A Country Within a Country; A Crown That Was Lost

[00:00:00] Never Again, Never Again, Never Again, Never Again, Never Again

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[00:00:14] globe, taking a deep look at past, present and impending genocides and mass atrocities.

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[00:00:33] you are.

[00:00:36] A country within a country, a crown that was lost.

[00:00:45] Good afternoon.

[00:00:46] Lisa and Philip are today our hosts for our podcast.

[00:00:52] The podcast is, as we know, made possible by a coalition against global genocide.

[00:00:58] I would like to introduce Lisa first of all.

[00:01:03] My name is Lisa Kerekolyo, a native Hawaiian from Hilo, Hawaii.

[00:01:09] She is currently the president of the Bilani Hawaiian Civic Club of Colorado.

[00:01:16] I'm sure she will correct me in a few seconds here, but let me tell you about Philip.

[00:01:22] So Philip is a Hawaiian musician and he's from Anahola, Kauni.

[00:01:31] Anahola Ka Wai.

[00:01:33] His name is Philip Joseph Kanaunaili Smeag.

[00:01:40] He is a native Hawaiian and he's the past president of the Hawaiian Civic Club of Colorado.

[00:01:48] Now before we proceed, kindly correct my pronunciations and then my descriptions of

[00:01:54] who you are, please.

[00:01:56] I find that was pretty good.

[00:01:59] Not too many people can pronounce Kale Koleo on the first day that they meet me, so good

[00:02:04] job.

[00:02:05] Thank you.

[00:02:06] Good afternoon to you too.

[00:02:08] We would say Aloha Auinula or good after the noon.

[00:02:14] It's good to be here.

[00:02:15] Very good.

[00:02:16] How about you, Philip?

[00:02:17] Yes, you did pretty good on those names.

[00:02:19] The island is Kaua'i.

[00:02:20] Kaua'i.

[00:02:21] Yeah, and it is the northernmost in the island chain there that we live on.

[00:02:27] And Kaunaili, you did pretty good on that too.

[00:02:30] By the way, the meaning of the name Kaunaili is to cause a ruckus.

[00:02:35] So if we get rowdy today, it's on me, not only some.

[00:02:38] Well, all right, very good.

[00:02:42] So many of us go to Hawaii on our vacations and oftentimes we don't really think much

[00:02:51] about what are Hawaii's, who are the Hawaiians.

[00:02:57] And I think we have this habit of merely working on people's lands or different lands

[00:03:06] without much thought.

[00:03:08] What I think people need to be aware of is that they walk on the sands on the shores

[00:03:16] and they walk on the lands of an island like Hawaii or Hawaiian Islands, forgetting that

[00:03:23] under those sands, under those soils are people's bones from way back when.

[00:03:32] And in many ways I think what we would like to try and do is to pay homage to

[00:03:37] that which we don't see, that which we don't think about so that tomorrow we can

[00:03:42] begin thinking about it so that we're becoming more and more aware what our Hawaiians are.

[00:03:47] They're part of Americans, but they also are different.

[00:03:51] So how would you to express the difference that the Hawaiians are in comparison to

[00:03:57] the rest of Americans?

[00:03:59] There are a couple fundamental differences with how Native Hawaiians, especially Native

[00:04:06] who have grown up before technology exploded the way it has, and we were able to record

[00:04:14] so many things because we didn't have a written language before we had visitors

[00:04:20] from the outside.

[00:04:22] And so we had to memorize and keep all of our knowledge within ourselves and

[00:04:27] pass it down through very complex mechanisms of oli, which is chant, hula, which is

[00:04:34] dance, and these stories and these chants were passed down for hundreds and

[00:04:39] hundreds of years, possibly even thousands of years, depending on how you date those things.

[00:04:47] And not a lot has survived to come to us today.

[00:04:52] But what we do know is that our environment is something that we are supposed to bond with

[00:05:01] and care for like we would a family member.

[00:05:05] We are literally related to our aina or our land.

[00:05:09] It is our solemn duty and responsibility to not only enjoy the fruits of it, but to give back

[00:05:17] to it and take care of it.

[00:05:21] I think an interesting thought about land, and I think we should come back and talk about

[00:05:27] that in a little bit.

