There are four things you should know,” says David Fuertes to the youths he mentors. “You should know your origins, because your ancestors have paved the way. You should know your values and connect in those values, because that’s going to drive you to make decisions. You should know your purpose, because that will show the ‘why’ of what you’re doing. And you should envision the ultimate for yourself and your lāhui [or ‘people’].”
Fuertes is the executive director of Kahua Pa’a Mua, an education-focused agriculture nonprofit in North Kohala, on the bucolic northern tip of Hawai‘i Island (also known as the Big Island). It’s one of many organizations that have popped up in the past decade in pursuit of food security and resilience in the Aloha State.
Some of these organizations were founded in the wake of legislation introduced in 2012 that acknowledged that Hawai‘i had become “dangerously dependent” on imported food. At the time, 92% of Hawai‘i’s food was being imported, which meant that in the event of a natural disaster or global catastrophe, the islands would have only seven days to survive.
On the heels of the Food, Energy, and Conservation Act, a $288 billion five-year agriculture policy bill passed by Congress amid the Great Recession, Hawai‘i’s bill called for the expansion of agriculture in order to cut down on expenditures, create more jobs, and keep money within local economies.
However, before the state legislation was even introduced, North Kohala—an area zoned mainly for agriculture—already had a plan to reach 50% food self-sufficiency by 2020. The community has yet to chart their progress, but Kahua Pa’a Mua is one of the smaller nonprofits to help make big steps toward that goal.
Caring for the Community
Founded in 2010 by Fuertes and his wife, Carol, Kahua Pa’a Mua operates on the premise that true, lasting sustainability comes not only from partnering with the land, but from empowering community members to take care of one another.
With several years of business management experience, Carol Fuertes serves as the nonprofit’s secretary and treasurer. David Fuertes brought the vision, along with 30-plus years of teaching agriculture in the Hawai‘i Department of Education, and experience in youth mentorship after he retired. Both wanted to focus their work on area youth when they created the organization—initially an expansion of a family-oriented taro cooperative.
“If you want food for a year, plant taro. [If] you want food for more than a year, plant a tree. But if you want to feed the community for a lifetime, invest in our children,” says David Fuertes, who comes from a long line of homesteaders and community builders. He moved to Kohala in 1975, but grew up in Kauai, where his father, who emigrated from the Philippines, worked on a sugar cane plantation and helped organize fellow laborers to strike for better work conditions and pay.
Kahua Pa’a Mua now hosts a mentorship program that teaches students from ages 13 to 18 about animal husbandry and crop production to grow and distribute food throughout the community. The program gets its name from Ho’okahua Ai, which means, “to build a foundation of nutrition, sustenance, communication, and sharing.”
While other youth initiatives throughout the islands use organic farming, at Kahua Pa’a Mua, the students employ Korean Natural Farming methods that fertilize soil with indigenous micro-organisms (IMOs)—bacteria, fungi, nematodes, protozoa—from one’s surroundings rather than inorganic fertilizers. Invented in Korea in the mid-1960s by Cho Han-kyu (also known as “Master Cho”), these methods have become widely used in Hawai‘i, but have yet to gain traction on the U.S. mainland. Besides producing high yield crops, these techniques help produce healthy soil and sequester carbon, which lessens greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’s pretty much growing nature by using nature,” says Jamiel Ventura, 21, who started off in Kahua Pa’a Mua’s youth mentorship program and has since returned as a farm assistant through the Honolulu-based nonprofit KUPU, which facilitates youth-focused environmental programs. Ventura first became interested in agriculture in middle school through a video game called Viva Piñata, where players plant crops in garden plots. It was Fuertes’ teaching of Korean Natural Farming that fully ignited Ventura’s passion.
Jamiel Ventura proudly stands behind his demonstration of the critical components of Korean Natural Farming. Photo by Libby Leonard.
But even Fuertes only began using these techniques in 2008, after being invited to the University of Hawai‘i to see Master Cho give a clinic. His motivation to teach this cleaner method of farming came when his son died of cancer.
Before the Fuertes’ son died, at age 36, doctors found trace amounts of 2,4,5-T (Trichlorophenoxyacetic acid) in his body, one ingredient in an herbicide once used on their family farm. The acid was also a component of Agent Orange, an herbicide and defoliant used as part of chemical warfare in the Vietnam War. Banned by the EPA in 1979, 2,4,5-T was used during the plantation era, and still lingered in the community for some time after. According to David Fuertes, if you knew who to ask, you could still get it.
“Being born and raised on a sugar plantation, chemical usage was a way of life,” he says, adding, “We irresponsibly used it to get the job done without thinking of consequences.”
