Haunani-Kay Trask is descended from the Pi'ilani line of Maui and the Kahakumakaliua line of Kaua'i. She is a powerful writer and poet. Her books include, Light in the crevice Never Seen (Calyx Books, 1994) and From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignity in Hawai'i (Common Courage Press, 1993). Trask is an active member of the Ka Lahui Hawai'i, a native Hawaiian initiative for self-government. She is also currently a professor and the Director of the Centre for Hawiian Studies at the University of Hawai'i.
Trask came to Vancouver to read at the Writers Festival in November 1996.
ManChui Leung: Very few people, especially in Canada, know about the Hawaiian soverienty movement. Could you tell me about the history of Hawai'i and the context that the movement finds itself now.?
Haunani-Kay Trask: Well all Polynesians begin anything formally or informally with their genealogy and that means your line of descent. So I am descended from the Pi'ilani line of Maui and the Kahakumakaliua line of Kaua'i and first through my mother, the second through my father. Those two lines carry with them obligations which is to carry forward the protection of the people and the land, those are traditional obligations. And in terms of the country, which is the land base, in our genealogy the land is one of the people Papahanaumoku (Earth Mother) and she made the Sky Father, Wakea, and they produced the islands and from the islands came the taro plant and from the taro plant came the people.- first the chiefs then the people. So the lessons of the genealogy are that we come from the land. I like to say to white people, well you say you come from monkeys and that's your problem, but we don't. We come from the land. We know where it is. We know who we are. We know what our obligations consist of. Because we come from the land we have to take care of the land, and because the taro plant is the first thing that came from the land and not the people we must take care of the taro, the taro is like corn or squash for the Native peoples on the North American continent, its the same obligation. We came from, what they call Corn Mother, we came Earth Mother, and the taro means we have to take care of the land by producing food not hotels or airports or military bases.
Then from the taro come the chiefs and since I come from a chiefly line the obligation are that we are to remind the people of the gods and the ceremonies and the obligations to be a spiritually correct person in your life and a set of obligations to take care of the people so that the leadership that is required of people like myself is to take care of the people, not to take care of business, not to take care of the political system, but to take care of the nation. And the question today in the sovereignty movement is, "what does that mean?" How do we take care of the nation? Do we represent the economic interests? Do we represent the educational interests, which is in my case because I'm an educator. How do we frame an approach that will accomplish all of things genealogical we are require to accomplish and also accomplish that need to be accomplished because we live in a capitalist, imperialist society. That's a big problem for us.
Then there is the history of Hawai'i which a history of a small country swallowed up by a bigger imperialist country and that means we have to address the presence the twin economic bases [US and Japan] on the threshold of the 21st century. We have to address militarism in Oahu has five major tourist destinations, seven major military bases and about 850,000 people. The island is 600 square miles, its so small, it so without resource, we're running out of water, we're running out of space, it's unbelievably expensive, crowding in some areas is like Hong Kong, so are people because they are proletariatized have been driven to the city so more Hawaiians live in the cities than on the land which is where they belong, and out from Ou'wahu now are mediating more and more efforts to commercialize and to make into tourist enclaves, the big island of Hawai'i and the island of Maui.
When the US downsized its military, we only lost one base. So we didn't really get back much land, actually we got back practically nothing. Pearl Harbour is kind of a nuclearized mausoleum. All the tourist go there to see where all the ships were bombed by the Japanese in the Second World War, and at the same time we have the largest portage of nuclear ships in the world. So that the Pacific is a hot spot and the ships are deployed from Hawai'i like the troops are. Any time there is a war in Asia, the US departs from Hawai'i, the seventh fleet of the United States which is their largest fleet, is ported in Honolulu at Pearl Harbour and they control the world to the coast of Africa. It's very difficult given that context to mount an opposition to militarism, its very difficult to sustain any kind of resistance because the ideology is so overwhelmingly pro-American, pro-military, and pro-tourist.