[00:05:28] We should also talk in terms of music and about culture because all those things are

[00:05:34] that which makes people grow or our people exist in an equilibrium with nature, for

[00:05:41] example.

[00:05:42] Philip, do you have some thoughts?

[00:05:44] I think Lisa and I were chatting a little bit after our last discussion about how to

[00:05:49] approach this.

[00:05:50] As native people, we have a view of the world that we grew up with in Hawaii.

[00:05:58] And Hawaii is this very beautiful place, of course.

[00:06:01] And it was even more beautiful when it was just Hawaiians there because it was an

[00:06:07] idyllic setting separated from all of the rest of the world actually by thousands of

[00:06:13] miles.

[00:06:14] So very difficult to find.

[00:06:16] And as a result, the Hawaiian people grew this wonderful culture in this wonderful place.

[00:06:23] And there was very little sickness.

[00:06:26] The Hawaiians would live long ages.

[00:06:30] To say you're healthy in Hawaiian, we say you're eevee, your bones are strong.

[00:06:35] And we are strong bone people.

[00:06:37] And they would live well into their 80s and 90s and some of them 100 years old

[00:06:42] and just very healthy people.

[00:06:44] So it was this beautiful place and these beautiful people.

[00:06:48] And it wasn't a condition of, you know, are they quote unquote surviving?

[00:06:53] The Hawaiians were thriving, thriving so much that we could take time to create hula

[00:07:00] and oli and music and chant and art.

[00:07:05] The feather work that our ancestors did, if you get a chance to see King Kamehameha's cape.

[00:07:11] What they call?

[00:07:12] Ahu, ahu, ula.

[00:07:17] His cape is made out of hundreds of thousands of individual feathers.

[00:07:22] And the feather work to this day still is firm and intact.

[00:07:26] I mean it is amazing the amount of art and culture that this Hawaiian society

[00:07:33] that quote unquote as you know our visitors showed up and said well it must be a

[00:07:37] backward society was not a backward society.

[00:07:39] It was a very advanced society.

[00:07:42] You think of channels of water on the island that I'm from Kauai.

[00:07:46] There's a group of what they call menehune and menehune are these smaller people but very

[00:07:52] strong and they could build rock work canals out of stone completely squared off

[00:07:58] and fit in place as though they were laid with mortar.

[00:08:01] I mean it's amazing aquaculture, agriculture, fishing ponds, terrorist slopes directing the

[00:08:09] water they could direct the water from the tops of the streams in the mountains to the fish ponds

[00:08:14] to the lo'i and lo'i where as we grow our kalo which is what we make poi out of.

[00:08:20] This water flows through all of those things goes back into the river and out into the

[00:08:25] ocean where it's supposed to go.

[00:08:27] Clean.

[00:08:27] That is the advancement.

[00:08:28] Clean.

[00:08:29] And fertilizing and caring for fish and food all in one natural sweep being directed

[00:08:38] by the Hawaiian people.

[00:08:39] I mean their scientific knowledge was amazing, their voyaging knowledge was amazing.

[00:08:44] They could navigate from Hawaii to Tahiti to Tonga to Samoa back and forth over

[00:08:50] thousands of years.

[00:08:51] It's really an amazing society.

[00:08:52] Let's talk for a moment about how the Hawaiians came to Hawaii.

[00:08:57] What were the origins?

[00:08:59] Where did they come from and who were they when they came to Hawaii?

[00:09:04] So as far back as we are told, we originally came from the Marquesas and then we visited

[00:09:13] and stopped at various places and may have started a few other cultures who are our

[00:09:19] Polynesian brothers and sisters in Samoa and Tonga and Guam and perhaps Fiji,

[00:09:28] maybe Aotearoa.

[00:09:30] But we consider ourselves all related.

[00:09:32] No.

[00:09:34] So by the time that we made it all the way to Hawaii, there was still the knowledge

[00:09:41] of how to navigate the oceans to get there.

[00:09:46] When enough Hawaiians populated Hawaii before it was called Hawaii, they ended up staying

[00:09:54] on each to each's own island and began to sort of begin their culture.

[00:10:02] And mainly chiefly societies.

[00:10:06] But it was interesting that from the start, how they decided to use what land they had

[00:10:14] and the water that they had very smart ways of just trading in what they could grow,

[00:10:22] what they could pick, what they could catch from the ocean.

