Haunani-Kay Trask : REFLECTION QUESTION 1 : How has your relationship to teaching changed over the years?

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Transcript

When I first started teaching I was in American Studies and of course you're just really terrified of teaching. And especially because I was teaching American Studies and you know I hate America, so it was strange. 

And then I had all these people who were football players and threw paper airplanes in the class and were grabbing the girls, and I mean it was just like a public high school instead of college. And so I had a disciplinary problem. I was young, and young women teachers are always getting harassed in class by the male football players, so there was a lot of working through of presentation style and authority before you get to the subject matter. 

Then I left American Studies and came over to Hawaiian Studies and of course everything changed. Then as a program we had people who wanted to be here, who wanted to be in Hawaiian Studies. And then I began to teach the history of our people and that was wonderful. So that changed my relationship to the material as well as the relationship to the students, and it became the ultimate revolutionary praxis.(1) That's what I would say.

It is a miracle that I can do what I do, get paid, and have tenure. It's a miracle. It's a miracle that I can tell the truth about the overthrow.(2) The university tried to remove me three times and they failed every time. You can't do it. I mean I suppose you could get to other people, but you can't do it to me and they gave up. They'll never try and do it now. 

That's exactly how I look at teaching. It is the greatest thing anyone could want to do who is a seriously engaged person. After all, when you are creating a revolutionary moment you're a teacher. When you're traveling with Subcomandante Marcos,(3) you're a teacher and I see teaching in that way. I don't see teaching as a passive classroom bound endeavor. Not at all. This is my nation, my people, and I am theirs. We are together. We are historically bound together. What a great praxis to do that. 

All the great revolutionaries were great teachers. Mao,(4) Marcos, Aung San Suu Kyi.(5) Everybody who is a revolutionary is a teacher. In every sense of the word by example, by theory, by praxis. That's what you are. You're a teacher. 

So teaching is a revolutionary project and teaching your own people is twice as revolutionary. If I fancy myself a revolutionary I'm engaged in a revolutionary project. 

That's why I have a really hard time teaching other people in other places which I have done and it doesn't work. I can't do it. The closest thing is teaching poetry to American Indian students. That's different - they're Native, I'm Native. They just think of Hawaiians as another tribe. But I can't be teaching anywhere on the continent. It's not possible, I can't do it. I can give lectures, but I could never teach. 

My students ask me this all the time, I had to think it through - "When did you actually become someone who was engaged?" When I came home. And I consider everything before that to be - as it always is for students - a training ground. Whether it happened to be in Madison, or anti-war, or in Paris, that was all a training. A training. Not the application.

Notes

(1) Praxis: The ongoing and circular process of moving between a deep theoretical understanding of any given social reality, and the direct action taken to transform it. In regards to the process of learning and struggle, critical educator Paolo Freire states:

It is only when the oppressed find the oppressor out and become involved in the organized struggle for their liberation that they begin to believe in themselves. This discovery cannot be purely intellectual but must also involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism, but must include serious reflection: only then will it be a praxis. (Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1996 edition. page 47.)

(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) Subcomandante Marcos (b. 1957): Spokesperson of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), an indigenous uprising formed in response to over 500 years of colonization and genocide of the Mayan Indians in the Chiapas region in Southeastern Mexico. The Zapatista declaration of independence was delivered on January 1, 1994 - the same day NAFTA (North American Free-Trade Agreement) went into effect.

(4) Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Also Mao Tse-tung. Chinese theorist, revolutionary, and founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, serving as the country’s first head of state (1949-1959). He was also instrumental in leading the Long March (1934-1935), the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the founding of communes, and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969).

(5) Aung San Suu Kyi (b. 1945): Leader of the National League of Democracy (NLD) in Burma, 1991 Nobel Peace Laureate, and human rights spokesperson, Aung San Suu Kyi has led the nonviolent opposition to the military junta since its takeover of Burma in 1988.  Her written works include Freedom From Fear and Other Writings (1995) and Letters From Burma (1995).