We have over 7 million tourists a year now and we have a million and a quarter residents of which only 20 percent are Native Hawaiian. So that means there are 30 tourists for every Native. People who don't have a sense of what that means in terms of your every day life really are spared one of the worst experiences because we are walking artifacts. As if tourist stores got up and walked around, that's what we are. Waikiki is the hotbed of cultural prostitution and there, the people are subjected and subjugated by stupid tourists who want you to dance and sing, so there is a kind of prostitution of your culture if you actually participate in it as a waiter, as dancer. Most Hawaiians in the tourist industry are either wait help, they are waiting on tables or they're dancers, the tourists come to see our culture. No one comes to Hawai'i to see American folk dance, they came here to see us, which means we have to perform and since jobs are at a premium, anyone who can dance winds up dancing for the tourists. The wages are very low, the jobs have very few perks in terms of medical care and leave of absence. So here's our situation economically and in the midst of all that we still have a sovereignty movement that's getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Man Chui: Can you tell me about Ka Lahui nation?
Haunani: Our organization in great part was formed as a response to militarization and touristfication of Hawai'i. We were formed in 1987, although the protest movement regarding lands had been going on for ten years. It took that long, say between 1975 and 1985 for people to realize that defensive, what I call defensive anti-eviction struggles were the last straw and that it would be easier if we would be offensive and take the lead and say, 'no, these were all the lands that were taken from the Hawaiian government in 1893 transferred illegally to the US and we want them back.' And this is the way in which we want them returned. We want to be a recognized nation on the same order as several American Indian tribes, we want to have definable territorial boundries, we want to be able to tax people on the land base. We want a democratic government. So we formulated a democratic government, and at the first convention we elected my sister as the governor of the nation. She has power to appoint her executive staff of which I am a member, I'm her press secretary.
The base of the nation is drawn from a traditional land division called a Moku and the Moku are divided into sub-districts and each sub-districts elects their own through a caucus process their own representatives who then elect the head of each island who then go to the annual legislative sessions where they pass laws and convene to discuss strategies. And this legislative session which is coming up in November [1996] which will be held at the Centre for Hawaiian Studies of which I am a director on the University of Hawai'i Campus will be their twentieth legislative session. I feel very good about that, we've had more legislative sessions than the legislature of the state of Hawai'i.
We believe in a more democratic process than they do. We are totally poor, we don't have dues or anything so there are no taxes levied on the people because we don't feel they are able to pay so that means everything is done by volunteer. But nevertheless we are the lead sovereignty organization. A poll was done by one of the local newspapers, a missionary owned paper, to find out who the Hawaiian people think are their leaders, and both my sister and I ranked higher than anyone, except a young man who does voyaging. He's revived the art of voyaging - he doesn't do politics. And when he was interviewed about his stature in the Hawaiian community, his first answer was, I'm thought of as a leader but I'm really not, I'm a cultural leader, I'm not a political leaders. As long as I stay out of politics, I will be looked at faithfully, but soon as I get into politics I will be in the thick of what the political struggle is all about. We all felt very good about that, because the newspapers continue to harass, attack and defame us and despite all their efforts, the Hawaiian people know who their leaders are and know who are the trusted carriers of the spirit. My sister, though, is nearing the end of her last term she does not want to run again, she's been very very ill throughout her last term like most leaders of that level of struggle and she needs to rest and give the leadership to a younger person. I say that although neither she nor I are even fifty years old, but to us twenty five years of struggle is enough to make you feel like you're a hundred and five.
We belong internationally to many organizations, one of which is the Unrepresented Nations of Peoples Organization funded by the Dalai Lama, my sister is the second vice president. We belong to the indigenous women's network, which is now hemispheric throughout the Americas, and my sister was a delegate to the Beijing conference. We belong to South Pacific organizations so our international linkages are very strong. We've done a lot of work with the Native peoples in america because it's easier in one sense because we're controlled by the United States. We've done less work in Central and Latin America, and that's mainly the problem of language, not intent. We've done a lot of work with the Maori, in New Zealand, Aretetoa. There very much like us in many ways but they're much better off because their country is not the world's leading imperialist power. And they have a much larger land base and they and the white people are the two major forces, they don't have the same immigrant problem that we do.