[00:10:26] Because in Hawaii, a land division is not a square of land like an acre.

[00:10:32] A land division is an ahupua'a and it runs from the top of the mountain where some water

[00:10:39] is all the way down to the beach where the people are fishing.

[00:10:43] So they would trade within their ahupua'a for everything that they needed.

[00:10:48] And so they had, they grew a very sustainable society.

[00:10:52] So the ahupua'a, was that a whole island or maybe a part of an island?

[00:10:59] A section of the island.

[00:10:59] A section of the island.

[00:11:00] Starting at the top of a mountain peak down to the shore.

[00:11:04] And in that triangular shape would be a river or stream.

[00:11:09] So everything to sustain life, both the fish at the sea and then the growing of

[00:11:14] fruits and vegetables near the streams and the channeling of water for the kalo,

[00:11:19] the taro to make our main starchy sustenance food and part of our history and all of it,

[00:11:27] is available then to those people who live in this ahupua'a.

[00:11:31] For example, Anahola is to this day still an ahupua'a.

[00:11:34] Oh okay.

[00:11:35] So you have different, maybe call them clans or maybe tribes coming from different parts of

[00:11:48] whatever you call it, from the Mactizos.

[00:11:51] But they came at different times I'm sure.

[00:11:53] A thousand years or two thousand years or whatever.

[00:11:56] So at what point for some do they decide we are going to have to be one nation

[00:12:03] because they have the Hawaiian nation or did that happen or do I get that wrong?

[00:12:08] No, that did indeed happen.

[00:12:10] I don't know how much of it was a decision so much as we see the birth of Kamehameha the

[00:12:16] first, Kamehameha Nui on the big island or Hawaii island who was a great warrior.

[00:12:24] He was a very large man, a very smart man, a very good politician is what we would probably

[00:12:30] call him these days.

[00:12:31] Was there fighting then?

[00:12:33] Yes.

[00:12:33] There was fighting among them all?

[00:12:35] Amongst the chiefs of silence.

[00:12:37] Amongst the chiefs.

[00:12:38] Did they actually fight with with with their swords and what have you or?

[00:12:42] All kinds of stuff.

[00:12:43] So we didn't have metal but what we did have was very hardwood and very sharp

[00:12:51] shark's teeth.

[00:12:52] Shark's teeth attached to hardwood and next to it could kill anybody.

[00:12:57] Yes, so yes there was warfare as Kamehameha sought to you know make his.

[00:13:05] To make you to become the king?

[00:13:06] To become king.

[00:13:07] Yeah okay.

[00:13:08] Yes.

[00:13:08] All right and we don't know when that was do we?

[00:13:11] Yeah we do.

[00:13:12] We do.

[00:13:12] It was what the day.

[00:13:13] Is that a thousand years ago?

[00:13:15] No no no it's more like uh 16 1700.

[00:13:19] Okay all right okay that's that's that's.

[00:13:21] But um I think you asked the question you know when when did Hawaii kind of decide

[00:13:25] to become its own nation or people?

[00:13:27] That's what I was going to hear that.

[00:13:29] When that happened but at some point the traversing back to southern Polynesia ended

[00:13:35] so at that point we know the Hawaiians just said okay this is us and they and

[00:13:40] they grew I think they simply grew sufficiently in population structure and culture

[00:13:46] and various chiefs on each island that everything settled into this is Hawaii.

[00:13:51] Now interestingly enough there is some theory that the Maori people our cousins the Maori

[00:13:57] are may have gone back down to southern Polynesia and then colonized Aotearoa because

[00:14:05] their language is the closest very close to Hawaiian.

[00:14:08] Interesting.

[00:14:09] So for example Loa in Hawaiian with an L means long Aotearoa means the long island.

[00:14:16] So Rhea they said Rhea we said Loa or Loa we said Loa they said Loa with an R sound.

[00:14:22] So could we say that the Polynesian languages or idioms do tend to sort of uh

[00:14:30] be similar in some ways?

[00:14:32] Yes.

[00:14:32] Yeah okay.

[00:14:33] What do you think what Samoan, Maori, who else?

[00:14:38] The Philippines?

[00:14:39] No not the Philippines the Tahitians yeah.

