The Value of Hawaii 2: Ancestral Roots, Oceanic Visions

The Second Gift

THE SECOND GIFT BRANDY NÄLANI MCDOUGALL FOR HAUNANI The first gift of Western civilization was disease. The second gift of Western civilization was violence. —Haunani-Kay Trask 1 I have no mercy or compassion for a society that will crush people and then penalize them for not being able to stand up under the weight. —Malcolm X For over four generations they have said we are a people with a history of violence, accustomed to the dark, cold cell, remedial in mind and body. They write of how we killed infants, sacrificed humans, practiced incest, how our kings and queens were alcoholic, inept dictators, how we owned slaves, how disease comes with darkness, how they must save us from ourselves. And we take the new tongue and its historical revisions, the low test scores, McDougall, The Second Gift 251 the longer sentences, the water shortages, the paid-off politicians, the third part-time job, the cancers and the radiation, diabetes and amputations, eminent domain and adverse possession, the overruling of all our objections because now their violence is all we know. 2 We are not Americans! We are not Americans! We are not Americans! —Haunani-Kay Trask Violence is more than lodging bullets into brown or black bodies, but also burning sacred valleys, stabbing tunnels into mountains, damming streams, dumping poisons into oceans, overdeveloping ‘äina, bombing and buying islands. Violence is Arizona jail cells, GMOs, and unearthed iwi waiting under a Wal-Mart ramp, in boxes, in museums, in a church basement. Violence is what we settle for because we’ve been led to believe green paper can feed us more than green land. Violence is what we’re used to as they measure our blood to wait decades for a dollar-a-year lease, when we forget how we once fed and healed ourselves, how our mouths hold life and death. We are no longer shocked by raids on what is left in the pitched tents and tarps, 252 PU‘UHONUA our evictions from beach to beach and park to park, the poverty of unfurling fists open only to the smallest of handouts. Violence is believing you are in the United States driving on a highway built over the sacred, carrying artillery to scorch the sacred so more sacred lands can become the United States through violence. 3 Don’t let anybody tell you not to be angry. We have every right to be angry—This is our country. —Haunani-Kay Trask You were born into captivity, a native in a racist, anti-Native world; yet, they call you racist. They hate you like they have hated every warrior before you. This helps them bear the weight of dominion; helps them keep their vacation houses, golf courses, hotels, and bases; helps them feed their children denial, so as adults they, too, can say, “Don’t blame me for what happened a hundred years ago.” They must keep believing that the United States McDougall, The Second Gift 253 is our country and not just the country that occupies our country, Hawai‘i. 4 It always seems impossible until it’s done. —Nelson Mandela You tell us: “You are not a racist because you fight racism. You are a warrior,” and you train more warriors, show us how to sharpen and land words like spears, how to catch their spears and hurl them back. You call us the spears of our nation, assure us “Decolonization is all around us.” You guide us to the rope of resistance so we can weave the newest strands together under a sovereign sun. And so we tell our children, our children tell their children, and their children tell their children until our words become the chattering winds of hope that erode the hardness of violence from the earth, and we are sown back into and born from Papahänaumoku green and tender once again. ...