Man Chui Leung:You and your sister are very prominent in the movement, how has your involvement influenced other women and feminist groups, lesbians, younger women and students, etc.
Haunani: I hope enormously, but I really don't know how much influence there is relative to other kinds influence. I know that the leadership is unquestioned, because I know it was questioned for a while. And some of the male leaders who oppose us from other sovereignty organizations have tried to disparage us because we're women. It's very common, it happens in every political system and they failed miserably because they're not intelligent enough to argue on a acceptable political level. Some of the examples of that are very constructed, one would be, one of the groups that supports succession, independence from the United States which we do not, we support a nation within a nation.
All Hawaiians in their hearts would like to be separate from the United States but there are some realities that need to be addressed like the militarization of Hawai'i. But in any case, one of these leaders had said, that he didn't understand why my sister and I were such angry people and our answer to him was that we don't participate in petty criminal behavior like you do, he goes around threatening people with weapons. It's that kind of macho behavior thinking that by being macho he's providing a model of leadership that Hawaiians should be like this. When in fact we cannot afford that - our prisons are already filled with Hawaiian youth and Hawaiian men in particular. Our men already suffer the highest suicide rate for young people in between the ages of 18 - 24. We already have a tremendous drug problem so we don't need to add to those images - this image of a strong armed person. That attitude of his lasted about a year, a year and a half, and then he got in trouble with the federal government and the state government - threatening people with guns . Then he apologized one day, made a big apology to the press to my sister and I. So my sister responded by saying, it's not to the Trask sisters that the apologies should be made, it's to the Hawaiian people for posing as a leader when what you really are is a petty thief - that's why you should make the apology. And of course the reason he made the apology was that he came up for a request for probation and he wanted to demonstrate a change of heart to the administration.
There's tremendous resentment toward my sister and I but it's at a very low level. I think what's happened it that, first of all there's a fear of attacking my sister and I which is good because it's based in fact which is that we're incredibly articulate. And both of us have studied all kinds of political movements and political theory, in fact that's what my PhD is in. So if you come up against us, you better be ready for a good long public fight and be ready to defend yourself. So therefore, the attacks have almost always been personal and not political because people, whether their legislators, or democratic party politicians or other sovereignty groups, cannot address our argument so they attack us as women. I'm know as a very angry, unhappy vicious person and my students like to say to people, do you know her? Have you met her? Do you know anything about her? It's character assassination, the same thing that goes on in regular dominant culture society. Neither my sister and I are married and neither of us have children so of course your sexual life is open for attack and assault and vilification. But really after 10 - 15 years we've been out there, it's very hard for people to, when pushed, come up with an answer. There's no question that the Hawaiian people consider us leaders.
Hawaiian men are grudgingly are coming to understand that. The larger system hates us and attacks us, especially the press. The press attacks me all the time. A month ago we were assaulted in a small newspaper in Hawai'i called the Honolulu Weekly, which comes out once a week. They had a huge front page picture of me at a demonstration supporting the university attack in tuition increases. All the pictures were outrageous, they were terrible, it was written by a white man for a white owned newspaper. All the newspapers in Hawai'i that are major are white owned, they did the same thing to me as they did to the Queen. The problem is that they won't give me space to answer, the space that they gave me was 900 words but the attack was 3000 words. And that's been going on for years, I'll been so vilified by the press. So whether or not you survive that as a women depends on what your obligation is. If you think your obligation is personal you're not going to survive it. If you think that people are going to be unfair, you're not going to survive. You have to begin with the understanding that everything is unfair, that people are racist especially white people. That the system is vicious. If you were waging a war of national liberation you would never expect the opposition not to kill you, so this is the same thing except it works on another plane.