[00:14:43] Similar?

[00:14:44] Well when the French colonized Tahiti they really they really did a number on their language

[00:14:52] just like just like when Hawaii was colonized.

[00:14:56] That's what I was trying to get at I'm trying to get at when the white man came

[00:15:02] when the white man came there was dancing and everything.

[00:15:06] There had been people who had made it to Hawaii

[00:15:10] just not made as big of a splash as um Captain Cook.

[00:15:15] Captain Cook.

[00:15:17] But by 1792 Kamehameha had already succeeded in taking over is considered as taking over

[00:15:24] of all the islands by either conquest or negotiation or marriage.

[00:15:30] So he did that in part by using modern weaponry meaning guns that he had gotten

[00:15:39] in trade from those people.

[00:15:44] So I'm trying to sort of bring us to the quote-unquote modern era which essentially

[00:15:52] when a white man arrives then we begin to call things modern you know.

[00:15:59] Before that the native culture is unimportant insofar as the white man is concerned.

[00:16:04] So and I'm saying that's a kind of whimsical sort of way.

[00:16:08] We understand yeah.

[00:16:10] So Captain Cook comes to Hawaii and when did the American come to Hawaii?

[00:16:18] Or did the British more British begin showing up in in Hawaii?

[00:16:24] Yes the British came the French came too the Spanish the um Portuguese.

[00:16:29] Even the Russians came.

[00:16:31] Even the Russians too.

[00:16:32] Some Russians and Germans and Hawaii.

[00:16:34] Did the Chinese come too?

[00:16:35] Much later during plantation times.

[00:16:37] Okay but they didn't come as as rulers or conquerors.

[00:16:41] No no.

[00:16:42] They came to they came as workers.

[00:16:43] Workers okay and the Japanese.

[00:16:46] Similarly Japanese Filipinos came in the plantation days.

[00:16:49] As workers also okay well let's keep with it with the whites.

[00:16:54] So the whites come and some somewhere along the way the Americans the Americans came

[00:17:00] came into.

[00:17:01] I think a large group of Americans came with the missionaries came yeah.

[00:17:04] Which would have been in the 1830s 40s 50s.

[00:17:08] Okay okay.

[00:17:09] So they came pretty early.

[00:17:11] They the a large group and it was a large group but a group launched from Boston Massachusetts.

[00:17:16] Okay all right.

[00:17:17] To come to Hawaii as a missionary.

[00:17:19] Missionaries yeah.

[00:17:21] And then so what did the missionaries do?

[00:17:25] Convert.

[00:17:26] Okay.

[00:17:27] Try to convert.

[00:17:28] They convert and then they bring language.

[00:17:32] Did they do a good job doing that?

[00:17:34] They did a excellent job doing that.

[00:17:36] They had already converted many people and then you know wanted them to read the Bible in English.

[00:17:47] And so they started opening up their own little schools and pushing forward the English language.

[00:17:55] And they did take the Hawaiian oral language and reduce it to writing.

[00:18:00] So please they were the ones that helped write down the Hawaiian language.

[00:18:04] So and so they also had I suppose the Hawaiian Bible.

[00:18:08] Or in correct Hawaiian Bible various things yeah schoolwork papers.

[00:18:13] The ABCs of Hawaiian they yeah they did all those written language for us.

[00:18:18] The Hawaiian language as we were saying before there were kind of different dialects I think.

[00:18:26] Is there one sort of united lingua franca for example for the whole of Hawaii?

[00:18:35] Is there one language that means the Hawaiians talk what is it?

[00:18:38] Hawaiian.

[00:18:39] It's Hawaiian.

[00:18:39] Just Hawaiian.

[00:18:40] We call it Olelo Hawaii.

[00:18:41] Olelo Hawaii.

[00:18:42] Olelo Hawaii.

[00:18:42] Okay.

[00:18:43] And it's starting colleges now it's starting schools.

[00:18:47] The language has experienced a huge resurgence of native languages.

[00:18:52] We are probably at least as compared to Native American Indians.

[00:18:58] Native Hawaiian language Olelo Hawaii is thriving.

[00:19:01] In fact the Native American Indians looked to us to say hey what did you guys do?

[00:19:06] What did what we did?

[00:19:07] And Lisa and I grew up in what's called the Renaissance age of Hawaii.

