place.
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When I took my ʻulu home, after having visited with Tūtū, I could not wait to cook it, to be fed by it. So I used the element of heat, as people around the world have done for centuries, making it more digestible for my body, making it soft enough for my soul. In the process, I employed adaptations of ancient technologies, as cooking in itself is an ancient process. Where families would have once gather around the hearth, or around a pit of heat and fire, however, I used modern tools to prepare my ʻulu all the while remembering where it came from and who it came from: both the friend who gifted it to me and the craving that drove me to my grandmother.
And as the smell of breadfruit slowly filled my tiny house, my mind drifted to ʻulu-scented memories of people and places that I remembered fondly: the breadfruit my father used to bake and salivate over; the breadfruit I was given as a gift by one of my most influential teachers after I graduated; the breadfruit I ate in the Marquesas that reminded me of home and made me savor connections across our sea of islands; and the breadfruit I was overjoyed to find cradled between my friend’s hands, before she smiled and quietly placed it in my own.
Then I remembered that for our ancestors food was ceremony and consumption was ritual.
And I wondered: Do we still nourish ourselves in this way?
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Before her recent passing, a close friend and mentor of mine shared a poem with me. It came from a day where she was supposed to go to church and didn’t. It was Easter Sunday. As she sat pondering her decision, her mind wandered to food rituals that are bound to religious practice. We eat wheat bread and drink grape wine, symbolic of the body and the blood of Christ. But, why, she wondered, must our Savior always be imported, shipped in or flown in from faraway lands? Why must God always be colonizer, tourist, or even cargo?
I chewed on her poetic musings for a while and realized that we had our own ways of eating that connected us to our divine entities, that connected us to place and people, that connected us to all of creation and to each other.
Therefore, as I ate my ʻulu, I remembered my grandmother and I remembered stories of sacrifice: an old moʻolelo tells us of the god, Kū, and his life as a planter on this island. Although quite skilled in cultivating and growing food, his people were once stricken by a famine that left them starving and hopeless. Seeing their pain and anguish, he told his wife that there was a way he could help them, but that he would need to leave them in order to do so. Looking at her children, slumped over in weakness, she consented and offered Kū her last goodbye.
With his family close, Kū stood as his name instructed: kū, erect; kū, strong; kū, firmly planted in the ground. And as they watched in sorrow, he began to sink into the earth, until he was completely buried in it, surrounded by ʻāina.
With heavy tears, the people cried over this patch of earth, and in the early morning, they noticed a shifting, a movement, a stir in the ground. What began as a tiny sprout of green grew into a wondrous tree, branching out towards the sky, with thick, dark leaves, and with swollen, plump breadfruit.
Looking upon this figure, Kū’s wife understood that her husband had become this tree: the trunk his body, the branches his limbs, the leaves his hands, and the fruit his head, each ʻulu containing the memory of his life, his sacrifice, and his love for his people.
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When I ate the ʻulu, I remembered this. I remembered that our ancestors considered food their relatives, their greatest teachers, their communion with gods. Thus, true nourishment was not just about satisfying physical hunger. All human beings on the planet are linked by the biological need to eat. But, for us, for kānaka maoli, true nourishment came from realizing the relationship between food and body, between ancestor and descendant, between place and people.
Thus, it’s no wonder that one of the first strikes of colonialism, one of the first acts of war against an indigenous people, is to cut them off from their food, and from their resources, so that they are not only stripped of the ability to feed themselves physically, but are simultaneously stripped of the ability to nourish themselves spiritually, emotionally, and culturally. They are stripped of connection, and in doing so, from an entire way of being and seeing the world.
And we need not look far into the past to see examples of this. Think of pipelines, think of telescopes, think of oil drilling, think of dredging, think of bombing, think of the pillaging of land and the erasure of history for profit. Examples of forced disconnection are everywhere. And examples of lived disconnection are even more abundant. So abundant, that we sometimes can’t see them.
Therefore as I ate, and as I considered these seemingly disconnected ideas together, filling the vā, or the space between memory and food, between story and ancestry, between ritual and consumption, I wondered: Is it possible to eat this way again?