Now David Fuertes works to make sure the health of crops extends to the health of the people as well as the conservation and preservation of the environment.
“The idea is if you take care of the land, the land takes care of you,” he says.
Feeding One Another
In the mid-18th century, North Kohala was home to 40,000 people who used systems of subsistence they developed to protect and restore both the land and the ocean. During that time, the concept of private property ownership didn’t exist. After Capt. James Cook’s arrival on the island in 1778, however, foreign investors’ interest in sugar mounted, eventually upending Hawaiians’ way of life. In the 19th century, Kohala was home to six of the state’s dozens of sugar cane plantations, but by the 1990s, these exploitative businesses had dried up as sugar production moved to other countries.
Today Kohala has roughly 6,500 residents, most of whom work in the ailing tourism industry. The land that is zoned for agriculture has been bought up mostly by the wealthy, many of whom don’t use their property as farmland, making it largely inaccessible to the community to grow crops. This blocks Kohala from being the food basket it once was and could be again.
After working as a land custodian for a mainland developer, David Fuertes got lucky and was given 5 acres. That land, which is part of the nonprofit’s learning lab, contains their brand new certified imu, a traditional underground oven. They hope eventually, with enough funding, the lab will have a processing plant that can be used to cook food for schools and the community.
The other 5 acres Fuertes acquired came through a landowner Fuertes knew through Future Farmers of America. It had been sitting idle for 20 years before the owner asked whether Fuertes could use it. In addition to the youth mentorship program, this land houses the nonprofit’s Ohana Agriculture Resilience initiative. Launched in 2019 with the hope of creating a revolution in backyard food sustainability, it provides 10 families with two 100-foot crop rows on their farm for free. Over the course of a year, families learn various aspects of farming and animal husbandry, and can grow whatever they please.
Once they graduate from the program, the families have a choice of equipment to continue their own operations at home. Options include a mobile pen called a chicken tractor to raise chickens, an odorless pigpen that composts manure and processes toxins under the pig’s feet, or an aquaponics tank to grow fish and soil-less produce.
“I got so much out of the program, and we established a network with all the other families,” says David Gibbs, who, along with his wife, Leah, and two children, were part of the initiative’s first Ohana Agriculture Resilience cohort. The Gibbs had recently moved from Utah so their children could grow up in a place knowing where their food came from. Now, the Gibbs’ yard has a garden filled with a variety of fruits and vegetables as well as chickens, whose eggs they share with the community.
One reason the programs are so successful is because of David Fuertes’ warmth. “He always makes us feel welcome,” says Joël Tan, who is part of the current cohort with his husband. Tan is the social impact director for a local organization called 1HeartHub. He found Kahua Pa’a Mua while conducting a needs assessment in the area. Tan and his husband are now growing napa cabbage, uala, and utong, and after the program, they hope to start a garden in their half-acre backyard. “At the end of the day, it’s grace in this time of quarantine,” Tan says.
Brandon McCarthy, who is also part of the initiative with his wife and children, says their wish is to grow some produce for local food drives. “I think the spirit of aloha is a real and tangible thing,” he says, “and it’s programs like these that make me feel it the most.”
David Fuertes says in Hawaiian culture that alo means many things, like “love,” “aina” [or “land”], “the universe,” and that ha means “breath.” So when you say aloha to someone, you’re actually giving your breath. “It’s more than just a greeting,” he says. “It’s giving part of your life.”
Correction: This story was updated at 2:38 pm on April 1, 2021 to clarify that KUPU is an independent non-profit, not a division of AmeriCorps. Read our editorial corrections policy here.
LIBBY LEONARDis a freelance journalist with work in National Geographic Digital, the SF Gate, and forthcoming from others.
MAUNA KEA, Hawaii – The permit allowing the Thirty Meter Telescope to be built and operated on Mauna Kea has been thrown out by the Hawaii Supreme Court.
In the conclusion of a 58 page opinion written by Chief Justice Mark E. Recktenwald, the court vacated the lower circuit court’s “May 5, 2014 Decision and Order Affirming Board of Land and Natural Resources, State of Hawaii’s Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decision and Order Granting Conservation District Use Permit for the Thirty Meter Telescope at the Mauna Kea Science Reserve Dated April 12, 2013, and final judgment thereon.” The Supreme Court remanded the matter to the circuit court “to further remand to BLNR for proceedings consistent with this opinion, so that a contested case hearing can be conducted before the Board or a new hearing officer, or for other proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
As many predicted after hearing the court’s questions during the oral arguments presented on August 27 (video below), the court found that the Board of Land and Natural Resources “acted improperly when it issued the permit prior to holding a contested case hearing.” The court says BLNR’s February 25, 2011 approval violated Hawaii’s constitutional guarantee of due process.
