At some point in the last year or two, I lost track of how to blog, of why I would blog. My blog has gone through a few different styles and phases, following me through a couple of moves in jobs and homes. I’m not too concerned about those shifts nor necessarily about not blogging. I spend enough time on computers and the internet, and I get tired of it. If I don’t have a compelling reason to blog, I figure that (1) there are certainly enough blathering blogs in the sea and (2) this is supposed to benefit me and people I care about somehow (i.e. it should be fun to write and read;  provide information that is really not getting through elsewhere; help build community, networks, or whatever else the internet can build).

Before I entered graduate school, this blog was more grounded in the happenings of the Asian Pacific Islander community writing workshops and other related nonprofit work I was doing. Now, in the thick of graduate school, sometimes it is hard for me to express an idea without tortured academic language, or to openly share ideas at all. We are pushed or self-conditioned to save our good stuff to publish, to not let others get the scoop, and not to publicize half-baked projects. I don’t think that is always bad advice but it can be a burdensome extra layer of thinking nonetheless about what you put out in public with your name attached to it- on top of other hesitations to putting things that can be close to the heart out here for friends, family, spammers, bots, and right-wing crazies to consume and comment on.

So, I have been asking myself what would make blogging worthwhile again. What work, what people and places, am I grounded in? What holes are there in e-conversations that I would like to fill, and what other conversations could I help start? I have some ideas but I realized the thing about blogging is that you can’t wait until you have the perfect tract formed, or else the momentum is gone and your blog is dusty.

There are folks whose blogs I look to often that I think have the goods- who ask good questions and get others talking and asking better questions too- in poetry world and academic-activist world. I’m grateful for their presence out here and would like to be better company myself.

Recently too, I’ve been taken with some blogs run on Tumblr, a host like WordPress, that claims to be the easiest way to blog. They make it very easy to repost items from other tumblrs, blogs, news items, whatever, just like how Facebook lets you post links to articles and videos. I like the way things look on Tumblr: photos look great, quotes are easily edited to highlight the punchiest part. And I also like that it’s quick to create posts and you don’t always need to add your commentary: it is more like you are collecting things in a shoebox. And sometimes others think what you’ve found are gems too (you can like or repost others items and they will appear as notes on the original item)- this can be an annoying echo chamber like Facebook and Twitter, but so far I’ve found the content quite good. A friend of mine keeps one at wordsandsteel, and the posts there and especially the ones at curate made me want to start one of my own.

So, I did, and you can find it at kith and koko.

More on that and on what I think can still inhabit this space soon.

They come first from England,
even though America is closer,
is still here, singing,

pounding,
panting.

Blue-eyed wolves blowing lightly
on my door with lullabies, sweet,
and hums, secret,

of reconciliation.

Whispering through the threshold
all their golden-haired
we-said-we’re-sorries, now

please-please, we must

be forgiven.

-excerpt from Sorry Day series, work-in-progress

***

I have had this mess of a poem or poems hanging around for a year or more now: my sorry day series, from which I read at Our Sea of Words recently. These were the poems I brought with me to VONA and Elmaz Abinader’s Political Content workshop last summer. While they got a lot of good feedback and attention there, I had put them down and in a busy year of other things not looked back. I am thinking now that I left VONA a bit more confused about my poetry than I admitted to myself then.

My experience of VONA was that it was generally a lovefest not unlike Our Sea of Words, albeit it was a very broad, diverse community of color with folks from all over, in a way that was especially welcoming and needed to me after a year of immersion in an academic program that sapped poetic language out of my writing. At VONA, I found myself writing more slam-style work (to me, more geared towards the performative, building speed and rhythm up in layers of anger) in workshop as I was influenced by others in the space, which was initially so satisfying, and later made me feel as if I were writing the same poem over and over. Angry and a little bit cute settler-go-home stuff, which I think is fun for everybody, myself included, in those spaces just not what I am interested in writing forever. This is not to say I think less of slam or spoken word or whatever labels folks find themselves using/contesting (I agree with others on how there is no slam or spoken word poetry, there is only poetry): I am trying to say here that the extra emphasis on performing (and perhaps performing on behalf of your particular community of color) at VONA was simultaneously exhilarating and uncomfortable, stimulating and stifling.

