Talk:Legal status of Hawaii/Archive 11

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Laualoha:Above, you said: "kanaka maoli were the ultimate colonists, coming to the Hawaiian islands in wave after wave of immigration, each one usurping the people that had come there before."

This points to a fundamental misunderstanding of who Kanaka Maoli are. Kanaka Maoli, by definition, are indigenous (or aboriginal, according to some people. Whatevas...). That means that we are descended from the first people of this land. Was James Cambell Kanaka Maoli? No. Was Muriel Flanders, his descendent, Kanaka Maoli? Definitely. She can trace her geneaology back to the first Hawaiians. Was Pa'ao Kanaka Maoli? No. Are his descendants (including the entire Kamehameha line), Kanaka Maoli? Of course.

Did Tahitians colonize Hawai'i? Definitely. It's a fact. So did Marquesans, Samoans, Tongans and many others. Are those colonists in our genealogy? Yes, they are. Were they Kanaka Maoli? No. Is Kanaka Maoli culture influenced by the ideas and technology they brought? Yes, it is.

Does this make the "blood quantum" thing a little cloudy? Hell yeah. Does it mean that there's no difference between someone who's 75% blood quantum and someone who's 1/64%? No way. Look at the statistics. Does it make things real tricky in terms of trying to work out real solutions for the restoration of pono in politics, and restoration of Kanaka Maoli identity, health and well-being? You bet your Spam musubi, Jere.--Laualoha 00:20, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Jere:What is "indigenous"? When do you become "indigenous"? Is it something that happens when a settler first steps onto soil untouched previously by humans? Or does it happen after the first generation? Or the second?

And how do you know if you have any genealogy relating to the original Marquesan settlers? How do you know that the Tahitians didn't wipe them out of your family tree? Have you had genetic testing done with Marquesans to validate your theory of ancestry? Would it count if you had cousins that were Marquesan, but you weren't?

Frankly, the term "indigenous" is a vile one, used by white explorers to separate themselves from those they thought were "native". It has been turned about into a word of pride, curiously, but it still represents the inherent racism of believing that *you* are different in some critical way than *me*.

Kanaka maoli literally means "true humans". It only became a racial term when the white man arrived, and that colonialist legacy is a sad one to propagate. We are all related, we are all cousins, brothers, sisters, and relatives - and just because my most ancient direct ancestors were only in the islands since the 1800s, doesn't mean I am any less a person, or any less a Hawaiian than those who have ancestry to pre-1778 immigrants.

I urge you, reconsider your idea of family, and open your heart to the fact that on a long enough time scale, we are all a part of the same genealogy. Your family may have spent a few thousand years navigating the south pacific by the stars, while my family explored the north pacific, the americas, europe and asia, but such small bits of time don't make us any less family.

How would you feel if one set of your children moved to an uninhabited island in the north Pacific, and your other children moved to an uninhabited island in the Indian Ocean, and a thousand years later, they wouldn't recognize each other as family? Why would the children who lived in the Indian Ocean be any less welcome in the north Pacific, or vice versa?

We are all indigenous to the earth, Laualoha, and Hawaii is just as much a part of the earth as anywhere else. There is great value to much of the culture and arts developed during the 500 or so years of isolation of the Hawaiian islands, but there is no value in separating us by blood because of that isolation. If you can separate the two concerns, one spiritual and transcendent, and the other crude and biological, I think you could find more peace in your heart about accepting others. Mahalo for reading, and my greatest hope that it shows love and respect for the things we both hold dear. --JereKrischel 01:16, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Arjuna:Oy vey. JK is are entitled to his own idiosyncratic definition of "indigenous", but Wikipedia is about commonly accepted terms and definitions, not post-modern readings with POV political implications. Arjuna 04:15, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Laualoha:Yeah, thanks, but I'm hearing the pain, and I'm not setting out to hurt anybody, so I think I should address it. Sorry for the long and painful dialog (note: Jere, at some point we've both got to consider others who have to put up with all this talk...), but we gotta get through this...

Jere, you seem to be making the assumption that I am saying that indigenous people are better than everybody else. I'm not, ok? And I agree that there are certainly problems that have built up through abuse of the term in international politics. But Wikipedia is supposed to be friendly to lay readers who know nothing about the subject, and I think this is the term they will understand best. I have defined what I mean by it above. There may be other definitions out there, some of which are indeed quite colonial. But to act as though there is no such thing as native peoples, when done broadly enough, is in effect to commit genocide. Sounds harsh, but seriously, I deal with it every day, and it's very real.

This is not to say that other struggles are less important, or that there is less of a "human family". Look, dude, I've spent more time working (for free -- wait, no, more like, at rather high expense) with Micronesian kids than Hawaiian kids; some of those kids are messed up by radiation from nuclear bombs, and they are all ridiculously poor. I'm not saying they're "less" in any way than Kanaka Maoli, including in terms of suffering. They don't even have a homeland to go back to; it's been nuked. If I did not love them as much as any Hawaiian kids, I would not have spent years giving them 'ukulele lessons, letting them destroy my yard (no can help when there are 30 kids and it's the only 12'x8' patch of grass available), and fighting in the city council for months to build them a park (which they did) even though I DON'T believe that the State is legal!

My point is that you are confusing the importance of indigenous identity within the Kanaka Maoli movement with racism, of the type exhibited by settlers in America. Sorry, man, but I don't think they are alike at all, and I really think you need to question your need to have the concept of indigenous identity erased from the planet. That's kind of dangerous thinking under the circumstances (have you looked at the statistics? I'm an MPH and a la'au lapa'au trainee, so I can pretty definitively tell you they're not pretty), and I don't really think it is healthy for you either.

Being Kanaka Maoli is not all about "rights" and "entitlements". Granted, people like Mr. Burgess have helped to make the struggle to keep "entitlements" a major theme for the young people in the movement today. But that's politics, not the meaning of being Kanaka Maoli. Being Kanaka Maoli means that you have a very very strong, unbreakable tie to the land, forged by the dust of the bones of all your ancestors mixed into that soil. It does not mean that you should belittle anyone else's ties, which may be very strong too, due to sweat, history, and sheer love for the 'aina. But it does mean that when Wal-Mart digs up your ancestors bones and stuffs them in a trailer under their parking ramp, it hurts (even for those in denial).

You say your ancestors have been in Hawai'i since the 1800's. That's a pretty long time. Don't you feel a special, even sacred tie to the places your ancestors lived and loved and died here? Don't you kind of feel some responsibility to protect those places, because of them? Can't you understand that Kanaka Maoli have an even older connection, and so the responsibility weighs even heavier on us?

I don't know about you, but all my ancestors are pretty important to me. I would love to go to Canton or Ireland someday to see the places those of my kupuna who were not here are from. Though it may never happen economically, I think there is some part of those lands that is in my heart, even if I'm not indigenous to them. I even have a crazy haole great-great-great grandfather who was a leader of the rescue team that brought back the Donner Party. I'm pretty proud of that, even though I'm pretty sure if we could meet we'd have some, uh, issues, seeing as the man helped to steal Indian land too.

The point is, Jere, that it's very important to know who you are based honestly on where your roots came from, and to know how deep they go in a place, too. If you're trying to limit others' identity, I don't think that's a good sign in terms of your own.

AND...Nobody is kicking anybody out of Hawai'i except the Real Estate industry. Please think about that!--Laualoha 14:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)