Many view the debate surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope’s proposed construction on Mauna Kea and Kanaka Maolis’ opposition to it as fundamentally a question of science versus culture. On the benign end, the word “science” has come to connote something close to cool and objective rationality – nothing more nor less than a collection of knowledge to be used in man’s (isn’t it always “man’s”?) noble aim to transcend nature. More malevolently, however, pitting science against indigenous culture is nothing more than insidious racism. This racism operates on the often unchallenged claim that science is an inherently western way of knowing and therefore superior to indigenous ways of knowing.
In fact, some Mauna Kea protectors wish to avoid this rhetorical ploy so strongly they can be heard saying, “We’re not against science, we’re just against building this telescope on Mauna Kea.” Their words imply that the telescope could be built somewhere else and western science allowed to run its course everywhere but here.
Personally, I am against the construction of telescopes anywhere and I have lots of problems with western science. I am careful to emphasize the adjective “western” in western science because Kanaka Maolis often remind me that they’ve always known many of the things western science claims to have discovered. Remember, as Mauna Kea protector Hualalai Keohula has reminded me, that Kanaka Maoli navigated the world’s largest and greatest ocean in canoes built with wood and stone, aided with nothing more powerful than the naked human eye, centuries before the West realized the world was round. This, it should be said, is the right way, the least destructive way, the non-violent way to practice astronomy.
I speak only for myself, here, but I will go so far to say I wish western science never existed. I know in today’s dominant culture my wish is pure blasphemy. As my friend Derrick Jensen noted in his brilliant work Dreams, science is the new monotheism. The old monotheisms – Christianity, Judaism, Islam – succeeded in removing meaning from the natural world and placed meaning in the hands of a jealous, abstract God dwelling in far-off heavens. Science, then, erased God and obliterated any possibility of meaning with Him. When I make these arguments, I’ve found it to be like Jensen has observed, when you blaspheme God, you are called a disbeliever. When you blaspheme science, you are called an idiot.
Still, on the whole, science has been a disaster for life on Earth. The first problem with science is the first problem with so many products of the murderous culture we live in. The first problem with science is science’s epistemology is rooted in this culture’s epistemology. And, this culture’s epistemology is based on domination. Epistemology is the study of how we know what we know.
One way to understand science is to trace what the leading scientific epistemologists have to say. Remember Sir Francis Bacon from your 6th grade science class? He invented what we call today “The Scientific Method.” He said his “only earthly wish is to stretch the deplorably narrow limits of man’s dominion over the universe” by “putting her (nature) on the rack and extracting her secrets.” As if that wasn’t scary enough, Bacon went on to say, “I am come in very truth leading you to Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave.”
Or what about the hugely popular science apologist, Richard Dawkins? He writes in his book A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love that “Science boosts its claim to truth by its spectacular ability to make matter and energy jump through hoops on command, and to predict what will happen and when.”
“To make matter and energy jump through hoops on command” is a soft way to spell domination. Substitute yourself for “matter and energy” (that is what you are, of course). How would you feel if a scientist pointed a gun at you, or shot electrical currents through your muscles, or stuffed you into a cage, starved you, pumped your body full of chemicals and forced you to jump through hoops at his command?
The culture we live in is based on domination. How else do we account for the fact that one in five women will be raped in her lifetime? One in four girls and one in six boys sexually abused before they turn 18? How else do we account for the fact that 2.6 people are killed by American police every day?
Why, then, would we expect western science – a product of this culture – to be any different?
***
There’s a better way to judge science. It is a question that should form all of our moralities. The question is simple.”Is the real world better off because of science?” I think the answer to that question is a resounding no.
I come to that conclusion because my morality takes the needs of the real, physical world as primary. Water, soil, air, climate, my body, your body, and the food that sustains us are all formed by complex relationships of living beings. These living beings form the communities that make life possible. The needs of these communities must inform every action humans take. Anything else is suicidal.
I understand that science can be useful. Western science gives us modern medicine, for example, but modern medicine is more often than not a leaky band-aid applied to a wound created by science in the first place. Many tell me that western science is going to give us the cure to cancer while they forget that most cancers are produced by environmental toxins that exist because of science. I understand that western science can help us predict the devastating consequences of climate change, but science opened the road to the technologies responsible for climate change in the first place. Western science is responsible for napalm, agent orange, and atomic weapons. Of course, the surest way to prevent the destruction those weapons caused would have been to never open the doors of knowledge that lead to them.