Is it possible to feed ourselves with foods that come from the lands of our birth, from the lands of our ancestors; foods that link us to who we were, who we are, who we can be; foods that take us back to our grandmothers?
Now, with such a lengthy introduction, you may be asking yourself what this has to do with Hawaiian culture-based education. And it is precisely this:
Education, in the traditional sense, fills.
Hawaiian culture-based education, on the other hand, must nourish.
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As a teacher, I often wonder what I’m feeding my students. When I walk into the classroom am I going to supply them with things I’ve picked up off of a shelf, like the shiny and perfectly packaged foods labeled “healthy” or “nutrient-packed” when in reality they are overly processed, and often times, devoid of any true substance? Or am I going to go an even easier route and feed them a pre-designed, pre-determined, and pre-made meal, one that can be consumed anywhere in the world and still taste the same? Or, am I going to give them the knowledge, the resources, and the technologies—both old and new—that they can use to one day sustain themselves?
Now, I believe that the metaphor of food actually translates quite well into the classroom. Why? Because we live in an era of McDonalidization. (Yes, that’s a thing). And although we may not want to admit it, even our education systems are in danger of being “McDonaldized.”
Think about it. McDonalds runs on certain core values: predictability, reliability, and convenience. Wherever you are in the world, you can walk into one of these restaurants and know that they will have certain key items on the menu, thus making them predictable. These items will not only taste the same, but will also feed your increasingly homogenized palette (a product of globalization, no doubt), thus making them reliable. And, these items will be convenient, supposedly saving you time while also conveniently distancing you from ʻāina, from connection, and from a sense of identity and urgency to maintain your food ways and life ways.
As we’ve been feasting on “fast” foods to accommodate our “fast” lives, societies have adopted these same principles to the point where they can be seen everywhere. In fact, the very ubiquity of these principles makes them almost invisible to us today. If you consider it, you can see that we are constantly exposed to “quick fixes” and “time savers”, anything to help us be more efficient. Even our banks and our pharmacies have adapted so that we don’t even have to get out of our cars to get what we need; money and medication come straight to us. But the more our lives are introduced to “efficiency” through machines and advanced technologies, the more we are living the impacts of disconnect, sometimes even without being aware of it.
In fact, it’s even in the way we educate our children. Yes, I would argue that standardization is the McDonaldization of education. It is the assumption that you can serve students the same curriculum, presenting it on the same trays, with the exact same components, regardless of location, or perhaps more precisely, while ignoring location altogether. It is the assumption that you can walk into any school in the country and students of the same age will be receiving the same content, passing the same tests, and achieving at the same levels as students at another school. It is the assumption that these classrooms will produce students with similar knowledge, making it easier to assess them, easier to predict their outcomes, and easier to rely on so-called proven methods that although suited for some, are never suited for all.
Hawaiian culture-based education is the antidote to this. It is the foundation of relationship and connection that our students need. Yet, in today’s world we are presented with a challenge: with all of the advancements that make our lives “faster” and apparently more efficient, our children and our students seem to have less and less space and time to slow down and savor the richness of their heritage.
I increasingly hear phrases in my own classroom like, “I’m Hawaiian but I didn’t grow up that way.” Or, “I never knew my history.” Or “I don’t really know what my Hawaiian name means.” While I am also honored to know many young kānaka maoli who are solid and steadfast in who they are, my classrooms seem to be filled more with examples of the former: those starving for a sense of identity, not quite knowing where and how to feed that ancestral craving for connection.
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This has made me realize that while our students are advantaged with every technology imaginable some of them are simultaneously disadvantaged because they’ve lost the ability—and perhaps even worse, the opportunity—to connect without these technologies. Thus, I believe that a 21st century skill to cultivate and grow is one of relationship, of teaching students how to see themselves as not only part of the ʻāina, but also part of an ongoing genealogy of people, places, and events that they can add to, or perhaps more precisely, that they must add to.
The students of today will be far more literate in modern technologies than we ever will be. Since I started teaching in 2007, I’ve noticed a drastic change in my classrooms. The students of today are those who have never known a life without swiping left, without Googling, without the wonders of the Internet. They are used to having the world at their fingertips—literally. They can go anywhere and be anything virtually in a matter of seconds. Thanks to technology, the world is becoming smaller and smaller as humans are more and more connected, and sometimes to my own dismay, more and more the same.