They all have their AK47s directed at you, its just that it happens to be newspaper, or it happens to be the university, in my case. The university has tried to fire me three times. I hope they've given up becuase it consumes enourmous amounts of time to struggle against being fired. If you want to be a leader you just have to accept that, it's very hard to accept that because its so unfair and when you want to reply, you don't have a chance to apply because you don't control the media. All the media in Hawai'i is rigged, even when people come to Hawaii from other cities, they can't believe, the Hawaiian press is still at the token stage of broadcasters who are people of colour, despite the fact that white people are only 20% of the population they control 100% of the media including the newspapers, the television stations and the radio stations. So the sovereignty movement really has done a great deal in terms of fronting women leaders and of course those women leaders have taken incredible media beatings because we are women.
The media is very viciously anti-female. You can be anyone. Men are attacked, for example for their private lives. The previous governor of Hawai'i had a wife, he had a lover, he had a former lover, nobody said anything about that. His wife actually left him and when he came back to be the governor, she came back to go through the whole ceremony with him. The current governor got a divorce from his wife, at least it was more upfront and public and he said we don't get along and so we haven't been living together so we're getting a divorce and I thought thank god a little admission. It's a nasty world for women leaders but for some reason I don't know whether we have tough skins, you can't are as much as any normal person because you won't function.
I like to look at the students and see how much they love me. In many ways, it's sad because Hawaiians love love, that's 99% of our life is based in aloha, now its such an overused word but so much of our culture is based on love. So it's very hard to not think about aloha before you do anything. I am one of the people in Hawai'i that is known as somebody who does not have any aloha, and of course, I don't for tourists, and for industrialists and for the military. There is this gloss from the tourist industry that we should give aloha to any person. And the attack on me in particular, and much less so of my sister, from opposing sovereignty groups is that I don't have any aloha. And my answer is that we need to get to the serious issues, what we don't have is land, never mind about aloha. We don't have land, resources, we don't have an educational system. We don't have language schools - that's what we don't have.
So the state now has moved to co-opt the sovereignty movement by creating a Sovereignty Advisory Committee which then became the Native Hawaiian Sovereignty Elections Council which held a demonstration election asking Hawaiians should Hawaiian delegates to form a government. Of course it was a Hawaiian governor on the centenary of the overthrow of the our government in 1993, who created this all government appointed council. They preceded inbetween 1993 and 1996 to get a million and a half dollars worth of glossy advertising to convince the Hawaiian people to vote. Now the record of Hawaiian voting in American type elections has been a boycott from beginning to end. In 1894 when Hawaiians were asked to vote on the Republic of Hawai'i constitution. There were 17,000 eligible voters and only 300 voted. Their position then as our position was recently was boycott. In 1959, in statehood, the majority of Hawaiians in Hawaiian communities, the communites that are almost entirely Hawaiian, boycotted the statehood vote. In 1996, the vote came in for the Constitutional Convention, should Hawaiians elect delegates and 62,000 people were eligible to vote and only 22,000 voted.
We held a press conference, we claimed victory, the newspapers of course did not cover the press but the television stations did. The Hawaiians are not stupid, when a people have no power at all, the last power they have is to say no and they did. So we took that as a sign of our leadership, that the Hawaiian people refused to participate. They did not want to legitimize the state process. Despite all the pain and suffering I felt victorious the day the vote was released. The sovereignty elections council released the vote and said that they won and never the gave the press the exact vote total. So there were more yes votes than no votes but there were more no participation votes than anything. To me this shows how we are leaders. To me that shows how we are leaders. I don't even let the press interview me anymore becuase they're so vicious and they're always white. So there's a conflict right away becuase they don't like white people. My thig is that I make my friends one by one, we chose our alliances one by one, are you a good white person, why should I trust you, given your history. They're vicious, the press is really vicious, that's true everywhere, they hate people of colour.
Man Chui Leung: In connection with the mobilization in 1993, which is the 100 years anniversary of the overthrow of the Hawaiian government, and now in 1998, five years later, it will be 100 years since the forced annexation into the United States. How has the movement built up in the five years? What do you have planned? And what are your suggestions for people to mobilize in solidarity?