The TMT project serves as a perfect reflection of the insanity of western science. Just like western science gains knowledge through domination, the TMT project is only possible through the domination of Kanaka Maoli. If the original people of Hawai’i were not exterminated by genocidal processes, were not made second-class citizens on their own islands, their culture not beaten to within inches of its life by American denationalization programs, Mauna Kea would be truly protected with the highest reverence.
But, western scientists have arrived, confident in the role Francis Bacon has laid out for them, to stretch Hawai’i on the rack and extract her secrets from her. The cops have come twice, with guns on their hips, to make Mauna Kea protectors vacate the Mauna Kea Access Road like Dawkins’ scientists who make matter and energy jump through hoops on command and arresting anyone who refuses the command.
Again, let’s ask the most important question of all. Is the real world better off with or without the TMT?
One way to answer this is to examine the physical processes needed to construct the TMT. Included in these physical processes are the actual materials used in construction. I am no expert on telescope construction and I’ve found it difficult so far to find detailed lists of the materials that will form the TMT (probably because acquiring these materials are a disaster for the environment.) From what I can tell, though, the TMT will be built with materials like steel, aluminum, and other rare earth metals.
You cannot have the TMT without steel, aluminum, and other rare earth metals. You cannot have steel, aluminum, and other rare earth metals without mountain top removal, open pit mining, and the combustion of vast quantities of fossil fuels. You cannot have mountain top removal, open pit mining, and the combustion of vast quantities of fossil fuels without climate change, mass extinctions, the forced removal of indigenous peoples, and the violent labor conditions present in extraction industries. So, before the materials needed to build the TMT ever even arrive in Hawai’i, they will be covered in the blood of humans and non-humans alike.
Telescopes are a disaster for the real world just like western science has been. Telescopes cannot be anything other than disasters for the real world because they are products of a murderous system of knowledge. It might be really super cool to discover the 832nd star in the 412th known galaxy with a new, massive telescope. This knowledge, however, comes through the domination of life on earth.
Mauna Kea – and I would argue all mountains – might be best understood as a complex community of living creatures living in mutual relationship. The needs of this community trump the desires of science. Mauna Kea itself acts as a giant water filter and houses the largest freshwater aquifer on Hawai’i Island. Everyone needs clean drinking water, but there have already been seven documented mercury spills associated with the telescopes on Mauna Kea. Currently threatened, endemic species call Mauna Kea home. The needs of mamane trees and ahinahina to live trumps the curiosity of astronomers to peep at other worlds.
***
Before I finish, let me anticipate the objections I will receive. Yes, I am quite aware of the comforts brought to some of us by western science. But, when we talk about how great science is for “us,” who are we talking about? Are we talking about the few indigenous societies clinging to their traditional ways of life, clinging to the only human ways of life that were ever truly sustainable? Are we talking about polar bears? Sumatran tigers? Bluefin tuna? We can’t be talking about West African black rhino because they just fell into the deepest dark of total extinction.
I know that science produced the internet, the laptop I’m typing on, and brought the delicious cold brew coffee I’m drinking. People often criticize me asking, “How can you condemn these wonderful tools you are using? You get on planes and travel to Hawai’i, you get in cars to visit places across Turtle Island, aren’t you a” – and they gasp – “a hypocrite?”
My answer is simple. Yes, I might be a hypocrite, but I believe my friend Lierre Keith who said, “Understand: the task of an activist is not to negotiate systems of power with as much personal integrity as possible – its to dismantle those systems.” Western science is a system of power and must be dismantled if we have any chance of surviving the catastrophe facing us. Sitting Bull used American made rifles to defend his people from American cavalrymen. Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian poet who was murdered for resisting Shell Oil in his homeland, wrote in English – the language of his oppressors.
I wish with all my heart that I could live as our ancestors lived – a life free from the deepest anxiety that in a few years everything might be gone. I was raised in the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains of Utah – a place I just visited – and I wish with all my heart that I could spend my life walking in Indian paintbrush, columbine, daisies, and lupine consumed in the total wonder and beauty of life. I wish with all my heart that I could sit still in simple expression of the love I feel. But, while everyone I love is under attack, it is simply unforgivable not to do everything within my power to protect them. It is simply unforgivable not to use every tool at my disposal to defend them.
History reveals western science as an accomplice to the murder of the real world. Western science is attempting the murder of Mauna Kea. Mauna Kea and the real world demand that we stop it.
Will Falk has been working and living with protesters on Mauna Kea who are attempting to block construction of an 18-story astronomical observatory with an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).