Anyway, so when I thought about what to read at Our Sea of Words, I could have picked my VONA performance pieces, but I just didn’t feel like I fit into them in the same way. My sorry day poems are uncomfortable to me too, and yet I am drawn to continuing the work on them, and so they took up the most time in my set list. Ryan mentioned that he thought what I could  have done better during that performance was to take more time to explain what Sorry Day is, where these ideas are coming from. I think he was right and yet I think I might want those poems to get to a place where explaining that is not a completely necessary introduction.

Sorry Day (I have written about it more here and here) is commemorated in Australia on May 26 every year as part of a push by Aboriginal activists to get the government to apologize and make reparations for the Stolen Generations: thousands of Aboriginal children who were forcibly removed from their families and put in state care, from the late 1800s to as recently as the 1980s. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd did officially apologize in 2007.

My own interest in the idea of Sorry Day follows the more general trend towards state apologies to colonized, enslaved, and other persecuted peoples (California, for example, just apologized for discriminatory practices towards Chinese immigrants who helped build the state in the 1800s). My interest is also particularly wedded to my experiences of Hawai’i, and the apology issued in 1993 by the U.S. Congress and President Clinton for the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. I am fascinated by the apologies beyond the criticism that they no doubt deserve (though folks tend to forget too that these apologies are often the culmination of years of hard work by community activists). I think there is much more to say about them and the historical losses they index in our maddening constantly-invoked-only-to-be-denied “post-racial” times. And yes, I think there is something poetic to them, and inevitably in our responses too.

I’ve just read this article by Performance Studies scholar José Muñoz called “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down” in which he attempts to theorize a “depression that is not one” in artist Nao Bustamante’s video piece Neopolitan. That is, in Bustamante’s film which shows the Latina artist crying at the end of a film set in 1970s Cuba (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Fresa y chocolate), Muñoz sees a racially-coded performance that is particular to Latinas, not a normative depression coded towards white male angst, but a “feeling brown” that addresses a historical particularity rather than a (supposed) universal one. To Muñoz, Bustamante’s form of depression is not one that asks to be repaired but uses the feeling as “a site of potentiality… Reparation is part of the depressive condition; it signals a certain kind of hope… It is a position in which the subject negotiates reality, resisting the instinct to fall into [delusion]…” I’m not sure that “feeling brown” covers it for me, if it could stretch or be a useful sounding point for something more applicable to indigenous and Pacific Islander “feelings” and community connections, but I am intrigued.

Maybe I have not made enough of the connections between the many thoughts here (and certainly they are not all there in my poem series yet) but this is where I am at, wondering about the potential embedded in big government apologies, in feeling sorry, in trying to be forgiven and how these things productively clash with feeling (or trying to feel) part of a “brown” community, feeling impatient with apologies, and yeah, feeling often depressed but far from done.

***

I saw you next outside, just in from Japan,
swinging the scales of apology,
dragging confusion.

Immediately, I wished you home without
the flash of Hiroshima, Nagasaki,
while other names paraded me by

Bataan, Nanjing, the old banal
Pearl Harbor.

Am I to tally these against you,
our would-be colonizers, as others

have, while our own complaints

stick in our throats-

We suck down your sea of
tourists, stalk trembling past Waikiki
weddings and gun ranges
installed for taking your pleasure in
the American pastime of shooting
black (outlines of) men.

Perhaps our genocide
is only slower, though I am unsure
if I can ever precipitate out
who from who.

-excerpt from Sorry Day series, work-in-progress

I’m not as quick on the blog review uptake as Oscar, Craig or Barbara Jane, but I wanted to write a bit about the reading I helped put together at downtown Berkeley’s Pegasus Books last Monday night.