[00:19:11] And so when culture and language and dance all became forward and became I don't know what it is.

[00:19:17] But when we were born Hawaiian was not allowed to be taught in school.

[00:19:21] Yeah so my mother.

[00:19:23] It was forbidden.

[00:19:24] It was forbidden to be taught in school not taught you couldn't speak it in schools.

[00:19:28] And so and it same thing happened in southern Polynesia in Tahiti where they banished it

[00:19:32] the French banished it from the schools.

[00:19:34] So as you know in colonization you know the ruling force going on court or the

[00:19:38] dominant force will say okay ban the language maybe we can you know to some degree quell the

[00:19:44] culture.

[00:19:45] And so that's what happened.

[00:19:47] Luckily some of our what we call tutu our grandparents.

[00:19:52] Kupuna seniors they spoke the land.

[00:19:56] You can't tell the seniors in Hawaii what to do.

[00:19:59] The tutu or the kupuna they do what they want to do very stubborn and they they

[00:20:04] preserve the language secretly in many cases spoken in their homes amongst themselves.

[00:20:09] My grandmother and grandfather fluent in the Hawaiian language.

[00:20:14] My mother bless her art did not speak the language.

[00:20:20] She sang the language but she couldn't converse in Hawaiian.

[00:20:25] So in one generation our parents generation the language was almost lost.

[00:20:31] What shall we say.

[00:20:33] Less than five ten percent of Hawaii spoke the language at that generation the one right

[00:20:40] before us the language virtually disappeared.

[00:20:43] And you feel strongly strongly about this don't you.

[00:20:46] Yeah yeah because as you know language creates a view of the world right.

[00:20:55] And if you don't know your native language you don't know your native view you just don't.

[00:21:01] Lisa and I are committed to learn it because we want to know what our ancestors knew

[00:21:09] and how they saw that tree or that fish or that wind.

[00:21:15] I mean the Hawaiians are so and the language itself is beautiful it's poetic it's metaphorical.

[00:21:23] To say I love you directly is uncommon to say you're as beautiful as that flower

[00:21:29] or the fragrance of that flower reminds me of you.

[00:21:32] That's Hawaiian so that's how you say I love you.

[00:21:35] That's it yeah so so if I was going to tell Lisa I love her what would I what kind of

[00:21:43] trees or flowers would I put down if you want to just say I love you like you know I love

[00:21:47] you as a sister you say aloha I aloha you I love you aloha is I want you to make it

[00:21:53] or to a woman you would say your beauty is like this ginger blossom and it fills the air

[00:22:00] or your back is like the side of this cliff straight and beautiful.

[00:22:05] I like I like I like yeah so in Hawaiian culture a beautiful woman was a back straight

[00:22:13] as a cliff the face round as a moon and the fragrance of the ginger blossoms.

[00:22:19] Sorry I'm a bit of a songwriter.

[00:22:23] It's poetry huh so let's talk about the things that with the Amishers came

[00:22:32] somehow began sort of diminishing the language the language that was being taught and then of

[00:22:39] course I'm you know sort of made English the more common language the dominant language for

[00:22:46] the air for the people then when did the the rulers people who actually rule people with guns

[00:22:53] people administrators when when do they show up and what did they do and what have they done

[00:23:00] you know if if yeah if you're going to define a Hawaii today is a result of those things that

[00:23:07] that you know the administration the rulers the people you know Washington DC or whatever

[00:23:15] the laws are made you know you know the the result the results of what these people do so

[00:23:21] so tell tell the audience for example how you see transformation of the beautiful

[00:23:29] Hawaiian independent nation independent nation to to our Hawaii that

[00:23:36] but that's that's covered in tourism and can't even support itself agriculturally

[00:23:42] at which we just saw through covid right well and you know and then it's overbuilt

[00:23:48] and where you have how fires you know fire sort of consume a whole a whole settlement

[00:23:55] or all of Lahaina all city ancient so how did we get here which is what I'd like

[00:24:02] I would like you to try and describe so what happened like in many native cultures contrasting

[00:24:08] or clashing a bit with western culture is that the western culture thinks this is the way it

[00:24:14] should be organized and the native culture says this is the way we were organized and it worked