Sitting outside the 10 by 20 foot makeshift tent that has served as my home for the last 34 days on Mauna Kea, I watch the tent poles shudder to the concussion of US Army howitzer cannons firing live shells at their training grounds below. When the wind blows just right, from the south, the rattle of automatic rifle fire reaches the occupation. There’s no denying it: A war rages in Hawai’i.
It’s a war on native peoples, a war on women, a war on the land, a war on life itself. The war did not start in Hawai’i. The war began thousands of years ago with the dawn of civilization when some humans chose to live in population densities high enough that they overshot the carrying capacity of their homelands and turned to dominating other peoples in other lands. Imperialism was born, and one-by-one land-based, truly sustainable human societies were either eradicated or forced into assimilation.
The war swept west across Turtle Island (so-called North America) – where it is still being fought -leaving whole peoples destroyed and now largely forgotten. The war is carving peaks from mountains, drying rivers so they no longer flow to their ocean homes, and boiling the planet’s temperature to levels dangerously close to being unbearable for all but a few lifeforms. The war decimates the numbers of our animal kin, too. Buffalo walk the ledge above total extinction. So do salmon. So do timber wolves. So do grizzly bear.
The war in Hawai’i began in the late 1770s when Captain Cook first appeared. By 1897, a million Hawaiians were killed in battle, by introduced diseases, and through Christian missionary efforts. Half of Hawai’i’s endemic species have been exterminated since European contact. The minds of Hawaiian children were attacked when the illegal Republic of Hawai’i outlawed the Hawaiian language in Hawaiian schools in 1896. The bodies of these Hawaiian children were attacked when they were beaten for speaking their native tongue.
A genocidal program of desecration was initiated as well. Hale O Pa’pa and the Kanaka burials there were paved over by highways while Kahoolawe was bombed to hell by the American military – and that’s just to name a very few of the sites desecrated. Now, the TMT project wants to dynamite an eight acre patch of Mauna Kea’s hallowed summit to clear the way for their telescope.
***
Rumors are swirling that the TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope) project is poised to break its self-imposed moratorium on construction and send its equipment up the mountain with an armed escort. We have heard that Gov. David Ige is willing to send the national guard against the Mauna Kea protectors.
In the midst of these rumors, it is not uncommon to hear people say they hope the situation on Mauna Kea will not turn violent. The problem with expressing this hope is the situation on Mauna Kea is violent, has been violent for a long time, and will remain violent so long as those in power remain in control of the land.
Before you object to this, consider the bombs and rifle fire I am listening to as I write this.
Consider that the first time construction equipment tried to force a way over the objections of the Hawaiian people, it came with men carrying batons and pistols. These men carrying batons and pistols put 31 peaceful protectors in handcuffs, carried them to the Hilo jail, extracted 250 dollars from each one of them, and now force them to appear at a series of of court dates under threat of jail time.
Consider that David Ige, as I wrote earlier, has stated that he is willing to call in the national guard to clear the way for the TMT. Speaking of war, the national guard is an organization of soldiers. They will come with rifles instead of the police’s pistols.
This is violence.
I didn’t even mention the violence already done to Mauna Kea to build and maintain the 13 telescopes that already exist on the summit. These 13 telescopes required their own dynamite and 38 feet have been cut from the height of Mauna Kea’s summit already. There have been 7 reported mercury spills on the mountain that contains Hawai’i Island’s largest freshwater aquifer.
Mauna Kea
Plants, animals, and insects that live on Mauna Kea are murdered by this mercury and its more than likely that humans – especially children and the elderly – are harmed by this mercury, too.
Kanaka Maoli are genealogically related to Mauna Kea – it is literally a family member – so to do this kind of violence to the Mauna is to attack an older sibling.
Again, this is violence.
I anticipate that some may accuse me of encouraging an atmosphere of violence by using words like war to describe the violent reality facing Mauna Kea, facing Kanaka Maoli, and facing the long, necessary road to Hawaiian independence. Describing reality, however, is not the same thing as encouraging violence. I want this violence to stop and the first step to a cure is the proper diagnosis.
As a haole, I understand that when push comes to shove the State will crack down much harder on people of color than they will white people, and I do not want to provoke this crack down. I do think, though, that we need to be prepared to react when the State does not treat the protectors with the kapu aloha that the protectors will show those who come to destroy Mauna Kea.
Those who deny we are at war are wrong. Maybe, they cannot recognize the war because war has become so utterly pervasive. The wars of the past led to the rape of women. The war we’re fighting now causes one in six women to be raped in her lifetime worldwide. The wars of the past were fought to beat armies, to eradicate cultures, and to topple nations. The war we’re fighting now causes the extinction of whole species – 200 species a day, in fact, day after day after day.