The students of today seek instant gratification, instant approval, instant confirmation of worthiness and importance in a like on Facebook, a heart on Instagram, or a comment, solidifying their existence. The students of today, in fact, are so connected to everything and everyone, that they are at the same time disconnected. Connected to the world, disconnected from ʻāina.
So, my question is: What are the 21st century skills that you are going to cultivate and how will these skills empower our youth to live understanding themselves as indigenous, as part of the land, as feeding from their ancestors, as standing, always, with ten thousand at their side? What opportunities will you afford them in and out of the classroom? And together, how can we mentor them and not necessarily teach culture, but provide spaces for living culture?
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I believe the potential of Hawaiian culture-based education is as wide and vast as our ocean. To be culture-based is not to bring tokens of culture, small tidbits of knowledge, or relics of a deserted past into the classroom. It is not to centralize imported, shipped in, or flown in concepts and to “Hawaiianize” the foreign. Rather, it is to tap into the ways of knowing and being that our kūpuna lived by and to teach and learn in that fashion: respecting the pilina, or the bond, between all things.
Postcolonial scholar, Ngugi Wa Thiongo (1986), once wrote about what he calls the cultural bomb: “The effect of a cultural bomb,” he said, “is to annihilate a people’s belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves” (p. 3). I see the lingering impacts of this in our communities, in our families, in the things we say to ourselves about ourselves, in the things that our students say to themselves about themselves and their potential.
Culture runs the risk of becoming a required subject, a portioned-out time of the day, spoon-fed to them. Culture, however, must frame their day. It must be so ubiquitous that they are almost unaware of it. Culture must simply be the way things are. It must be part of every day: starting from how they meet and greet one another, to how they are welcomed into a shared space of learning, to how they become co-carriers of responsibility, with the ability to respond to the challenges of today. They must be immersed in aloha while also being primed to be cultivators of it, to ready the soil for an empowered future. Our children and our students must never be complacent, must never forget the past, must never be without connection. Our classrooms can provide the space to taste the realities of what it means to be a contemporary Hawaiian today and what it takes to carry a nation forward.
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I think about my Tūtū often these days and wonder how she would have taught me, how she would have nourished me and showed me the wonders of the world. Although we never had that chance, I imagine that it would have started with ʻāina and that would have included great food: nourishing, healthy, from the soil and sea. I imagine it would have involved story-telling and ancestral memories, working and sweating, feeling the weight of our pasts: the beauty and the pain.
I imagine that it would have included sitting with her without a screen or an app between us. Instead, I imagine that we would have filled that space, that vā, with story, creating memory and creating culture.
Now, I’m not saying that technology is a hindrance to deep learning, or to a type of learning that goes beyond the feeding of facts and the regurgitation of information. What I am saying is that technology must be a tool for tapping into the breadth and depth of our ancestral knowledge. In short, it must be a tool used to cook the ʻulu as it cannot, and should never be, the “meat” or the “substance” to be consumed. It must be used to make knowledge more digestible or softer for our contemporary palettes, but must never become the sole source of nourishment itself. Culture must be what feeds. ʻĀina must be what feeds. History and ancestry must be what feeds. And modern technologies can be the spoon for that, but not the meal. It must lead us to new tastes, new smells, new experiences of connection.
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A couple of days ago, I took a walk with my father and my older sister. As we hiked forest trails in mud-soaked boots, embraced by mist and the scent of dancing ʻolapa, my dad recounted his time eating hāpuʻu shoots. He had recently taught my sister how to prepare them, and as he spoke, he reminisced. Telling me about these fern shoots brought back memories of place and people, so many in fact, that he could almost trace a moʻokūʻauhau, or genealogy, through food.
When I thought about hāpuʻu, I was reminded that these shoots were once a famine food, something that our people would only eat when they had nothing else. It was a survival food. But, when my father spoke about them, it was with fondness. And when my sister recounted the process of learning how to prepare them the week before, it was with pride. They had gathered the shoots together in the forest above our home. My father had instructed her on how to choose the right ones. They then boiled them so that they could peel them and soak them, all in preparation for the final cooking.