[00:24:19] years for years thousands of years guys I'm not sure why we need to change this but the dominant

[00:24:25] forces decided to basically get rid of the the chiefing the chief system and what we call

[00:24:32] class so instead of king because they weren't in it exactly because they were in Hawaiian and

[00:24:38] they weren't in the elite class or the ruling class they decided that how he needs a like similar

[00:24:44] to a legislature there were two houses it was set up like a British structure there was a

[00:24:48] house of commons and house of nobles and a king but then over time the king became quote

[00:24:54] unquote a powerless king a puppet king and they created a constitution called we called it the

[00:24:59] bayonet constitution basically king kalakaua was the king at the time and this is the 1800s

[00:25:05] this is the 1800s yeah so all of this transitioning is happening trying to keep the monarchy but

[00:25:11] creating this a house of commons and house of lords type of thing after the British model

[00:25:16] was where Hawaii was leaning and then as that went on the king was basically removed of all his

[00:25:23] powers but he was there was kind of the British model of have the king and their queen

[00:25:27] be the figurehead but the power lie in the groups that have body body of government so that carried

[00:25:33] on for a bit and then kalakaua died and his sister queen lindy or colony took the throne

[00:25:40] she refused the previous constitution before he died he did a couple of very important things

[00:25:49] for our culture yes up until that point hula was still being only practiced out of sight

[00:25:56] hula is what the dance hula is our dance only practice in the in your own homes

[00:26:03] basically the christian church says hula not allowed school said because what why not it was

[00:26:09] a little too he then he then a little too native for them because it it it talks about

[00:26:19] our relationship with our ancestral gods the land each other in ways that are uncomfortable

[00:26:30] for missionaries doesn't talk a bit about the by the human body also

[00:26:34] also yes and they may be relations relationship between different bodies also yes well that's

[00:26:41] really un-christian you know yeah christians have a hard time with that because hawaiians

[00:26:45] most native cultures are much more open about sexuality and relationships love is part of our

[00:26:51] lives and all of our lives but you know in the christian world you kind of hide all that stuff

[00:26:55] so it was a little difficult for them so he he brought it back out and he made court dancers

[00:27:02] and so he you know he brought it back into the public eye so when he did that there was

[00:27:07] another i would say resurgence and the beginning of the hawaiian renaissance where

[00:27:13] it starts to come back to us then we have li liu who takes the crown and does a very good job

[00:27:21] while she can but this whole time there are financial and political forces you know they've

[00:27:29] created large plantations plantations economic systems and instead of slaves they have very

[00:27:37] low paid you know workers that they had to bring in so that's how all these other people ended up

[00:27:44] coming to hawaii um to work on the plantations now how was the land acquired you know from the

[00:27:50] hawaiians to the uh to the this corporation a lot of it was given to the missionaries

[00:27:58] that's another thing that's different hawaiians don't believe that you can own land right land

[00:28:05] ownership is of everyone and it's not ownership it's we steward the land so i firmly believe

[00:28:13] that we did not think of it the same way as all the american businessmen thought of it when

[00:28:19] they came there so they start creating financial power houses and using that to create political

[00:28:27] action and with the help of some people in the u.s marines they overthrew the monarchy

[00:28:36] this is very important so the land that was taken from them from the the hawaiians what

[00:28:42] happened to the hawaiians who lived in on that land well they sort of pushed away

[00:28:48] so that they are living in villages in small towns what happened to them so what happened

[00:28:54] there's a thing in hawaiian history called the great mahele so mahele meaning to separate out

[00:29:00] so they took the land and applied a western style uh dividing up of lands and creating

[00:29:06] boundaries and so forth and they told the hawaiian people the kanaka they said you know

[00:29:11] if you live on this land now you can have this land but you have to come in and do this

[00:29:15] palapala which means paper you have to fill out this paper and of course the hawaiians are

[00:29:19] going what is this paper i got to fill out to to keep my land so many of them didn't fill out

[00:29:25] the paper therefore the land is like untitled according to the papers in the government

[00:29:31] offices so many hawaiians mine included used to have beautiful land hana lake kawaii is one

[00:29:36] of the most beautiful places on earth and um we know we had land there and the land is

[00:29:43] no there's nothing to prove we ever had the land there so if you didn't do the paperwork