Maybe, they cannot recognize the war because they are privileged enough not to confront the reality of this war. I think Palestinians understand this war. I think Catholics in Northern Ireland understand this war. I think Afghanis and Iraqis understand this war. I think hammerhead sharks, California condors, mamane trees, and ahinahina understand this war. They have to, because their survival depends on it.
Maybe, those who deny the war is happening think they can avoid the war’s dangers by ignoring it. It might be possible to avoid bullets, gas, and bombs by agreeing and cooperating with the cops as they place you in handcuffs, but you are just as susceptible to the environmental toxins the dominant culture unleashes on us every day. Denial saves no one from cancer.
Yes, Hawai’i with the rest of the world, is at war. This war – more than any other – is a war that we absolutely must win. If we lose, we lose life on this planet. To win a war, you must destroy your enemy’s ability to make war. The battle on Mauna Kea against the TMT is a mini-war in the larger war on life. The surest way to win this war is to undermine the TMT’s ability to build their telescope.
There are many strategies currently being employed to win this war – to undermine the TMT’s ability to build their telescope – but the weakness of most of these strategies is that they rely on our enemies to do the right thing. The countless sign-waving events conducted in support of Mauna Kea are designed to persuade the public of the justness of our movement. The incessant social media campaign we are waging is geared towards changing the hearts and minds of the world. The court cases challenging the TMT project, for example, rely on a judge to agree with the arguments made by our lawyers.
And why do we appeal to the courts to protect Mauna Kea? The answer is simple. If the judge rules in our favor, the decision will be backed with the full force of the State. The judge’s ruling and it’s enforcement will be backed with an organized group of men carrying guns – the police, or another organized group of men carrying bigger guns – the national guard. If we were to win in court and the TMT tried to build it’s telescope, it would be them and not us for once, who would be staring down the barrels of rifles. Of course, we do not trust the courts to do the right thing.
That’s why we stand on the Mauna Kea Access Road at this occupation.
Another way to say all this is: the State can, will, and already has used violence against us and our relations in the natural world. We must understand this in order to be effective. We must understand that writing really clever essays might not stop them. We must understand that hugging cops when they come to arrest us might not stop them. We must understand that we may not have an opportunity to place leis around the necks of national guardsmen when they point their guns at us.
I hear many people within the movement state confidently, “We will stop the TMT project.” But, if we do not understand the violence the State is capable of I feel like what we are really saying is “We will stop the TMT project as long as the police or the national guard agree to what we think are the rules.” I am not writing these things to cause despair. Rather, I am writing these things to encourage the deepest levels of commitment to protecting Mauna Kea.
Of course, those who think I am calling for violence demonstrate their own belief that only violence will stop the destruction of Mauna Kea, the destruction of Hawai’i, and the destruction of what is left of the world. I do not claim to know what will stop the destruction of Mauna Kea, but I do know that we must understand the way the State frames our tactics for us before we even begin. Once we understand this, we must ask tough questions.
I’ll walk my talk and begin: If the police or national guard overwhelms the protectors on the Mauna Kea Access Road, what do we do next?
I write these words from the floor of a warm corner of the men’s restroom at the Mauna Kea visitor center. The temperature outside is too cold for my laptop battery to take a charge and the restroom houses the only active plug, so I huddle in this corner to combat the words used by those who seek to destroy what I love.
I’ve been on Mauna Kea for the last 24 nights standing in solidarity with Kanaka Maoli as they protect their sacred mountain from the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) project that would dynamite an eight acre patch two stories deep at the pristine summit of Mauna Kea.
When I was asked to come to Mauna Kea, I was asked to write in a way that connects the complex forces informing a destructive project like the TMT to the systems currently murdering the beautiful islands of Hawai’i. More specifically, I was asked to write to America about the genocidal context the TMT springs from.
The occupation on Mauna Kea exists for two reasons. First, the Mauna Kea protectors will stop the TMT construction equipment when they finally seek to force their way to the summit again. As I write this, it has been 79 days since the TMT construction was stopped on the Mauna Kea access road the first time. Second, the Mauna Kea protectors serve as public education ambassadors. Each day hundreds of tourists come to Mauna Kea and each day dozens stop by our tent to ask us what we’re doing.
These conversations, reactions to some of my previous essays, and discussions with other protectors lead me to believe that a vocabulary lesson for haoles is due. As haoles who want to support Hawaiian sovereignty, we must learn to use the appropriate words.