The event came together through individually meeting and exchanging emails/Facebook messages with both Craig Santos Perez and Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu. Though I didn’t know either Craig or Fui very well, we have a lot of mutual friends through both the UC Ethnic Studies community (they being at Cal and I down at UC San Diego) and the Bay Area Pacific Islander communities. They had both heard that I was a poet through others, and they mentioned they would love to do a reading together if I were ever back in the Bay. I knew I was coming up in July for a visit and so we started talking dates and it all came together pretty easily. Craig invited Professor Caroline Sinavaiana, an acquaintance through them both being published with Tinfish Press, and Fui invited her sister Loa Niumeitolu. My friend Rachel Marcus at Pegasus said she would be happy to host us, and I was excited to read there because I always loved that store, and remember it always having a lot of poetry books and chapbooks.

My impression of the night was that it was a big lovefest- everyone, including me, was happy to be there, excited to meet the other readers and audience members, and enjoyed all the poetry and growing sense of togetherness. Loa said in her introductory remarks that the night was about finding a language where there just hasn’t been one. I think she meant both building languages of cultural/political alliance across Pacific Islander communities in general and perhaps diasporic ones in particular- as well as Pacific Islanders claiming/strengthening their diverse range of voices in poetry and literature. Fui also gave a heartfelt acknowledgment of Craig and Caroline as some of the few Pacific Islanders who have published poetry books, seeing them as folks to look up to and follow. Indeed, it felt great to me to have a mix of poetry experience in the reading, and many mentioned being honored especially by being able to read with and hear Caroline’s work as she was in that space a gracious elder, mentor, kumu.

My feeling about my own reading and work was that I am rusty. Especially compared to some of the solid, lovely work others read and I can’t wait to see again in print. In an ideal world, I would have worked harder to revise and write new work before the reading. I didn’t. I have been out of the poetry world for at least a year, in which school and other commitments have tied me up. Physically, of course, I am also away from the Bay Area and the poetry people and scenes I am familiar with. So, much of the night was simply about being ecstatic that I was reconnecting, that I was still recognizable as a poet to people. I actually think that ecstatic feeling, the lovefest and the related community building, is incredibly important and will push me to keep writing and work harder to be at least a little better next time. I am glad I shared some new work that wasn’t totally polished and now will return to it, maybe put some drafts up in this space even.

Certainly, the night also helped in the possibilities of having a next time: Craig mentioned wanting to get something together later this year in Southern California. I am hoping Our Sea of Words is the beginning of me tapping into a Pacific Islander poetry community that will eventually be not only a lovefest (which, again, was something I was really grateful for Monday night) but also a solid place of challenge and growth, with a presence not only at readings but online and yes, in print with Tinfish and other presses. Barbara Jane has some thoughts up on how community work is not always a lovefest, that it also gets confusing and hateful- and I am thinking I experienced that majorly this year but in the academic Pacific Islander community. Maybe more on that later, but for now: is it just me or does the Pinay writing community really rock at networking, creating an online presence, etc. (and put other writing communities of color, or whatever you’d like to call them, to shame)? I am so often drawn to Barbara Jane Reyes‘ and Kimberly Alidio’s blogs and their candidness about the process of writing, and of being a writer. This is not to say that these writing communities are always mutually exclusive (my experience has usually been in broad, diverse writing communities of color), but I wonder if Pacific Islanders will come to have anything like the Philippine American Writers and Artists blog, if and how it would work and benefit P.I. folks. I think maybe that is a conversation we could have in the future, as there is a growing online presence of Tongan, Chamoru, Kanaka Maoli, Samoan and other writers and artists. I joked later that the night was brought to you by Facebook, but it wasn’t really a joke: without it, I don’t know that I would have connected so easily with Craig and Fui, and Craig with Caroline, etc.

In the past, my readings at Kearny Street Workshop were photographed by some of the lovely Asian Am. scene photographers, like Jay Jao. I was thinking on my way there that it was too bad Jay wouldn’t be there to take pictures, but it turned out that Oscar Bermeo showed up and did us one better. For the love of community readings, he took pictures and videos, which are all available on YouTube. The rise of Facebook culture also ensured that many more photos than I even expected and a continuing lovefest are happening there too. In all, I feel extremely grateful to everyone (including many friends who are not poets or Pacific Islanders) who came out to support, and I’m looking forward to getting back to work, in terms of poems, community, and even this blog.