[00:29:48] you could lose your land you may not have lost it right away but somebody could then

[00:29:52] buy it from you because somebody else acquired your land so the haoles knowing the rules

[00:29:57] went in and began to apply for various parts and pull it up they set up the rules like

[00:30:02] that well yeah they set up the rules with their new government lines and their territorial

[00:30:06] government so very shady scary so so a couple of things here um one of them was how

[00:30:15] um this civilization which was brought to the islands also also consisted of bringing

[00:30:23] bringing bacteria and the viruses and diseases absolutely i think i think i think that's an

[00:30:29] important point i think that is worthwhile talking about i think because as we know

[00:30:34] viruses and diseases are as powerful as warfare or morsel absolutely you know about it's really

[00:30:40] a biological weapon and from the first visit of captain cook venereal dies was found the

[00:30:44] next couple weeks later uh some of our women were identified with this strange sickness and so

[00:30:50] yeah it's a sad story measles everything you can think of and it wiped out you know 80 percent

[00:30:59] of the population yeah leprosy yeah and that's that's truly very important because it's

[00:31:05] around the world right i think wherever colonizers have gone diseases have been you know have gone

[00:31:14] along with them it is true in mexico for example it's true in south america it's true in africa

[00:31:20] in the islands also in the islands also i think i think that's one thing i think people need

[00:31:25] what is it that you you don't want the uh the ordinary american to know if i can start

[00:31:32] with that one lisa and you follow up on that but um to me i'm half native hawaiian and i'm half

[00:31:39] caucasian my dad was english irish german and he was a coast guardsman and came to hawaii made

[00:31:44] a beautiful Hawaiian woman and stayed can't blame him he didn't want to go back to new jersey

[00:31:49] that's why we have philip here but to me i guess what i want people to understand is

[00:31:56] sometimes visitors to hawaii or americans in general maybe people who are white don't

[00:32:01] understand the trauma that happened to the Hawaiian people and the trauma crosses bloodlines

[00:32:11] i mean it it's in me because it was in my mom and my grandfather and my grandparents and great

[00:32:17] grandparents they witnessed the loss of the Hawaiian kingdom my great grandparents witnessed

[00:32:23] the loss of the Hawaiian kingdom and and i ignored it for a long time because it hurts

[00:32:30] i ignored it when i became active with pilani i decided you know what i need to understand

[00:32:37] this history and so i studied it and i learned it as painful as it was we need people to

[00:32:44] understand that if we look sad that's the reason if we are frustrated that's the reason

[00:32:51] because we lost so much we lost not just land we lost language we lost culture there's certain

[00:33:01] things we don't even know about there was tradition of in south southern palanisia there's

[00:33:07] a tradition of the orator the guy that can stand up and speak for hours you might have

[00:33:12] it in the african cultures too and his job was to tell the stories i don't know anybody

[00:33:18] in Hawaii that does that now but it existed i would love to see that again the the Hawaiian

[00:33:24] orators who simply stand and tell the stories so there's so much that is missing that it

[00:33:30] hurts we want people to understand that and have compassion for them i think a lot of

[00:33:36] americans don't realize that native hawaiians are not recognized by the united states

[00:33:44] i mean our name is on the a nhpi days month you know this month of may right

[00:33:51] asian american native Hawaiian pacific islander month so they recognize us but but in terms of

[00:33:56] rights and benefits go ahead the kanaka maoli have no political voice in washington dc

[00:34:02] for ourselves and our nation we haven't even been recognized yet how would you change that

[00:34:09] i would have the united states return our sovereignty as a nation

[00:34:14] as they have in other places as other countries have to other countries but we had

[00:34:20] we had treaties with them we had treaties with britain and france i would tell them that they

[00:34:29] need to abide by that treaty and return our sovereignty to us and let us make our own

[00:34:37] decisions on our own land because we're we're dying out on our own land with the resurgence

[00:34:44] of our culture we are able to bring back our language but as of last year there are more

[00:34:50] native hawaiians living away from hawaii than there are living on their own land

[00:34:56] is there much of an activism then there is yeah and what for what form is that is that

[00:35:02] taking so for example lisa she's from the hawaii island where mount akea is and uh when the

[00:35:10] university of waii and other scientists decided they're going to build a 13th telescope up there