The terms I define in this essay—haole, racism, white supremacy and genocide—are experienced in a very real way by oppressed peoples around the world. It is not my place to explain these terms to people experiencing genocide in the most vivid ways, so I write to those privileged enough to be free from these realities. The first step to acting in true solidarity is accepting the truth and to accept the truth we must communicate with the most honest words.
**********************
Haole is the Hawaiian word for “white person.” The first time I used the term in my piece “Protecting Mauna Kea: History for Haoles,” I received a wide variety of comments and messages.
Some of the comments were from native Hawaiians thanking me for being a haole willing to describe the true Hawaiian history to other haoles. Some of the comments were from people offended by my use of the term. Some of the comments were from people telling me I was wrong, that haole has no racial connotation and means simply “without breath.” Finally, and most disturbingly, some haoles accused me of spreading division within the movement by using the term and demanded that the term never be used again.
Usually, disputes over definitions can be resolved simply turning to a dictionary. So, I’ll start there. Here is the definition of “haole” from the “Hawaiian Dictionary” compiled by the famous native Hawaiian language scholar Mary Kawena Pukui: “White person, American, Englishman, Caucasian; American, English; formerly, any foreigner; foreign, introduced, of foreign origin, as plants, pigs, chickens; entirely white, of pigs. To act like a white person, to ape the white people, or assume airs of superiority (often said disparagingly, especially of half-whites). Americanized, Europeanized; to have become like a white person or have adopted the ways of a white man.”
Now, I understand that haole can become a derogatory term if words like “fucking” or “stupid” precede it, but Pukui’s definition makes it clear that the most common use of the word haole is to describe a white person. And, I was careful in my essay to use haole only to refer to white people. So, why did some haoles object to being called haoles? Why did some white people get angry for being called white people?
One thing I’ve noticed in my attempts to work in solidarity with people of color is that many white people hate being reminded of their whiteness. When I was a public defender bemoaning statistical realities like the fact that there are more black men in prison today than were enslaved in 1850 to a roomful of white judges, prosecutors and cops, I was shouted down and told we live today in a colorblind society. When I was at the Unist’ot’en Camp pipeline blockade in so-called British Columbia and our Unist’ot’en hosts explained the need for separate indigenous and settler camps due to the reality that many indigenous peoples felt more safe expressing their opinions away from settlers, there was always a white person who tried to set up in the indigenous camp with the logic that we’re all one human family.
So, the question becomes: Why do white people hate being reminded of their whiteness?
The answer, I think, is white people know they benefit both from a brutal history and an on-going reality of genocide and imperialism.White people have visited unspeakable violence on ourselves and on peoples and lands around the world. This is uncomfortable for some white people. But, the truth is the truth however uncomfortable.
Haunani-Kay Trask
I am writing about Hawai’i so I turn to the brilliant Hawaiian thinker Haunani-Kay Trask. Trask also used the term haole to describe white people and Trask was also forced to defend herself from angry white people. She explains the uncomfortable history confronting haoles, “In Hawai’i, it is the haole who stole our land, took our government, destroyed our nationhood, and suppressed our culture. It is white people who created laws to divide Hawaiians by blood quantum; it is white people who brought capitalism to Hawai’i. In other words, it is white people who, for their own benefit, have exploited and oppressed Hawaiians.”
When Hawaiians use the term “haole” – a word that means simply “white person” – they use an original word from their original language. Haoles have taken too much from Hawai’i already. When white people demand that Hawaiians give up their original words those white people seek participation in an inexcusable dominance that extends to something as sacred as original language.
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What about claims that I (and by extension anyone else who uses the term) spread division in the movement when I write “haole”? What about claims that the term haole is an expression of reverse racism?
These claims are based on an ignorance of social reality. In a world free of racism and white supremacy, differences in skin color would not matter. Humans, indeed, would be one big family. This is not the world we live in, though.
At this point, I must define racism. Again, I’ll turn to Trask who defines racism as, “A historically created system of power in which one racial/ethnic group dominates another racial/ethnic group for the benefit of the dominating group.” In a racist system, “economic and cultural domination as well as political power are included in the systemic dominance of the exploiting group.” Finally, “a monopoly of the means of violence is also held by those in the dominating group.” Racism in Hawai’i has taken the form of white supremacy where white people form the the dominating group.
Notice that Trask’s definition opposes the typical, liberal notion that racism is an emotional state existing in the minds of individuals. By this definition, then, it should be clear that haole as a Hawaiian word cannot be racist because Hawaiians are presently incapable of holding the requisite power in Hawaii to engage in racism. As long as Hawaiians remain a dominated racial group, they cannot be racist. They can discriminate against haoles, perhaps, or express prejudice, but they cannot practice racism.