Haunani: Well one of the things we know pretty clearly is how we're going to proceed in this constitutional convention. There are a lot of open areas in terms of questions, are we going to have funding? Are we going to be able to meet? Are the Native communities going to be in control? It's struggling with a strategy that is almost entirely dictated by the existing reality. Nevertheless we did pretty good on the plebiscite, the boycott. Probably what we'll do is make some sort of shape of resistance to the control of the convention and depending on how that turns out, our organization or course still exists, we're still in a position of leadership. Is to decide after that whether we will do an alternative convention, an alternative celebration.
In 1993, that celebration began with Ka Lahui. We were in the front line of the march and now that pictures been reproduced all over the world which is picture of us standing sort of at attention just before we walked into the gates of the palace. Not a person in that picture is a member of the group other than Ka Lahui. Our security is there, our banner is there, our leaders are there right in the front. Because the other groups were late as they always are. Part of leadership, it's so interesting, I want to write something about this, part of leadership is about being out there first. Never mind all this elected stuff, it's to speak the truth first, to organize based on the truth first, that's what leadership is. Whether you get the credit for it, is probably never going to happen, you're not going to get the credit for it. And if you want the credit for it then you need to revise why you're in the movement because it's your own achievement that is the comment.
So if in 10-15 years we have raised the consciousness of Hawaiians regarding the overthrow, regarding injustice, regarding land loss, regarding the loss of self government, that is its reward. If the Hawaiian people say to the two white missionary owned newspapers, those are our leaders. No matter what the newspapers says about elected officials that's your reward. I think the problem for a lot of people is the struggle is so hard and it takes so much out of you, and it changes your life. You know people lose their familes, they get divorced, they don't come home anymore, their kids don't get fed and we go down in all the attack and assault and depression. And what we need to do sometime is just to stand away and look back at what we've done and that's your reward. Because you're never going to get paid, you're never going to get sympathetic television or newspaper coverage, you're never going to get anything. The reward is when Hawaiians come up to me and say, "Thank you so much for explaining what happened to us." That's it, that's why I'm an educator, really. I'm lucky because I have a job and most Hawaiians who are in the movement don't have a job, and I'm tenured and even though they trying to fire me I think they've given up, and I have a beautiful building.
Now that I have space and the Maoris have taught me space is sovereignty, its impossible [to fire me and get rid of us]. Now they have to deal with us, especially on the campus of the University of Hawai'i, very carefully because we are not going to go away. All the time we were jammed into three offices in a little building and they thought they could fire me, they were dismissive and vicious. But the president that tried to fire me, lost his job. To me if you go to war with someone, you win or lose that's all, there isn't any peace that comes out of some kind of stalemate, that's not peace, that's a loss. He came after me, he tried to fire me, we came after him and he lost, he's gone. So the present president of the University of Hawai'i is very careful and he knows that he comes from outside and we don't, which is an incredible advantage. As long as you stand on your genealogy, as our elders tell us, that's fine. You just keep reminding people that you are Native. With that identification comes all these understandings, and one of them is that you are not going to fire us, you are not going to get rid of us, we are here to stay.
So I think the present president, like the current political system, is very careful about what they say about us and what they do. They almost always front Hawaiian collaborators to attacks us. They don't attack us directly anymore because they don't want to go the way of the previous president of the University of Hawai'i. So that's good, to me that's a victory, I'm there, I have a building, I have five acres of land, I have 120 majors with four faculty members and this guy's gone. That's the kind of victory you're not going to get love and money . You're just going to get political advancement, if you're lucky and that's what you're in there for.
Man Chui Leung: Do you have any suggestions on how people can show solidarity and campaign for Hawaiian sovereignty?
