The Journal of Pacific History 

Published online: 24 Oct 2017

Review of Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai‘i

By Tina Ngata

At a time of growing tensions around the Pacific, the world nervously eyes both the United States and North Korea, and every move being made by either side draws a sharp, collective breath. With military strikes threatened against the US military base established on Guåhan, it seems that the Pacific basin is indeed poised to be the playground within which these global tensions play themselves out. For those of us living within or coming from the Pacific, this situation is as terrifying as it is infuriating, for it is precisely this targeting of our islands that underpins many of our calls to demilitarize the Pacific. With this backdrop in mind, it has never been more important or timelier to consider the potent messages within Anne Keala Kelly’s documentary Noho Hewa.

Noho Hewa provides a vital Indigenous lens on militarization in the Pacific. Although the film’s initial focus is on Hawai‘i, that lens pulls out to consider the broader questions around United States military activity around the world, and the role Hawai‘i is forced to play in […]

I wrote this last fall, but it’s worth sharing here, given the overall horror of cultural appropriation being aided and abetted by plenty of natives. Anywayz… You can go to this link for the complete commentary.

Our hopes, dreams and struggles are inconvenient to what Disney has chosen to produce about us. Worse yet, we’re expected to shut up and enjoy the ride everyone’s taking on our back. Yes, some of our own people, grateful for any acknowledgment, don’t recognize an insult or culture theft when they see it. Others will happily join in with the massive, commodifying monstrosity of “Moana” and buy Moana-gear and computer games. (I heard that the Ala Moana Disney Store is already well-stocked.) One Maori writer, who likes the Maui-Skin-Suit, said it’s like dressing up as Santa Claus. He’s not far off, seeing as how we’re the ones doing all the giving. He reminded me of something funny that Haunani-Kay Trask, one of our beloved sovereignty leaders, once said to me: “Yah, the haole, they stole everything we gave them.”

Being culturally poached and misrepresented isn’t flattering, it’s a threat. The historical fact is that […]

This is a radio documentary I did 10 years ago. Sadly, the story of Hawaiian homelessness has only worsened, and it was already really bad then. (This story, and a few others, are available at annekealakelly.com)

http://archive.fsrn.org/content/being-hawaiian-and-homeless

Lately, the selling out of Hawaiian culture, and silence of Hawaiians who literally fly around the world posing as Hawaiian “leaders,” compels me to share this essay. Why? Because, in part, it’s about them and their state sanctioned privilege. If I were to write it now I would use stronger language. Here’s to hoping they stop using a broken compass.

http://www.annekealakelly.com/uploads/3/5/9/1/3591542/resistance_pdf.pdf

The now normalized American social order and economy requires Hawaiians to assimilate or disappear. One common form of the vanishing Hawaiian is evidenced by the ongoing mass desecrations of Hawaiian graves.

The Australian Association for Pacific Studies Annual Lecture in memory of Epeli Hau’ofa will be presented by Tevita O. Ka’ili.

“In the beginning was the ocean” is the opening line of the Tongan creation story. Tongan deep history states that people originated in the moana (deep sea), and that Limu (seaweed) and Kele (sea sediment) are our primordial parents. Epeli’s Hau’ofa’s concept of Oceania revives an ancient cosmogony that begins with the moana and frames our advocacy for the ocean.

In this paper, Tēvita O. Kaʻili will navigate Hauʻofa’s Oceania by traversing what has now become a sea of ocean pollution, ocean acidification, rising sea levels, overfishing and deep sea mining. He will also critically examine, from an indigenous Tā-Vā (time-space) theory, the “mining” by extractive corporations, like Disney, of cultural heritage, such as stories, symbols, iconographies, objects, motifs, and deities that are associated with the ocean.”

Date: 12th April                                                                                       […]

Teresia Teaiwa has walked on ahead of us, and I am sadder than I can say. She was a brilliant, courageous, beautiful Pacific woman who led the way for so many of us. She was one of the most powerful and articulate voices when it came to colonization and militarization, thinking and speaking in ways that the rest of us had to run to keep up with. She was kind, generous, and an extraordinary poet.

I am heartbroken. There never was and never will be anyone like her. And those of us who were lucky enough to have been on the receiving end of her beautiful smile, or any of the beautiful words she wrote and spoke, or to have stood in her light, were blessed.
Her being gone from us… the void is immeasurable.

God bless her soul, and blessings and prayers for her ohana.

ANNIE PAU and I first met at the Farrington Highway Starbucks on the Waianae Coast of Oahu. I was working on a story for Al Jazeera and needed a Hawaiian who was willing to be interviewed about what life is like for thousands who can’t afford rent. Parts of Waianae resemble refugee camps, so it felt wrong, meeting with a homeless person inside the mother ship of gentrification.

But nothing else was open at 6am on Sunday near Lualualei Beach Park, where Annie and her husband, John, were living in a tent with their two dogs.  That beach is nicknamed “Sewers,” for the stench from a sewage treatment facility wafting across the road.

Hawaiian names are often derived from an event or legend. Sometimes they’re metaphors, other times they describe something literal.  But they always have meaning, although many have ended up on the sacrificial altar of tragic irony.  Given its name millennia before the sewage, Lualualei means, “Beloved one spared.”

When I arrived at Starbucks that morning, Sinatra’s voice crooned over the din of hissing spigots and grinding beans.  Those in need of stimulus lined up dutifully, awaiting their single soy this and double […]

A book launch for LIMBO, an environmental novel by Jamaican filmmaker and author, Esther Figueroa, is taking place Friday, September 4th, at UH Manoa’s English Dept, 5:30PM. Figgy, as she’s called by friends, is a brilliant writer and artist whose works are fast becoming the archive of environmental destruction and resistance in Jamaica.

Here’s the event flyer:

Join us for the Hawaii launch of ESTHER FIGUEROA’s novel Limbo, also featuring the powerful poetic voices of RAJIV MOHABIR and RAIN WRIGHT-CANNON, as well as novelist SHAWNA YANG RYAN reading from her forthcoming novel Green Island.

Praise for Limbo:
“In this brave and witty new novel, Esther Figueroa takes us into the dark side of tourism’s uncontrolled development. The work is intelligent, clear-eyed and unforgiving; Figueroa does not avert her gaze – the devastation of land and wildlife is harrowing. Esther’s passionate concern for the future of Jamaica and the Caribbean, and ultimately for the future of our planet makes Limbo a landmark work of extraordinary importance.”
—Patricia Powell, author of The Pagoda and The Fullness of Everything

The reading will be followed by a book signing.