And when they ate them, days later, it was a solidification of their relationship, a confirmation of ancestral knowledge, and a validation of connection to ʻāina. They had been fed and nourished by the experience. And they were still salivating over it.
As I listened to their memories unfold, I realized that our children need these types of experiences. Why? Because they are starving for them and are in danger of being malnourished, perhaps not physically, but spiritually and culturally. Thus, they need the so-called famine foods so that their taste buds can readjust, and rejoice, and begin to hunger for more. They need “foods” for survival because our survival as a nation depends on it.
Our students need a true taste of what it means to be aloha ʻāina.
Aloha ʻāina is far more than loving the land. As many contemporary Hawaiian scholars agree, it is about a constant and loyal dedication to the life of our nation. It is a never-ending fight for the betterment of our people. This commitment, I believe, comes through knowing the land, the ocean, and all of our sources of sustenance intimately: knowing them as ancestors, treating them as ancestors, seeing them as the grandmothers who march at our sides by the thousands.
The future of our people will reside in the ability of our youth to see beyond the screen in front of them—beyond the glow of their social media outlets, their instant likes, and their constant updates—so that they can slow down and savor the depth and richness of everything around them, so that they can put hands to ʻāina and feel its pulse.
Our children and students need the skill and the strength to ʻauamo kuleana, or to carry their responsibilities, to serve and feed their people, to strengthen ancestral connections, and to use them as a base for protecting and safeguarding all of those sources that feed. To ʻauamo is to put a pole across your back—one used to carry large bundles of food, water, or supplies—and to shoulder the burden for the next generation. Thus, our students must be awakened and reawakened, constantly, to the beauty, power, and pain of being indigenous.
What is responsibility but the ability to respond? And in today’s world, where our children can access anything and everything at the push of a button, they will need guidance in becoming stewards of what’s beneath their feet. They will need guidance in learning how and when to respond to today’s challenges. And that can only come through connection, through pockets, and moments, and silences for feeling and tasting kuleana.
Without this, we will be lost.
Thus, the 21st century skill that I hope to cultivate in my own classrooms is one of connection. Everything that I teach is taught in relation to my students. They are always pushed to find that personal relevance, or that string of thought and action that can make anything, even the seemingly foreign, somehow personal, or something with the potential to impact them and they way they see the world. Any and all modern technologies used are to support this mission, never to distract from it.
Why?
Because our youth have enough distractions.
What they need now is hope. We need to grow hope from the soil, we need to harvest it from the sea, and pull it from the clouds. We need to be washed in it. But we will not see it, or grasp it, or be nourished by such hope until we are able to cultivate it, starting in our classrooms. Hope, in itself, is a radical political act, one that defies any and all attempts to silence us, to marginalize us, or to even bomb us out of existence. It is a political act in a world that expects us to lose hope, to dream smaller, and to give up and assimilate.
Thus, we must build hope and a sense of pride and this must come from a willingness and a dedication to stand for something bigger than oneself. I firmly believe that our students will only know what that “something bigger” is when they can look up from the screen momentarily, or turn off the music in their headphones, or distance themselves from the keyboard, and close their eyes, putting ear to the breeze, putting hand to the earth, putting heart to the knowledge of who they were, who they are, and who they can certainly become.
Give your students this chance through a culture-based education that nourishes, that feeds them experience and moments for change, moments for connection, moments for communion with their grandmothers. Give them the chance to fill the spaces between with meaning and purpose.
Feed them. Nourish them. And let them sigh, audibly, “mmmm”.
Mahalo e Tūtū.
References:
Angelou, M. Our Grandmothers. http://www.ctadams.com/mayaangelou25.html
Hauʻofa, E. (1998). The ocean in us. The Contemporary Pacific, 10(2), 391-410.
Teaiwa, T. (2016). Personal Communication with author.
Thiong’o, N. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Portsmouth, Heinemann.
Wendt, A. (1976). Towards a new Oceania. Seaweeds and Constructions, 7, 71-85.
“Whether we’re marching down Queen Street or planting kūmara, our movements matter. So, plant your kūmara.”