[00:35:15] the hawaiians put their foot down and said no this is not happening so we are active to

[00:35:20] save our land our aina our mountains our streams there's a growing sentiment there

[00:35:27] what we hope is that people realize hey we're not going to sit down anymore and you guys

[00:35:31] just do whatever you want there's a there's an old saying that if you don't have a seat at the

[00:35:35] table you get eaten for lunch well we got eaten for lunch for a thousand years now we're going

[00:35:41] to sit at the table we need to have a voice and we want that voice to be heard so we would

[00:35:46] like self-determination we would like to be able to organize our own native Hawaiian

[00:35:51] population into some type of governing group we don't know what that is yet the shape of it

[00:35:56] and we want the united states to as they have with indian nations allowed indian nations to

[00:36:03] self-govern i think the us is a bit afraid of it because if they did that to us we are the largest

[00:36:09] all of a sudden largest indigenous nation within the united states boundary so it's

[00:36:16] 300 000 people yeah this is a fascinating discussion and i wish we had more time to

[00:36:24] there's so much so much i would really like to to hear about for example the relations between

[00:36:31] a you know the people and the land whether you consider the land as a as an existing being

[00:36:38] i mean a land is not an object a land is a living living thing a living thing could you

[00:36:44] say a few words about that to us the aina is our family we raise it like we would a child

[00:36:51] we take care of it like we would our oldest relative or our grandparents

[00:36:58] and it takes care of us in return when we pass on we go back to the aina to let the next

[00:37:06] generation thrive off of that but in this culture that we have been forced to live within

[00:37:14] the land is vital for financial profit land is property land is to be used as a tool for yourself

[00:37:24] land is owned according to the the hawaiian tradition land it cannot be owned it can't be

[00:37:33] owned because you can't pick it up and take it with you it's necessary for the survival of our

[00:37:40] species in addition to that because in the in land you're also talking about water

[00:37:47] you're talking about trees and plants you're talking about air those are things that that

[00:37:54] cannot be owned those are things that were here before the beginning and we are finding it

[00:38:00] they should not be owned exactly and this was true of the american american natives for

[00:38:06] example and by the way it's true in is true to you know for the people in africa all the tribes

[00:38:12] in africa that the whole land belongs to them or they belong to the land you know so it's the

[00:38:19] same it's the same the same feeling the same thought the same philosophical uh sort of a

[00:38:26] basis along which we all have existed until the western mind came you know came to be

[00:38:33] the western mind looks at land and water as in as a asset to generate profits and wealth

[00:38:40] the hawaiian and native cultures look as the land as our responsibility to care for to know

[00:38:46] that we might nurture it so it will nurture us yes that we will be able to care for ourselves

[00:38:51] and our children so the old hawaiian system for thousands of years was able to feed a large

[00:38:56] population there was no starvation there was food there was water there was clean water

[00:39:01] there was fish there was taro there was bananas all of that self-sustaining year after year after

[00:39:07] year in hawaii when there was covid and a and a ship could not go from california to hawaii

[00:39:13] all of a sudden everybody's afraid of not being able to drink milk you know it is not

[00:39:18] sustainable the ecosystem that the western world has created in hawaii i think maybe as a as a

[00:39:26] last point here maybe what what i think we as a human race need to begin doing is to go

[00:39:34] go to go back to the old traditions where we don't own these things that actually give us

[00:39:40] life and maybe sort of being going away from this profit motive also because that's that's

[00:39:46] the same and things i mean where where somebody is defined by their the amount of

[00:39:52] money that they have in the bank or the number of things that they can show they can show

[00:39:57] they have they have you know yeah there's a phrase in hawaiian and i don't know how

[00:40:01] to translate in hawaiian you might know but there's a phrase in in hawaii that says

[00:40:05] to see the future you need to look back so sometimes to see the future we have to go

[00:40:11] backwards first then create a better future well thank you so very much you two have been

[00:40:17] wonderful this is a great subject thank you for having us i wish i wish we could repeat

[00:40:22] this again do it again there's much so much more that we can talk about mahalo nui lau

[00:40:28] thank you very much the never again podcast is presented by the coalition against global

[00:40:39] genocide and its mission to educate motivate and empower individuals and communities to

[00:40:45] oppose genocide and crimes against humanity