I’m incredibly lucky to be reading poetry soon with these other amazing Pacific Islander poets, Caroline Sinavaiana, Craig Santos Perez, Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu, and Loa Niumeitolu. Please stop by if you are in the Bay!

*

Our Sea of Words: Poetry from Oceania and Beyond

Monday, July 13, 2009
7:30 pm
Pegasus Books Downtown Berkeley
Shattuck Ave. at Durant

Maile Arvin is a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) poet from Kentucky and Hawai’i. Her work is published in two chapbooks by Kearny Street Workshop, Same Place, Same Time (2006) and 12 Ways: an anthology of the Intergenerational Writer’s Lab (2007). She is also a graduate student in the PhD program in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, San Diego.

Fuifuilupe Niumeitolu is a Tongan American scholar, poet and community activist. Her work has been published in Amerasia, The Contemporary Pacific and The Berkeley Poetry Review. Fuifuilupe is a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley and she is on the organizing committee of OLO; One Love Oceania, a Pacific Islander community response to homophobia.

Loa Niumeitolu’s poetry is published in Whetu Moana: Contemporary Polynesian Poetry in English. Her essay “The Route Back to Tonga,” is published in Homelands: Women’s Journeys Across Race, Place and Time. Niumeitolu is a community organizer around issues of prisons and incarceration. She is a founding member of One Love Oceania, a Pacific Island women’s queer support and political group in the Bay Area.

Craig Santos Perez, a native Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guahan (Guam), is the co-founder of Achiote Press and author of the poetry book from unincorporated territory [hacha] (Tinfish Press, 2008). He is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

Caroline Sinavaiana, Associate Professor of English at UH Manoa, teaches Oceanic and comparative literatures, and creative writing. She has published, lectured, and read her poetry and scholarship in many countries, including the US, China, India, Italy, Barbados, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and New Zealand. Poetry collections include: Alchemies of Distance (Tinfish, AA Arts, & Institute for Pacific Studies), and Mohawk/Samoa: Transmigrations (AA Arts). Her book on traditional comic theater in Samoa – House of the Spirits — is forthcoming from the Institute of Pacific Studies. At present, Sinavaiana is completing a new collection of poetry, and a memoir with the working title, Nuclear Medicine.

Hang gliders at Torrey Pines, San Diego

It’s been a long time since anything really happened in this space. I am trying to see if I can get back into it, working out what new functions this space could serve and what new stories could be told here. I am starting small, with a picture I took today. Sometimes I think I would like to photo blog; especially when a year of writing a thesis has wrung a lot of words out of me.

It is the beginning of my summer break. Across the street from my school is the Pacific Ocean, and a glider port where people (tourists, probably) take off and learn how to fly. I think it would be terrifying to jump off the cliffs attached to one of these, but they seem unbearably calm, looking up at them below. Maybe more terrifying would be trying to come back down- what if you just couldn’t force your way down? What if the landing hurt you?

Maybe I will post more photos here, and maybe they will force me to come back down into writing, writings of all sorts. I am going to be part of a poetry reading next month (in the Bay!, it’s in the works, more info soon). Is writing again, and finding poetry again, like riding a bike? Like being afraid of falling, or of landing? It is the beginning of my summer and I am finding out.

Kānaka Maoli Scholars Against Desecration

Second Statement on Naue, March 24, 2009

As Kānaka Maoli scholars we write to follow-up on our statement from September 13, 2008 publicly condemning the state-sponsored desecration of a Native Hawaiian burial site at Wainiha, Kaua`i resulting from the construction of a new home at Naue Point by California real estate developer Joseph Brescia.  Both the state abuse of power and the desecration continue unabated and must come to a halt.