On the eve of the controversial signing of the TPPA in Auckland, New Zealand—a highly debated move that will be met with protest around the country—I sit on my narrow patio, admiring our small, city garden, and think about the impacts of this agreement. I will be the first to admit that there are aspects of the TPPA that baffle me, that test me, and that make me feel, for lack of a better word, quite dumb. And I’m not alone. I’ve been in many conversations over the last few months where people have quietly confessed that they do not know enough, or that they do not understand enough, or that the TPPA simply confuses them. They know they are against it; they just don’t know why.
So, I sit here, looking at my small garden—a large feat in a concrete, city dwelling—and wonder, is it really as complicated as it seems? Last weekend, wanting to both learn more and to support TPPA opponents, I attended a hīkoi, a march, to deliver a petition to New Zealand’s Governor General, urging him to not support this agreement. Before the gates of Government House, a woman grabbed the microphone and spoke passionately about the potential impacts of the TPPA. As signs and posters shouted phrases like, “Don’t sign away our sovereignty,” and “NZ is not for sale,” or “TPPA, Backroom Dirty Politics,” I realized that perhaps the reason for my own ignorance regarding the TPPA has something to do with the enormity of it. “Think about any aspect of your life,” she said, “health, education, children, food. The TPPA will affect it all.” Then she ended with what perhaps became the simplest and yet most profound phrase of the day—at least for me—“Our movements matter. Whether we’re marching down Queen Street or planting kūmara, our movements matter. So, plant your kūmara.”
Unfortunately, I don’t have room for kūmara (ʻuala, sweet potato) in my small garden, but I understand her point. Among the many aspects of our lives that the TPPA will impact, one is food, something that I am extremely passionate about, something that I feel is an avenue towards decolonization and sovereignty. To plant your own kūmara, the woman briefly explained, is to resist those large corporations that will and do seek to control what we put into our mouths. Therefore, resistance to the TPPA can be that simple: it’s about protecting our rights, our freedom, our sovereignty and, yes, even our right to choose and grow what will nourish us.
“There is a lot to loose [sic] in the TPP—control over land and resources, the tino rangatiratanga of Maori, affordable medicine, intellectual and cultural heritage, internet freedom, the ability to regulate the financial sector, tobacco laws…food and agriculture… it’s bad for farmers and local food security…”
As she further explains, other free trade agreements have had devastating impacts on local farmers and rural communities around the world when they were forced to compete with products from other countries. According to Brower, after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), for example, “Mexico went from a country producing virtually all of its own corn to one importing nearly half of its staple food… Mexican consumers are paying a higher price for their (now GMO) tortillas…” Can New Zealand and other countries suffer a similar fate? It’s certainly possible. And with that, the TPPA may also impact New Zealand’s laws regarding Genetically Engineered Foods: “GE food labeling is only one of many food safety regulations that New Zealand may be forced to eliminate under the TPP agreement,” says Brower. When those laws are done away with, what then will we be putting into our mouths, what genetically modified crop from another country will find itself on our plates?
All of this makes me think. Perhaps planting kūmara, or even the small amount of vegetables that I have in my garden, is a movement—an action—that does indeed matter! It’s a small and subtle resistance, a small stand. Therefore, while I hope to attend TPPA demonstrations, marches, and protests, I will also plant my metaphoric kūmara because each of these movements is done with reason and intention. They have purpose in reminding us what we stand for and what we stand against, because we must know both.
As the sun shines down on my small garden, I look at the plants that I’ve already been able to pick and eat from, and I think, “This is a start.” Planting my own food, my own kūmara, will not solve everything. It will not prevent the signing of the TPPA tomorrow. But, it is an action that has purpose, an action that matters. In fact, even in countries devastated by war, by injustice, and by torture and brutality, where people are fighting for their lives, planting matters. In the country of West Papua, for example, planting kūmara is important. Last year, reporters from Māori Television’s, Native Affairs, visited West Papua—a country that has suffered human rights abuses at the hands of Indonesia, a country that deserves freedom and justice—and they recorded the words of one West Papuan who promotes, yes, the planting of kūmara, of sweet potato, because it forms the foundation of life: “The education of children happens in the garden. Men [and women] teach everything about life, the rules of life, behaviour, morals, even our aspirations, they are all taught in the garden.”
