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DEAN ITSUJI SARANILLIO 8 Colonial Amnesia Rethinking Filipino “American” Settler Empowerment in the U.S. Colony of Hawai‘i A history that serves as a guide to the people in perceiving present reality is itself a liberating factor, for when the present is illumined by a comprehension of the past, it is that much easier for the people to grasp the direction of their development and identify the forces that impede real progress. —Renato Constantino, The Philippines: A Past Revisited There has been deliberate, intentional, purposeful miseducation and disinformation by the government, by the schools, and by the communications media to hide the truth of this [colonial] exploitation, and to promote the fairy tale that Hawai‘i is a democracy, that everyone has equal opportunity, and that it’s a paradise with racial harmony. —Kekuni Blaisdell, Autobiography of Protest in Hawai‘i AS A RESULT OF the countereducation afforded Hawai‘i residents by the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement, Hawai‘i’s history of conquest by the United States has resurfaced, exposing numerous contradictions and questions for those who claim Hawai‘i as their home. Previous studies of race relations and popular ways of imagining Native Hawaiians have employed a domestic “civil rights” framework, framing Native Hawaiians as an ethnic “minority group” within Hawai‘i’s multicultural state competing for their fair share of the American pie.1 On the other hand, the body of work produced by many Native scholars and Native sovereignty supporters uses a broader discourse of “indigenous human rights” that recognizes Native Hawaiians as a “peoples” who have a genealogical continuity with Hawai‘i distinct from that of other racial or ethnic groups.2 This latter framework situates Hawai‘i within an international political arena, calling for a reconceptualizing of Native Hawaiians as a colonized indigenous people with specific human rights that have been violated by the imperialist United States of America. As the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement reminds Hawai‘i of a history of colonialism, how can Filipino communities in Hawai‘i use these challenges to DEAN ITSUJI SARANILLIO 125 rethink our own past, present, and imagined futures? How do our beliefs, actions, and investments in the U.S. system collide with the aims of the Native Hawaiian sovereignty movement? What are the continuities between Filipino struggles in Hawai‘iandthevariousanti-imperialistmovementsinthePhilippines?Howcanwe link these movements to the Native Hawaiian movement for self-determination? In this essay I show how the U.S. colonization of Hawai‘i conceals itself, maneuvering historically oppressed groups against indigenous peoples. Specifically, I examine the apparent contradictions and implications of a Filipino settler identification with the United States in a U.S. colony. I situate this contradiction within the context of colonial miseducation, to show how this identification is the product of a history of U.S. colonialism in both the Philippines and Hawai‘i. As a fourth-generation settler of Filipino and Japanese descent from Hawai‘i, I would like to add a different point of reference, one that is in dialogue not with the U.S. settler state but instead with the indigenous peoples under colonial domination. As Vicente Diaz, Native Pacific cultural studies scholar, stated to Filipinos and Chamorros in the U.S. colony of Guam: “If the history of relations between Chamorros and Filipinos is one of a shared struggle within colonial and neocolonial realities, then it is we who should be orchestrating the history, not allowing it to play us.”3 For Filipinos in the United States, marginalization and subordination seem to be requisite for U.S. citizenship. The newspapers, books, articles, and journals that focus on racism against Filipinos in Hawai‘i have pointed out the inequities and systemic structures of racism engrained in Hawai‘i’s society.4 Ethnic studies scholar Jonathan Okamura’s analysis of socioeconomic data from the 1990 U.S. Census reveals that Hawai‘i’s unique ethnic/racial stratification of power consists generally of whites, Japanese, and Chinese holding dominant positions in the state, and Filipino Americans, Samoans, and Native Hawaiians comprising the lower levels of ethnic/racial stratification.5 Compared to more dominant groups, Filipinos in Hawai‘i lack social, economic, and political power, yet we often seek empowerment as “Americans” within a U.S. settler state. While Filipino communities in Hawai‘i must continue to resist various inequalities, we must also be aware of the colonial structures engrained in U.S. nationalism which render invisible the U.S. violation of Native Hawaiians...

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