To say that I am, in fact, enforcing racism by pointing out that racism exists is to buy into the erroneous idea that racism is just a belief held in the mind and as such can be overcome merely by holding love for all people. White supremacy and racism, though, are enforced by physical power and violence. To truly undermine racism requires physically dismantling the means by which racism is perpetuated. If we cannot point out that haoles are white people directly benefitting from a specific arrangement of power, then we will never effectively dismantle white supremacy—and what’s left of Hawai’i will be annihilated.
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Another word many haoles roll their eyes at is “genocide.” The truth is Hawai’i has suffered from over two hundred years of on-going genocide and the TMT project, regardless of its stated goals, is another attempted act in a long list of genocide.
Too many limit their view of genocide to ditches full of corpses or black and white photographs of gas chambers. These are certainly images of genocide, but Article II of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide (the international authority) contemplates a much broader definition.
Article II says genocide is “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group as such: killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Raphael Lemkin invented the term “genocide” and informed much of the 1948 Convention’s rationale with his masterpiece written in 1943 titled “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.” He wrote, “Genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation.” Genocide can also be “a coordinated plan of actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”
Captain Cook on the coast of New South Wales (Joseph BACKLER/Wikimedia)
Viewed through this lens, we can see the countless, obvious acts of genocide that comprise recent Hawaiian history. First, there was Captain Cook landing on Hawai’i’s shores with sailors he knew full-well carried communicable and terminal diseases for native Hawaiians. The numbers are devastating. The population of Hawaii was estimated at well-over 1 million when Cook landed in the late 1770s. By 1898, at the time of the Ku’e Petitions, only 40,000 Kanaka Maoli existed in the whole world. This loss of human life in such a relatively short time reflects the “immediate destruction of a nation” Lemkin describes.
The illegal overthrow in 1893 involved all-white conspirators forcing Queen Liliuokalani to abdicate her throne as regent of the Kingdom of Hawai’i under threats of violence. The Kingdom of Hawai’i was formed to protect Hawai’i from European powers. So, the overthrow deliberately inflicted conditions calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the Hawaiian people. The objective of the overthrow was the disintegration of Hawaiian political and social institutions.
The banning of Hawaiian language in schools by the illegal Republic of Hawaii in 1896 was a move that was unquestionably designed to alienate Hawaiian children from their native culture, language, and religion.
And now we stand on Mauna Kea to stop genocide again. Make no mistake, the TMT project is classically genocidal aiming to desecrate the most sacred mountain in the traditional Hawaiian spirituality. Mauna Kea is the genesis site for Kanaka Maoli and is referred to as the piko, the navel of the world, connecting Sky Father to Earth Mother. The people are genealogically (read: literally) related to the Mountain making Mauna Kea an essential place of worship.
It is easy for many to see that blowing up places of worship like a synagogue or a mosque would be genocidal for causing serious mental harm to Jews or Muslims. It is easier still to see the way steamrolling places essential to world religions like Bethlehem or Mt. Sinai would be genocidal as well. Dynamiting Mauna Kea undermines Kanaka Maoli culture, spirituality, and society destroying a place of worship that is perhaps, the most symbolically significant place to the traditional Hawaiian spirituality.
Of course, the crime of genocide requires two elements – intent and action. A shrewd reader might object to accusations of genocide the same way the TMT organizers do, arguing that the TMT project does not intend to harm Hawaiians but instead is an effort to foster human understanding of astronomy. According to Gregory H. Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, “Intentional means purposeful. Intent can be proven directly from statements or orders. But more often, it must be inferred from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts.”
What happens when we view the TMT project through the totality of the haole presence in Hawai’i? Can we infer a systematic pattern of coordinated acts that would rise to the requisite level of intention needed to prove genocide?
As I demonstrated earlier, we see that the last two hundred years in Hawai’i—marked by the arrival of haoles—are dominated by genocide. Captain Cook came to the Pacific specifically to open the region to British colonization. Missionaries followed Cook to destroy Hawaiian spirituality and replace it with Christianity. Americans overthrew the Kingdom of Hawai’i to push the genocidal legacy of Manifest Destiny ever farther west. The Hawaiian language was suppressed in Hawaiian schools to program children in the Hawaiian version of “Kill the Indian, save the man.”
Now, the TMT project attempts to blow up the piko of the world, the heart of the Hawaiian people, in an act of desecration Cook, the Missionaries, and the haole plantation owners could only dream of. This is racism. This is genocide. The TMT must be stopped.