In the late 1980s, in response to a massive burial site disturbance at Honokahua, Maui, Kanaka Maoli came together to challenge the laws that allowed this type of sacrilege. As a result of this history, five Island Burial Councils were created and are administratively attached to the State Historic Preservation Division (SHPD) of the Department of Land and Natural Resources to address concerns relating to Native Hawaiian burial sites.  By Hawai`i state statute, the composition of each island Burial Council must consist of a majority of Kānaka Maoli.  The preservation criteria established by state law favor the “preservation in place” of burial sites that contain a “concentration of skeletal remains,” or are “pre-contact” or “historic period” burial sites associated with important individuals and events.

At Naue, there are 30 known burial remains within less than half of an acre, with a high likelihood that more remains are present. Naue is a significant historical site that is frequently acknowledged in hula, oli, mele, and other Hawaiian knowledge sources.  Accordingly, the Kaua`i-Ni`ihau Island Burial Council appropriately voted to preserve in place the burial site on the property claimed by Brescia.

In complete contradiction to both their own state law, and the April 3, 2008 determination adopted by the island Burial Council to preserve the burials in place, the SHPD improperly approved a “Burial Treatment Plan” for Brescia without the required consultation with the island Burial Council.  The Burial Treatment Plan was submitted by Mike Dega, the archaeologist hired by Joseph Brescia as a consultant in support of his building a private home atop of the burial site.

The SHPD’s own rules empower the island Burial Council to determine the disposition of previously known burials.  The island Burial Council’s decision on this issue is supposed to be binding. Yet, SHPD deputy administrator Nancy McMahon sanctioned the use of vertical buffers and concrete caps on the burials to make way for installing the footings of Brescia’s house.  Her authorization for such an intrusive “preservation” measure is a fundamental repudiation of the power allocated to all of the island Burial Councils.

By ignoring the decision of the island Burial Council, her actions undermine both the very concept of historic preservation and the reason for the founding of the island Burial Councils.  Tragically, before a court could intervene, and based on McMahon’s unauthorized agreements, Brescia’s team managed to install massive house foundations on a portion of the cemetery.

The Kaua`i Planning Commission’s approval of Brescia’s house plans included a specific condition issued in a letter dated December 12, 2007 that “No building permit shall be issued until requirements of the State Historic Preservation Division and the Burial Council have been met.” The requirements of the island Burial Council have not been met; the Council recommended that there be no building upon the cemetery.  SHPD covered up the island Burial Council’s decision by trying to pretend that vertical buffers and concrete jackets constitute “preservation”; they do not.

During the consultation required by the preliminary October 2008 court ruling, on November 6, 2008, the island Burial Council recommended that the SHPD reject the revised Burial Treatment Proposal submitted by Dega. Therefore, Brescia still has not met the requirements of the island Burial Council and thus, the building permit should be revoked.  Because the Kaua`i Planning Commission’s December 2007 approval was specifically conditioned on Brescia’s meeting the island Burial Council’s requirements, there is no real approval of Brescia’s house plans.  The island Burial Council made clear the proposal to build on the burial site was culturally unacceptable to its members, which is why the Council rejected the revised Burial Treatment Plan.  The Kaua`i Planning Commission should be held accountable to rescind the conditional approval it gave, since its requirements were not met.

In the midst of this ongoing desecration, last month, on February 4, 2009, the SHPD wrote a letter to Dega acknowledging his sixth proposed Burial Treatment Plan.  This is the same Burial Treatment Plan that McMahon circulated to Native Hawaiian Organizations for consultation as part of a court order by Judge Watanabe on October 2, 2008.  The outcome of this consultation with Native Hawaiian Organizations was their sweeping rejection of the proposal.  Without any regard for this rejection, the SHPD letter to Dega states, “at this time we cannot accept the Burial Treatment Plan without some revisions which are to be addressed below” and then outlines seven concerns for him to deal with such as detailing a landscape plan for burials outside of the house footprint. In other words, the letter basically instructs Dega to revise the Burial Treatment Plan in order for SHPD to approve it.  This is unacceptable; if McMahon’s decision is reaffirmed despite the outcome of the consultation with Native Hawaiian Organizations that clearly rejected the proposal, it would set a dangerous precedent and strip the island Burial Councils of any meaningful authority.