Therefore, perhaps it is in the garden, hands deep in soil, planting our kūmara, where we will not only learn about why we must stand against agreements like the TPPA, but where we will also show and teach future generations the values that we stand for, those that the TPPA threatens.
So go ahead and plant your kūmara, or whatever it is that you can plant, whether seeds or roots because our movements—even the small ones in city dwellings—must grow.
The following piece was written to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (being celebrated in America today) and to raise awareness for West Papua. It was also written as a reflection on the work organized and performed by Oceania Interrupted, a collective of Māori and Pacific women raising awareness for issues affecting our Pacific region. Benny Wenda is an independence leader for West Papua, currently living in exile in the United Kingdom. This creative piece is an imagined dialogue between Martin Luther King, Benny Wenda, and myself.
Photo by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted
“Who will be the voice?” Benny asks. “Who will be the voice?”
I hear Martin’s words, singing: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.”
This matters. West Papua matters!
So, I take one step forward, my hands bound, my mouth covered in their flag, my body adorned in nothing but a black lavalava. My skin, mourning. But I find the breeze, kiss the rain, and bathe in spots of sun.
Marching, marching. Eyes ahead. There is voice in these actions. Voice in these movements. Our pace is that of sacrifice, of suffering, of struggle. It is slow. But it moves forward, one step at a time.
Photo by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted
Martin once told us that “Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”
Every step forward is another step towards justice.
Benny’s eyes water for his people: “Our people cry the last fifty years” but “Because we are ‘primitive’, nobody listens.”
I want to cry. I want to cry for them. But I will not dress the flag that binds my mouth in tears. I will only wear it with strength. Marching, marching. Eyes ahead.
I stand in a line of women, Oceanic women, interrupted. Interrupting spaces, thoughts, actions. Giving space for West Papua: space to learn, space to see, space to feel.
I can feel the woman ahead of me, the one behind, our breaths in synch. Marching.
Photo by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted
Martin once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.”
We stand for West Papua!
Fifteen years. Fifteen years is the amount of time a person in West Papua can be imprisoned for raising their flag. We wear it voluntarily.
At home, I can raise my Hawaiian flag everyday; I can wear it on my chest. I can speak of sovereignty, speak of indigenous rights. I am privileged.
So, I take another step forward. Marching, marching. Eyes ahead.
Every step forward, no matter how small, is another step towards justice.
Photo by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted.
Benny’s hope is like the wind pushing at my back: “I promise, one day West Papua Free! One day I will invite you to meet my tribe, when West Papua is free!”
I think of what his eyes have witnessed: the killings, the rapes, the torture, the imprisonment of his people and I am amazed at his resilience.
He limps forward, his leg injured in the bombing of his village. Every step, painful. Every step, suffering. Every step a sacrifice.
Martin’s words remind us in windy whispers, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
Every step forward, even if crawling, is another step towards justice.
Marching, marching. Eyes ahead. There is voice in these actions. Voice in these movements.
Benny asks again, “Who will be the voice?”
I will. We will.
We cannot be silent. Silence and absence can be mistaken as consent. I do not consent to what is happening in West Papua. Therefore, I will not be silent. I will not be absent.
I will march. We will march, giving voice to those who cannot speak, to those who cannot fight.
Photo by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted.
Benny reminds us that we are not separate: “On the outside, we seem a different colour, but inside of your blood, what colour is that? It’s red.”
Therefore, to fight for our Pacific family is to fight for ourselves.
We all bleed red.
“Who will be the voice?” he asks again, then answers his own question, saying, “You are the voice of the tribal peoples around the world.”
Yes we are, Benny. Yes, we are. Marching, marching. Eyes ahead.
Every step, no matter how small, no matter how difficult, no matter how scary, is another step towards justice.
Walk with me.
Photo by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted.
All photos are by Tanu Gago and Oceania Interrupted and were originally posted here. The photos come from a series of acts performed in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand. The first was at the Indonesian Embassy and the second was at the Positively Pasifika Festival held at Waitangi Park. The performances, using visual and performative art, were aimed at raising awareness for West Papua. They were entitled “Capital Interruption: Free West Papua.”
For more information on Oceania Interrupted, visit their page here.
He Wahī Paʻakai: A Package of Salt 