Hawaiian is Hawaiian, No Matter Where You Were Born or Where You Live

I am a Mainland Hawaiian. I live in California. I know my way in and around the cities of Los Angeles, parts of Orange County, the upper deserts, the lower deserts, the mountains and the shoreline. And like all Southern California residents, I know my way back and forth to Las Vegas. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, by island born parents who taught my brother, sister and I how to be good Hawaiians. We were taught that Aloha is measured in terms of how much of it you give away and not by how much of it you can save and give only to those people we deemed as "good enough".

I don't recall the last time I truly felt like I was not good enough to receive respect, to receive the same amount of courtesy which I extended, at least not until I visited the one place that ALL Hawaiians consider as being home. My family and I recently returned to California, and happily so, from the Hawaiian island of O'ahu. We had the money, and my grandmother's Honolulu home was vacant, at least for the week that we would need to use it. We spent our tax return on it. My husband had never been on a "real" family vacation, and in 17 years, we had never been on a big fat family vacation. We don't count Vegas as a family vacation anymore. It's kind of hard to do that when you and the Blackjack dealers trade nods of acknowledgment with one another. We have become regulars in Vegas, sort of.

I will not bore you with specifics about the flight. If you travel, then already you know about the tedious nature of checking in, going through security, waiting for hours to hear that your flight is boarding, and then getting onto a packed airplane and hope that the thing stays in the air for the time that it takes to get to where you are going. If you fly, then you are already familiar with what has to be done. It is stupid and is violating and ridiculous, but if you fly, you have to do all those stupid little things to satisfy the NTSB.

Flying is not the part that bothered me. Let it be known now that if you intend to go to the island of O'ahu, then also be prepared to be treated terribly if you are visiting there, and be prepared to be scared to go anywhere that is not in Waikiki if you are..."haole". The correct definition for the word "Haole" is foreigner, but the way that it is used by many Hawaiian locals on O'ahu is meant to be the equivalent of the dirtiest word known to come out of a haole mouth - the "n" word.
Before I had gone to the place where my roots are, to the birthplace of my ancestors, to the place where all Hawaiian people consider home, I was thrilled to be visiting with my family. Once we got there, my entire world shattered.

I may get the evil eye, I may get a lot of words of Kapu (won't work, folks...my God is bigger than your superstitions), and may receive the disdain of people who share not more than ancestry and a certain ethnic pride but nothing more with me, but it must be said : Aloha is, in many places on those islands, no longer a word by which we live, but rather, a word which equals "tourist money" in the eyes of those who should know better.

I would like to throw my hands up and shout "I am sorry, but..." ...but I'm not. I am not sorry that I feel the way I do about a place which I used to love to visit, and I am not sorry that like all thinking people would expect to be respected, I expected at least a modicum of decency. And that is exactly what I got, what everyone who is not part of the blood Hawaiians who live there and believe as many of them do - that others do not have the right to be there and that they will do what they must in order to make you understand this. It is almost an unspoken rule that many ethnic Hawaiians have, that they keep secret from everyone when packaged tours are being sold via airline websites. No one is warned about the oppression which blankets the islands. There is a certain heaviness, a certain feeling that unless you were born there, you do not belong there, and if you go there, you will be made to know this. Well, I know this, and it is a really very sad thing indeed, because a place I used to love and consider my second home is no longer the place of love, family and unity I remember it being.

Where once I played on white sanded beaches now stand rows of tent cities which house the homeless Hawaiians who have chosen to live off of the land, who have decided that they will shun the America which embraces them, and have decided that they are owed and owed big. Those who used to be friendly and welcoming to those who shared heritage if not zipcode are now hateful to those who are of the same ancestry, but not the same place of birth. It is almost as though these people have decided that they will have their Hawaii, their way, and that they will squat until they get their way. If getting your way means that you will brave the elements, will become hateful, bigotted, ignorant to the fact that what you are doing is alienating all those who share what was once the goal for us all - the spread of aloha, the perpetuation of our sacred culture and the sharing of universal wisdom, then that is what you will do, and continue to do.

It is not that my family and I constantly got lost trying to find our way around, but that when we asked for help, we were...I was...laughed at, and neither is it the fact that there are certain parts of the islands where it is not safe to be alone and white on a beach - ever. It is not that although I blend in well with the locals until I begin to speak that was the only problem. It was none of those things and all of those things that people assume happens only to white people who don't know better.

It was the arrogance mixed with the ignorance. It was the idea that because I am a mainland Hawaiian, I am damaged, am not good enough, and certainly not welcome in that place I used to refer to as my second home. It was that anytime I went to the store I was expected to speak a certain way, and when I didn't, I was met with disdain and "stink eye" from the locals. It was that even certain members of the human race with whom I share DNA but not much else, treated me as though it would not hurt when my daughter was picked on at the park where my cousins and I used to play hide and seek. They acted like I should have expected to be treated as I was because I was "not from" there.

You're damned skippy I ain't from there.