To date, 5th Circuit Judge Kathleen Watanabe has denied requests for a temporary restraining order and has even refused to grant a temporary injunction to stop further construction until the full civil suit is adjudicated by the state court.   The civil suit — Joseph Brescia v. Ka`iulani Huff, et al. — currently in progress is a travesty.  Brescia is suing at least 17 individuals–almost all of whom are Kānaka Maoli–implicated in protecting the burial site from his construction work. Beside trespass, Brescia has accused them of five other counts: private nuisance and harassment, tortious interference with contract, civil conspiracy described as “terroristic threatening”, intentional interference, ejectment, and slander of title.  We stand in solidarity with the defendants.  Brescia has no one else to blame but himself; he knowingly took the chance of building his house over a grave site when the essence of the island Burial Council’s action was to preserve all burials remains in place.

We must remind the state agencies that their own law, Hawai`i revised statute 711-1107 on Desecration, specifically states that no one may commit the offense of desecrating “a place of worship or burial,” and the statute defines “desecrate” as “defacing, damaging, polluting, or otherwise physically mistreating in a way that the defendant knows will outrage the sensibilities of persons likely to observe or discover the defendant’s action.”

We call on all people of conscience to join in our condemnation of the desecration of the ancestral remains by:

* holding the Kaua`i Planning Commission accountable for upholding their own condition by finding Brescia in violation of it by starting to build;

* demanding that the SHPD honor the Kaua`i-Ni`ihau Island Burial Council’s original decision to preserve the burial site without any construction;

* insisting that the SHPD respect the outcome of the court-ordered consultation process and reject the Burial Treatment Plan;

* supporting an end to the illegal construction supported by the state; and

* protesting Brescia’s lawsuit targeted at those who have served to prevent the further degradation of the bones of our kūpuna.

Signed,

Hokulani Aikau, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Political Science,
University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Carlos Andrade, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Maile Arvin, M.A. candidate, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California San Diego

J. Leilani Basham, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i at West O`ahu

Kamanamaikalani Beamer, Ph.D., Mellon-Hawai`i Postdoctoral Fellow, Kohala Center, Hawai`i

Kealani Robinson Cook, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Michigan

Lani Cupchoy, Ph.D. Candidate, History, University of California, Irvine

Lisa Kahaleole Hall, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies, Wells College

Sydney Lehua Iaukea, Ph.D., Mellon-Hawai`i Postdoctoral Fellow, Kohala Center, Hawai`i

Lilikalā Kame`eleihiwa, Ph.D., Professor, Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Anthropology and American Studies, Wesleyan University

Kanani K. M. Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Geology & Geophysics, Yale University

Jon Kamakawiwo`ole Osorio, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Lessa Kanani`opua Pelayo, M.L.I.S. Candidate, B.A., University of California, Los Angeles

Kekailoa Perry, J.D. Assistant Professor, Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Keanu Sai, Ph.D., Lecturer Kapiolani Community College

Noenoe K. Silva, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Political Science, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Ph.D. Candidate, Program in American Culture, University of Michigan

Ty Kāwika Tengan, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Anthropology and Ethnic Studies, University of Hawai`i at Mānoa

Haunani-Kay Trask, Ph.D., Professor, Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies, University of Hawai`i, Mānoa

Liza Keanuenueokalani Williams, Ph.D. student, New York University

Erin Kahunawaika`ala Wright, Ph.D. Director of Native Hawaiian Student Services, Hawai’inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge

——-
Contact: J. Kehaulani Kauanui
Ph: 860-638-1264
Email: jkauanui@wesleyan.edu
——–

TAKE ACTION

Please cc: all letters and emails to:  J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Center
for the Americas, Wesleyan University, 255 High Street, Middletown, CT
06459.
Email: jkauanui@wesleyan.edu

Write the Kaua`i Planning Commission, State Historic Preservation
Division Officials, Governor Linda Lingle, Joseph Brecia, and the Mayor of
Kaua`i.

