Haunani-Kay Trask : CONTEXT QUESTION 4 : How did you become socially conscious?

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Transcript

Thirty years of your life. You have to give years and decades of your life because as we all know consciousness takes forever to change.

You know I take great sustenance from those that have gone before me. I mean people like black people. Just think - people used to spit on Martin Luther King.(1) I mean just the thought of that, when I watch it in the newsreels… I mean just it's shocking, because now we all think of him as this great man. But there was a time when people hated him, and would spit at him, and throw things at him. You take sustenance from that.

You look at the Third World in general. You look at revolutionary struggles.

And also Hawaiians are very resilient in one sense, because this is an old story for us. It's not just students, I mean the overthrow,(2) you know?

When you tell your students - if you are a Hawaiian professor - and you tell your Hawaiian students in class that the haoles(3) are racist, everybody nods. Nobody says, "Oh no! That's a terrible thing to say!" Oh no, the haoles are racist, and especially now, when we have Rice v. Cayetano,(4) or Barrett,(5) or Ken Conklin trying to be an OHA trustee.(6)

In many ways the general public has finally caught up with us. This really is about racism. This isn't just about "the aloha spirit."

Notes

(1) Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968): American civil rights leader who, through the practice of civil disobedience, became an influential opponent of segregation, racism, and American militarism during the civil rights era of the 1950’s and 1960’s. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, and was assassinated in 1968.

(2) The overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi: The U.S. military in support of a small group of white businessmen overthrew the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in 1893. In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaiʻi, without a popular vote and against the expressed wishes of the Hawaiian people.  Today, Hawaiians are wards of the federal and state governments.

(3) Haole is the Hawaiian word for foreign things (including foreign people) and was originally used to refer to all foreigners. Today, the word refers only to white people.

(4) Rice v. Cayetano: A successful lawsuit filed in the U.S. Supreme Court to extinguish the political rights of Native Hawaiians to vote in the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs elections.

Specifically, this lawsuit was filed by haole settler and missionary descendant Harold “Freddy” Rice, alleging that the voting requirements for the Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ (OHA) elections were discriminatory on the basis of race (Hawaiian voters only) and in violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. OHA currently controls over $350 million in assets, excluding past due payments in the millions of dollars still owed by the state to Native Hawaiians.

Denied at the district and appellate courts, Rice and his settler attorney, John Goemans, were encouraged and supported to take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court by the Virginia-based, racist advocacy group, The Campaign for a Color-Blind America. In February 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ignored the established political relationship between the United States and Native Hawaiians and ruled in favor of settlers voting on Hawaiian issues.

Emboldened by the Supreme Court decision, other settlers soon filed court cases to terminate other existing Federal and State Hawaiian entitlements and to use those resources (lands and monies) for all citizens, Native and non-Native alike. In September 2000, the U.S. District Court ruled that settlers could run for OHA Trustee seats on the once all-Native Hawaiian OHA Board. A month later, the numerically larger settler population of Hawaiʻi voted for a Japanese settler, Charles Ota, to occupy an OHA seat. The assault upon Native Hawaiian entitlements continues to this day.

(5) Patrick Barrett: In October 2000, a haole American settler filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of  Article 12 of the Hawaiʻi State Constitution - the section that created the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA), adopted the federal Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1920, and provided for Native Hawaiian political rights. Barrett’s lawsuit was designed to extinguish all OHA and Hawaiian Homelands operations. Monies earmarked to benefit Native Hawaiians were to be made “available to everyone regardless of ancestry". A welfare recipient, Barrett was represented by John Goemans, the same settler attorney in the Rice v. Cayetano case. The Barrett v. Cayetano case was later dismissed in U.S. District Court in the summer of 2001.

(6) Ken Conklin: A retired Boston Public School teacher who joined other settlers in their public crusade to extinguish the political rights of Native Hawaiians by gaining access to Native resources, entitlements, and assets. Conklin, a recent white settler in the islands, ran an unsuccessful electoral campaign for an OHA Trustee seat in 2000.