Haunani: Well it thinks like what we doing right now, interviews, public contributions so that people understand just on a pure information basis what's going on. We urge people to boycott Hawai'i as tourists, don't come because there is no way you can come in solidarity if you're staying at a hotel, if you're using tourist transportation. It's a very harsh position, not one that all of us support, but I support it, I actually started a boycott for it. I said it at [the University of] Victoria, I said it in California. I say it wherever I go - don't come. There's nothing wrong with people taking vacations but they shouldn't take them in the Third World. The Third World suffers from tourism, it doesn't matter that are people are employed because the wages are poor, the benefits are non-existent. So its a very concrete thing that people can do, they don't even have to organize, they just need to make another choice. And I would say don't go to any place in the Third World, unless you go with those people's blessings to organize with them, to contribute to them, don't come. The less occupancy in the hotels, the better. As soon as the American economy took a downturn, the hotels were only forty percent occupied. As soon as Hurricane Eva came and smashed all the hotels in the island of Kahaui, zero. The Sheraton didn't open for a year and a half - good, wonderful. I know that people are sympathetic in great part, because most people have a sense of other people's suffering even if they themselves don't endure it. And so, therefore, they do need concrete suggestions of how to help, and that's one of them.
Man Chui Leung:Let's say for example in January 1998, you rather have us mobilize and organize here or going to Hawai'i to mobilize with you?
Haunani: We ask people to send a delegate. We don't what we're going to do just yet, we may have another march, we don't know what we're going to do. The Maori send delegates, the American Indians send delegates. The delegates that come to whatever it is that we choose to mark the event are formal political alliances. In terms of what people can do, I would definitely say boycott because one of the things that was very effective in South Africa, and in other places, was the boycott, and it took years and years and years. We organized at the University of Hawai'i to get the university to withdraw its investments. And again the same president who tried to remove me, went up against his own board which said, no we're withdrawing those investments. Period. This is all we can and so we're going to do it. And the president spoke out against it, it was ridiculous. I mean his own board was telling him, listen, save yourself the public embarrassment. But he refused.
So I think I that's something people can do. Organizationally, certainly, when we get a clearer vision of what we're going to do, then people can send delegates and organize around that and do press, etc.. At the moment Canada commits 750,000 tourists in Hawai'i, and I think the Commonwealth, I am told, is a million and a quarter. So any anti-tourism activity is really wonderful. The Times Colonists over in Victoria did a huge colour article on me speaking, saying "Don't come," about two years ago. Of course they called Hawai'i and tour agencies to get a response, and tell said, "she's crazy and she doesn't speak for the people". But the whole article was essentially on that and it was wonderful and it was a great organizing experience because I was getting ready to speak the next day and I asked them, "Did you do a press release?", and they said, "Yes" and I said, "Well, let me see it." so we went in there, the students and I, and sat there for several hours typing the new press release, emphasizing the anti-tourist part of it. Because I said, you need a hook, for the news people. They're not just going to cover another visiting person. We sent it out and they showed up the next day. It was wonderful
Just managing the press is just an incredible job for left organizations. They, the organizations, have to have some sense of how venile and petty the press is in terms of their approach. 'What it is that the press likes?' That is what you have to go after because so many of us do a straight sort of line that we give to the press but they're not interested in that. What you need to do is get them in there and then reproduce what it is you're gonna say. Another thing I've learned about the press is when the system makes a press relaease they come immediatley to you for a response. Sometimes I respond but most times I say, 'No, we will call our own press conference tomorrow.' And the press gets very upset because they don't have a news story they just have one sided story, but all their stories are one sided. So that's what we did when the plebiscite vote was done, we said, you come back tomorrow, we're holding a press conference and they came. The editors refused to print the story but all the television stations covered it. It was great. Some day I want to teach a class, probably outside of the campus, on how to do press, how to write a press release, how to call the press, how not to be badgered and bullied by them because their so vicious persons, they're all not Hawaiian and the way they talk to me as if we're crazies. My thing is that we demand the same respect that you give to the government that' s the difference between us, we're not going to talk to you just because you're here, leave. They came to our building for a comment, I have to comment, I have to see the press release and then I'll write my own press release and my sister will do the press conference, I don't have a comment now
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