See addresses below:

Ian Costa
Director of Planning
County of Kaua`i

4444 Rice Street, Suite 473

Lihue, HI 96766
icosta@kauai.gov

Laura Thielan, Chairperson
State of Hawaii, Department of Land and Natural Resources
State Historic Preservation Division
601 Kamokila Blvd., Room 555
Kapolei, HI 96707
dlnr@hawaii.gov

Pua Aiu, Administrator
State Historic Preservation Division
601 Kamokila Blvd., Room 555
Kapolei, HI 96707
pua.aiu@hawaii.gov

Nancy McMahon, Deputy Administrator
State Historic Preservation Division
601 Kamokila Blvd., Room 555
Kapolei, HI 96707
Nancy.A.McMahon@hawaii.gov

Governor Linda Lingle
State of Hawai`i
Executive Chambers
State Capitol
Honolulu, Hawai`i  96813
governor.lingle@hawaii.gov

Joseph Brescia, President
Architectural Glass & Aluminum
1151 Marina Village Parkway, Suite 101
Alameda, CA 94501
jbrescia@aga-ca.com

Bernard P. Carvalho, Jr.
Mayor, County of Kauai
4444 Rice St., Suite 235
Lihue, HI 96766
mayor@kauai.gov

Today is the anniversary of Queen Lili’uokalani’s overthrow in 1893. There was a march in Waikiki that I would have loved to be at, in honor of her and in protest of the ceded lands appeal being pushed through to the US Supreme Court by our Governor Linda Lingle.

Today Israel also begins a ceasefire and occupation, after the death toll in Gaza is near 1,200 Palestinians.

I haven’t had much time or energy for writing here, but I did want to re-post the statement our department drafted in response to Israel’s destruction in Palestine.

—

UCSD Ethnic Studies Department Statement on the Racial Violence in the Gaza Strip

The faculty and graduate students in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California San Diego condemn the most recent actions by the State of Israel in the Gaza Strip, commencing with the air strikes that began on December 27, 2008 and the ground invasions, which started on January 4, 2009. Both have resulted in the death and mutilation of a large number of Palestinian civilians. While Israel argues that it is targeting Hamas militants, the astounding number of civilian deaths (exceeding 900 as of January 13, 2009) shows a blatant lack of concern for Palestinian lives. They result from Israel’s targeting of hospitals, mosques, schools, residential buildings and other civilian locations, a practice that cannot be supported by the self-defense argument reproduced by media outlets and endorsed by the US government.

As critical scholars in the field of racial and ethnic studies we interpret these violent actions as an indication of how, in the global order, people of color and the places they live are irrelevant to international legal instruments and moral principles. In short, the most recent deployment of the Israeli military arsenal constitutes nothing more nor less than another episode of racial violence. For this reason, we believe that the current military aggression cannot be divorced from Israel’s overall policy of violence against Palestinians, which includes the strategies deployed during periods of “cease fire” such as tactics that deny access to basic necessities including food, water and health care for the Palestinian residents of the Gaza strip. The recent aerial bombing and ground invasions further this systematic practice of racial violence preventing the Red Cross, the UN and other humanitarian organizations from providing urgently needed assistance to the people of Gaza.

In this unique historic moment, on the eve of the inauguration of the first African-American president, we expect the United States government and the American people to condemn such practices of racial violence in no uncertain terms. Unfortunately, we hear a repetition of the argument that Israel is exercising its right to self-defense. It is inconceivable that a society that prides itself on its respect for human rights, and now celebrates another milestone in the road towards racial justice, fails to recognize that Israel’s military objectives, the destruction of Hamas, cannot justify the indiscriminate killing of men and women, young and old, just because they live in the Gaza Strip, because they are Palestinians. This generalized construction of the enemy is at the core of racial violence. It criminalizes a whole population. It aliments existing representations of Arabs, Muslims, and Brown people in general as ‘criminal/terrorists.’ In sum, it justifies otherwise morally untenable acts of total violence.

