Haunani-Kay Trask : REFLECTION QUESTION 5 : What does the public think about Haunani-Kay Trask?

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Transcript

But it is shocking. I think people are shocked on lots of levels to challenge, as a Hawaiian woman - a short Hawaiian woman - to challenge the image of the hula dancer, of the soft, kind, compliant Native person. To challenge all those images is hard, but you know we've been at it for 20 years now.

I wouldn't... I don't think there's anybody in Hawaiʻi who doesn't know the kind of person I am, assuming that they know me. If you were to ask people, "Do you know Haunani-Kay Trask?" the ones who said yes already know the kind of person I am. There's lots of people who probably say no, but that's to me an indication of how successful we've been in conveying the whole issue of the overthrow, the necessity for sovereignty, indigenous human rights, women's mana.(1) We've been very successful… 

The press likes to say that the general public hates me. Well, who is the general public? You mean the general Hawaiian public? Which public are you talking about? Then they do these periodic polls and there's the Trask sisters,(2) and they just go, "Hmmm!" You know the newspapers represent classes. We have two white newspapers.(3) Then there's Hawaii Hochi, but they don't really count, or Hawaii Herald. But in the larger population there's only two papers, and they're both the same paper. They're the same white ruling class paper. So if we had our own newspapers then we'd be in a better position to tell what kind of sense the Hawaiians have about their leadership, not the Star Bulletin, or The Advertiser. 

But in general I think that the Hawaiian people, even if they disagree with what Mililani(4) and I say, or the nature of our comments, we've been out there. 20 years is a long time. 

And you know, my office has a framed poster of Malcolm X,(5) and he has a gun over his shoulder, and he's looking out the window. And that's been there for years. And that's who I look at when I'm at my desk and when people walk in and sit on my couch when Malcolm hangs above them and they look at me, there's two pictures of Malcolm on one side and a Hawaiian warrior on the other side. I am who I say I am, and after a while people not only get used to it, but some people actually come to understand what you're saying and to support you. And the only people I care about are my people. I don't care about anybody else thinks. Why should I? They don't care what Hawaiians think.

Notes

(1) Mana: Supernatural or divine power; to have mana, power.

(2) "The Trask sisters": Referring to both herself and her younger sister, Mililani.

(3) The Honolulu Advertiser and The Honolulu Star-Bulletin: The two largest settler daily newspapers in Hawaiʻi.

(4) Mililani Trask (b. 1951): Lawyer, nationalist, and political leader (founder and first elected Governor of Ka Lāhui Hawaiʻi) who has worked extensively in the area of human rights for indigenous peoples both in Hawaiʻi and internationally.

(5) Malcolm X (1925-1965): Also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. African-American political leader, advocate of human rights and Black nationalism, and a trenchant critic of the racism and militarism of U.S. foreign and domestic policies:

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country. (Malcolm X, from a November 1963 speech in New York City.)

Excerpt from "The Politics of Academic Freedom as the Politics of White Racism."

...As Frantz Fanon has taught us, dark skin and dark people are the classic bogeyman of the haole. White people know that all over the world people of color have been brutally and unjustly treated by white imperialism. White people know how violent they have been to each other and to us and they know our grievances are real; and thus they imagine how much more violent we would be to them, with our real history of violations. This is why every demand for respect and recognition of dignity on our part is read as a sign of violence. This is why white people so fear black people in the United States, despite the fact that it is white people who have a history of violence against black people and not the other way around. White violence, then, has a long and sick history - in the world, in the Americas, in the Pacific, and right here in Hawaiʻi. And this continues to be denied

(Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, revised edition. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999. page 175.)