I'm sure it was cool back when the Hawaiians were in charge, but now it's become like every other used-to-be-indigenous land in the States--unloved and uncared for. Don't ask for sovereignty unless you're willing to a) give up everything the white man brought and b) take care of your freaking aina. Yeah, no more
And, of course, I will get lynched for saying this, because of my skin color. If I were browner it would be fine for me to say something like this, but because of my heritage I'm being an "ignorant racist cracker".
I'm not racist, but I do see what's going on, and yes, I do make generalizations based on what people tend to do. White people nowadays have an almost guilty air about them (the decent ones anyway--I'm not including the KKK in this generalization), as if they need to make up for what their ancestors did. So they fling themselves into Greenpeace and Maui Peace Action and cultures that don't belong to them, trying to make up for the mistakes of our past by holding on to what we almost destroyed, while indigenous people embrace the culture of the very people that raped, pillaged, and took whatever they had. And we continue to take it--white people are just that---white until written on. We're ambiguously European--we lack any real culture. Just a melting pot of everything else. So we latch onto whatever else we can find. A lot of kids here in Hawaii choose Japanese culture. I've chosen Mayan. And then we try to keep the traditions of our "chosen culture" alive in order to make up for the thousands of cultures we've destroyed.
Most of the hippies---the ones who have rejected taker capitalist culture--in Paia are white, whereas when I go to Wal-mart I see that 70% of the customers there are local. What's wrong with this picture? You ask for sovereignty, but if given back your land what would you do with it? I walk past your house and see ten dead cars on the lawn which has no green on it whatsoever and a brand-new SUV in the garage with flowerpots that grow dirt and cigarette butts, and I'm supposed to support your cry for sovereignty? I sit at school and I watch almost all the students throw their recycling in the trash, and I'm supposed to believe you care that damn much?
Sure--hate me for being white, for saying what you don't want to hear, for seeing the goddamn truth--hate me for all these things. But in the end, who's caring for the aina? You or me?
When you can answer that satisfactorily, then you will have true sovereignty--because that's what it is. Taking care of your land. That's what a [good] sovereign did. That's what we need to do.