I am from the true "Ninth Island", Southern California, where the sun sets on the same ocean that it rises on a little more than 2500 miles to the south and the west three hours after it does so here. The same sun, not the Hawaiian sun...the same damned sun. I am from a place where diversity might get you the "stink eye", but it will not get you lynched (okay, not immediately), will not get you beaten in a parking lot for simply tapping the bumper of another vehicle, beaten down by a father, a mother and their sixteen year old son for a simple little tap.

I hail from where tolerance is practiced daily, where when someone asks you for directions you actually get them instead of laughed at. I come from a place which in comparisson to O'ahu, welcomes strangers - we know not to bite the hands that feed us.(Tourism is big here, too, folks) Or mow our lawns, watch our children or walk our dogs. Here on the mainland, we are a true study of diversity. Sure, it can be tumultuous at times, but none the less, even with our mohawked hair, our fake boobs, our facelifts and our latte's, mainland Hawaiians possess something that not too many Hawaiians from home still wish they really had - tolerance.

We might complain about it being too crowded here, that there are too many people on our freeways, that we wished there were more copies of the "DMV Driver Handbook" were printed in English, but none the less, we deal with it. Not because we have to, but because we know that no amount of squatting on any beach is going to do us any good at all. It would prove nothing more than that we are capable of being strong and stubborn when in fact what we need to be is strong and smart. Ignorance is never a good thing, and when you mix ignorance and arrogance with hatred of a people who you have no real idea of, and when you decide that you are going to make an entire race of people pay for the sins of their forefathers, not only are you wrong, you are ignorant. How foolish does one have to be to sit in self-righteousness, believing that you are somehow better, more pure than the rest of us, when in fact, you are not. You are not better than we are here on the Ninth Island. This is not to make you assume that you are not smart in your own right, but it is to say that although your fight is admirable, in part, it is wrong.

It is wrong because it stems from a generations old hatred, and it is wrong because you are perpetuating hatred and not unity. Your fight is admirable, and though I have a sickening sense of minimal respect for your fight, it is your hatred that makes me think twice and makes me know that there is a reason people ask me what island I am from.

It is with pride that I tell them "The Ninth Island, brah...sunny and wonderful Southern California."

I would not be so angry if I knew that this fight was for more than just what I think it is for, which I will not state, because I am just one person and the last thing I need is to be lynched by people I don't even know. You can continue your fight, but please, bruddahs, sistahs, know what it is that you are fighting for. I have a hard time believing and accepting that people - my people - people who came from royalty and warriors have been reduced by the thing which they are fighting for- freedom. What are you trying to be free from? White people? People who are not Hawaiian? People who you feel do not understand you?

Here is a question which I have asked a few of you, and there are some who came to terms with the reasons they had for feeling as they did, so here again is that question. Answer it truthfully in your own mind, and then go back to your beaches and see the hatred as it festers, and see the plight and the oppression and think about this for a minute. That which you have named strength is your weakness, is the thing which is crippling you, and me, and us all.

Imagine coming down the beach is our Queen, Lilu'okalani. Imagine her in all her regal glory, and imagine that she is a study of quiet royalty. Here is this brilliant woman who was an intellectual, musically talented, fit to be queen. She is walking toward your encampment, and see that she is smiling, and as she draws nearer to you, her smile becomes a look of sadness. A tear rolls down her cheek, and she is now holding out her arms to you, asking "What has happened to my children? What has happened to the children of Hawai'i, Na Mamo? 'Auwe...'auwe..."

What would you tell her? Would you tell her that you are now giving back the same amount of bigotry and ignorance that was given to those who took her crown? Would you explain to her that in this day and age of iPods and laptops that what she is witnessing is just a continuance of what happened to her back then? Would you seriously look this regals woman in the eye and tell her "Aunty, we are doing this in your honor" ?

What exactly would you say to this woman?

And more, what would you expect her to say to you?

I love Hawaii. I love the Hawaiian people. Please, never think that this was a writing which was meant to truly make people mad and keep them mad. I wrote it because in this world, and in this life, we are given opportunities, every minute of every hour of each and every day to make right that which is wrong, one thing at a time. If what is being done in order to take back the islands is starting first with hatred and bigotry and ignorance, then the only lesson which has been learned is that hatred tears down all that has been built up and bigotry kills aloha. There is no unity, no love, no acceptance, just bitterness for wrongs done to an entire nation of people whose only goal in life these days seems to be to live the remains of their days out there on the beach, bathing in public restrooms, living in tents, and raising the next generation of Hawaiians to believe that people who are not like them are damaged people. Yes, even those of us who are just like you.

So, I guess I will stay my damaged okole here, on the Ninth Island called Southern California. It is not that I do not love you all - You are Hawaiians. We are ohana. I will always love you.

Yet this does not mean that I undertstand you, your pain or your reasons for going through what you go through. Perhaps maybe I am not supposed to.
This does not mean that I agree with you, your ways, and your reasons for being so, so hateful. Where was it that you all decided that you would wage war against people who had nothing to do with what our ancestors went through?

When was it decided that you would all martyr yourselves and be at the mercy of what you have been told is the right way to hate people?

AUNTY