We hope that the Obama administration will remain consistent with its call for change, that it will issue a forceful condemnation of Israel’s killing of Palestinians, and will review long-held US policies, cutting the military, economic, and political support that provide implicit and explicit backing of Israel’s practices of racial terror.  We are convinced that only such a stance will reflect a true commitment to peace in the Middle East. More importantly, it will signal the seriousness of the call for change that is the hallmark of the incoming Obama administration.  Any policy that accepts Israel’s right to self-defense as a justification for racial massacre, in this case the systematic extermination of Palestinians, favors complicity over change.

We did a Voicing Indigeneity podcast last night, about Obama’s win and what it does and doesn’t mean to us personally and as Ethnic Studies scholars. Rashne Limke shared her experiences working for the Obama campaign in Las Vegas for the last two weeks. Kit Myers brought up Bill Bennett’s disgusting assertion that people of color “have no excuse anymore.”  Ma Vang told us about how this was her dad’s first time voting in an American presidential election. Angie Morrill talked about hope and hopelessness especially for indigenous folks in America now. And I rambled on some about the Akaka bill, and how terrifying it is that it is better poised than ever to pass (as recognition, in the same way perhaps that Obama represents some kind of recognition of African-Americans, is not necessarily all bad but it is dangerous in new ways).

You probably have been having similar conversations all week, but did you sing Wilson-Phillips “Hold on” at the end of them? I didn’t think so. Go to Voicing Indigeneity or here to listen.

(Or, why I refuse to spend another election night crying.)

So, we’re still doing this fall back, spring forward daylight savings thing, huh? Does anyone know why?

And we finally going to vote this week, in an election that you’ve either gotten very tired of a long while back (possibly with the exception of Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin) or you’re very zealously pinning your hopes on one candidate. I started the election season impressed by Obama and his popularity; now I am more worried. What are we all going to do after Tuesday, Obama or no Obama? This is not to engage in a debate about how much ‘hope’ and ‘change’ Obama is going to bring. In our more vulnerable moments, I think most of us understand that national presidential politics is not a system built to change the terrain of any of the political issues that are most important to us. Obama has said as much, retooling that June Jordan quote- “We are the ones we have been waiting for”- to ask us to believe in our potential to change, not just his. Of course, he would like us to believe in ourselves but maybe after we believe in him enough to get him into office.

So, will it be after Nov. 4th that we can recognize how this election about race and gender also included the first black female candidate Cynthia McKinney? And how in California, the proposition system allows out-of-state funding to propel discriminatory constitutional amendments (Prop 8 ) AND dramatic restrictions of abortion rights (Prop 4) AND drastic increases to the prison-industrial complex (Props 6 and 9)?

I love all my friends who are passionately against Prop 8 and I agree. But surely we can argue against it without using the same rhetoric that the conservative Right is using (protect our families). The fight for marriage equality is important but it cannot be framed as the civil rights struggle of our generation- because that presumes civil rights struggles of the 50s and 60s have been totally successful. It also presumes that no one fought for gay rights before us- will this change after we all see the new Harvey Milk movie? Voting no on prop 8 should be a starting place to change the way the state recognizes all of our relationships, and to open up legal and financial protections between people who need it whether they are married or not.

In Hawai’i, voters are deciding on a new mayor (an incumbent bent on pushing through an expensive and convoluted rail project) and on whether or not to hold a Constitutional Convention, which (due to shifts in power in the state) could significantly scale back Native Hawaiian rights that were gained at a Con-Con in the 1970s. At this year CNHA’s, I listened to a speaker tell us to believe in the people and trust that a Con-Con would go well for Native Hawaiians. Believing in ourselves is not the same as believing in electoral politics. And that is not a nihilistic stance: that radical change has never come about that way does not mean that radical change has never happened. It does mean that progress can be lost, and we have to be willing to re-articulate our struggles over and over again.

None of this is to say voting is useless. If you can vote, of course, do. But it is to say: don’t just vote. And don’t believe that electoral politics is totalizing. Especially for those of us who are privileged enough to be enjoying a certain level of material wealth whoever is in the Oval Office- we can and should do more.

I’m so ready to start talking about after Nov. 4th.