Decolonizing the Light: Reading Resistance in Native Hawaiian Poetry

Abstract

By reading metaphors of light and darkness through the opposing lenses of colonial racism and indigenous activism, this essay argues that poetry is key to understanding the nuances of Native Hawaiian nationalism. Haunani-Kay Trask is a Native Hawaiian poet, activist and professor whose radical politics has attracted criticism from the white American community whose economic influence she vocally opposes. Trask's work as a poet is inextricable from her political activism and her poetry will be read alongside critical work on the intersection of colonialism, racism and gender that has contributed to the devastation of indigenous people, culture and land in Hawaiʻi. The acquisition of land for plantations in the nineteenth century and resort development in the twentieth has resulted in the dispossession of Native Hawaiian people, whilst global mass tourism has deeply affected the portrayal and consumption of Native Hawaiian culture. Trask's poetry is a lyrical but unsparing look at the effects of globalization on the delicate ecology of her home. For those willing to brave the severity of her indictment there are valuable messages about what constitutes native belonging and indigenous activism in Hawaiʻi.

• aloha ʻāina
• colonization
• globalization
• Hawaiʻi
• poetry
• Trask, Haunani-Kay

Notes

1 Aloha ‘āina is a core Hawaiian value; Pukui and Elbert (1986, 21) state “aloha ʻāina is a very old concept, to judge from the many sayings (perhaps thousands) illustrating deep love of the land”. Most words in Hawaiian have several meanings, and other meanings of ʻāina include “food” and “to eat”, indicating the land's fundamental place in sustaining Hawaiian life.

2 For a full explanation of the transition from traditional to western land use, see Alexander (1891) and Silva (2004).

3 Both Asians and Native Hawaiians were discriminated against, and both groups lived in terrible conditions in the 1920s and 1930s. See Stannard (1989, 2006, intro.).

4 The idea of equality developed through the tendency of early western philosopher–scientists to apply the laws of physics to the animate world. Mayr (1985) links philosophy, science and religion in a contextualization of the political environment that gave birth to democracy. He argues the essentialist principles of the physical sciences contributed to the formation of ideals of democracy, resulting in democracy asserting “not only equality before the law but also essentialistic identity in all respects”, “expressed in the claim, ‘All men are created equal’, which is something very different from the statement, ‘All men have equal rights and are equal before the law’” (79). Whilst attitudes towards race have changed in the late twentieth century, they have tended towards using the law to enforce equality between races as a form of “colourblindness”, rather than dismantling the discourse of race. Some argue that institutionalizing in law the instruction to be “blind” to skin colour only reinforces racism by allowing culture and race to be conflated, and by denying people their “race”, as it is socially constructed, they are denied their cultural consciousness (Carbado and Harris in Delgado and Stefancic 2013, 30). For a discussion of how the practice of colourblindness has been used against Native Hawaiians, see Rohrer (2006).

5 In Trask's poetry nationality and ethnicity are regularly conflated. While haole refers to any white person, regardless of nationality, Asians are usually divided by nationality and are subjected to more pejorative stereotypes. In the poem “At Punaluʻu” (33) Trask puns on the racial stereotype of Asian eyes: “Every tourist, a camera / to capture us Natives; / the slant of their lens / diminishing Hawaiians. // Japan Japanese just from / Tokyo; Hong Kong Chinese / and tall Taiwanese, Asia's dragons” (1–9). By stereotyping Asians Trask is turning the “lens” back on tourists, who like to photograph Hawaiians when they see them. Trask's disdain for Asian (particularly Japanese) investment in the building industry and its exploitation of sea resources is well documented, and rooted in Japan's colonial history in the Pacific, particularly in Guam (1999b, 44, 48–50, 52).

6 A kukui tree was planted in Queen Liliʻuokalani's garden Uluhaimalama as a symbol of hope that the Provisional government, which had overthrown the queen, would be enlightened and restore her to her rightful office. The kukui is also a symbol of light and leadership. It is the official emblem of the State of Hawaiʻi (Pukui and Elbert 1986). During the queen's imprisonment in ʻIolani Palace, Honolulu, flowers from Uluhaimalama were cut each day and wrapped in the daily newspapers before being delivered to her. In this way she was able to keep abreast of news of the outside world and receive messages of support from Hawaiian royalists (McDougall 2016, 22).