Haunani-Kay Trask : PRACTICE QUESTION 6 : Why was it so important to fight to create a Center for Hawaiian Studies building at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa?

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Transcript

Of all my accomplishments, Hawaiian Studies will surely stand as one of the greatest, because it was nonexistent before that. It had a half-time director. And there's no way that Hawaiians have not taken up their position on this campus. Now, what happens after my generation, who knows? 

But there's always the potential, because it's here. And the great achievement was the building.(1) Once the building is here, you have a place. Once you have a place, you always have revolutionary potential. You gotta have that place, though. You don't have a place, you're gone. 

And I think it's wonderful for the Hawaiian people to see it. It's one of the most concrete, visible products of the sovereignty movement,(2) is the building. Now what happens after this, you don't know.

Notes

(1) The Center for Hawaiian Studies building: More than a century after the overthrow and 90 years after the creation of the University of Hawaiʻi, Native Hawaiians succeeded in obtaining their own building on campus. However, approval of the building took years of struggle, led by then-director Haunani-Kay Trask against various state and university opposition. The Hawaiian Studies complex was finally completed in 1996, with the dedication ceremonies held in January, 1997. The award-winning building complex sits on five acres and is composed of classrooms, an open-air auditorium, library, seminar rooms, faculty offices, audio-visual theater, and a three-acre kalo (taro) garden. 

(2) sovereignty movement: A decades long struggle by Hawaiians to reclaim their nation, land, and resources from their colonial overseer, the United States. Haunani-Kay Trask writes:

More akin to the American Indian Movement than to the Black Civil Rights Movement, the Hawaiian Movement began as a battle for land rights but would evolve, by 1980, into a larger struggle for native Hawaiian autonomy. Land claims first appeared, as in Kalama Valley, as community-based assertions for the preservation of agricultural land against resort and subdivision use. By the mid 1970s, these claims had broadened to cover military-controlled lands and trust lands specifically set aside for Hawaiians by the U.S. Congress but used by non-beneficiaries. (Haunani-Kay Trask, "The Birth of the Modern Hawaiian Movement: Kalama Valley, Oʻahu," The Hawaiian Journal of History, Honolulu: Hawaiian Historical Society, 1987, p.126.)

During the 1980's and 1990's, the sovereignty movement continued to evolve. In 1993, over 15,000 Native Hawaiians marched to the ʻIolani Palace, the site of the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom.  Under the leadership of Mililani Trask, Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi created a comprehensive plan for achieving sovereignty, the “Hoʻokupu a Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi:  The Master Plan” (1995) which can be found in Haunani-Kay Trask’s From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi.

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Excerpt from “Native Student Organizing: The Case of the University of Hawaiʻi.”

Hawaiian Studies is part of the larger Hawaiian Sovereignty movement. We are part of the struggle for Native control over Native lands and Native communities. We represent Hawaiians in resistance at the University of Hawaiʻi, and we are consciously focused on training cadres for the nationalist front of our movement. My students come into our center, then, partly because we are engaged in the study of our culture and history but also because we are Native nationalists.

For students, as for any other organic group, organizing occurs at the site of engagement. The campus - where students study, live, and work - is the primary site of their resistance. This is not to say that students do not participate in community efforts, but the main arena of student resistance is the campus. It has to be, since that is where the forces of power penetrate and construct student lives.

(Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, revised edition. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999. page 186.)