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Islands of Hope is
a multi-format social justice project presenting historical accounts and
compelling family stories to help inform the American public regarding
Puerto Rico and Hawaiʻi and U.S. policies which have greatly impacted
island families since U.S. occupation.
Community Lost
Evicted, extracted, removed. Following
U.S. occupation of Puerto Rico (Borikén) in 1898, U.S. territorial policies
actively removed native Boricua families from their farms, and tore
communities apart, as the land moved into the hands of American banks and
sugar syndicates. Extracted from Borikén, the first of many families
boarded a ship in November 1900, bound for Hawaiʻi to serve as servile
labor on sugar plantations there.
Today, the United States is again
implementing policies that separate children from parents1 and economic
policies, practices, and conditions that push poor and low-income families
into the street, family shelters, or homeless camps.2
1 June 26, 2018, a
federal judge issued an injunction against the Trump administration’s
“zero-tolerance” policy that was separating children from parents at the
border. That same day, the U.S. government was returning the remains of
George Ell to relatives in Montana. Taken from his parents in 1890, the
17-year-old Ell died in Pennsylvania a year later. His parents weren’t
notified for over a year, and requests to return Ell’s remains were
repeatedly denied.
2 Desmond describes
policies, practices, and experiences in Evicted:
Poverty and Profit in the American City.
Islands of Hope
A village of house-less Native Hawaiians,
squatting on state-owned land on the Waiʻanae Coast west of Honolulu
for over 10 years, holds nearly 250 people, including about 50 children.
The camp has developed a self-governing structure, provides support to
resident families, serves as an interface for political, social, and health
agencies—and acts as a collective safety net for the children. Looking for a more permanent sanctuary
for their village, they offer one example of an “island of hope” for a
vulnerable population in paradise.
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January 4, 2016.
It was Monday morning and I was running
late. January 4th was my
first day back to work in Honolulu after the long flight from Seattle and Christmas
and New Year’s spent with family on the continent—or the mainland, as
people inappropriately say. I worked
near downtown Honolulu at the corporate headquarters of Kamehameha Schools
(KS), a private K-12 school system for Native Hawaiians that was endowed in
1883 by Bernice Pauahi Bishop, great-granddaughter of Kamehameha I. As a senior research associate at KS, I
had previously scheduled myself into an all-day session up at the high
school campus.
I thought
about skipping the Hawaiian Leaders session. I didn’t want to walk in late. It would be rude, especially given the
fact that I would likely be the only non-Native Hawaiian in the room and
would be there only as a guest. But
I had been the one who in December had approached William (BJ) Awa, Jr.,
director of the First Nations’ Futures Program (FNFP), to ask permission to
attend the orientation session for the new cohort of FNFP fellows. The speakers would be noted Native
Hawaiian community leaders who would relate their experiences—in business, non-profit,
and professional organizations—to young Native Hawaiian professionals who
had applied, and been selected as fellows, for the tenth FNFP cohort.
I wanted
to attend. I wanted to listen. I wanted to learn. So even though I was late that morning, I
drove to the Kapālama high school campus
overlooking Honolulu. I parked and walked
up the steep flights of concrete steps to the spacious Ka‘iwakīloumoku Hawaiian Cultural Center,
walking casually so as not to be perspiring profusely on that already warm
January morning. My plan was to see
if I could artfully and tactfully slide into the room without disturbing
anyone.
Opened in 2012, the Ka‘iwakīloumoku
Hawaiian Cultural Center had been envisioned as a catalyst for the
revitalization of Hawaiian culture more than two decades earlier by former
Kamehameha Schools trustee Myron “Pinky” Thompson, father of famed
Polynesian voyaging navigator Nainoa
Thompson. During the week of January
4, the Cultural Center was hosting new First Nations’ Futures Program
fellows attending orientation meetings before beginning a year-long
project-based collaboration to study, design, and produce a product or
activity benefitting the Native Hawaiian community. The collaborative effort was intended to
develop leadership skills. Brainchild
of Neil Hannahs, the Kamehameha Schools Land
Assets Director, the project was coordinated with Stanford University, Hannahs’ alma mater, and included parallel cohorts of
Alaska Native fellows and Maori fellows in Aotearoa (New Zealand).
That
January morning, I stopped on the covered walkway at the edge of the
center’s conference hall and listened closely. The grand meeting hall, with its high
ceilings and immense ceiling fans, could be divided into three large rooms
utilizing retractable mobile walls, as was the case this particular
morning. However, like an
amphitheater, the long south-facing wall of the building, along the walkway
and large open grass courtyard overlooking Honolulu and the Pacific Ocean,
often remained open. As I stood on
the walkway, I could hear a single male voice issuing from the far
room. So I
moved down the walkway to the edge of that room and stood behind the
retractable sidewall, listening.
The
speaker was talking in a casual tone of voice. I couldn’t hear any shuffling papers or
movement of people in the room.
After a moment, I poked my head around the corner and surveyed the
room quickly before withdrawing behind the wall again. The tables were positioned in a long
rectangle in the center of the large room.
Standing at the far end was the speaker, Thomas Kaulukukui—Vietnam
veteran, former teacher, retired judge, and current board chair of Lili‘uokalani Trust
established by Queen Lili‘uokalani to care for
orphaned and destitute children.
FNFP fellows and KS staff were seated along the parallel sides and
south end of the table. I noted
empty chairs, but they were tucked between individuals. It would be disruptive to enter and take
a seat, but it would be a larger distraction if I entered and remained
standing against the wall. I weighed
the options: enter and create a
momentary disruption, wait and listen behind the wall until Kaulukukui finishes speaking, or simply turn and take
my leave.
Hawaiians
and their warm aloha spirit never cease to amaze me. I’d barely begun my deliberation before
BJ Awa was standing directly in front of me, indicating I should follow him
into the room. “I don’t want to
interrupt,” I protested quietly. Awa
motioned again and insisted calmly, “Come on.” He pointed to an empty chair on the near
side as he continued across the room and around the table to his seat on
the far side. Kaulukukui
acknowledged me subtly with his eyes but did not break from the story he
was telling. And people around the
table were not the least bit distracted from listening attentively to Kaulukukui.
Warm. Inclusive. Accepting. Aloha.
That is what I remember about that session on January 4. And I remember Thomas Kaulukukui
stating that people who live in Hawai‘i all have
one thing in common, as he saw it.
They were there because someone was a risk-taker. Someone left their home and journeyed to
find a new home in Hawai‘i—the most isolated place
on earth. Each faced challenges. Each
had a story. From ancient Polynesian
voyagers who first sailed the entire Pacific Basin, to European explorers
who entered the Pacific looking for riches in China. From Asian immigrant farm workers looking
for a better life for their families, to North American families looking to
live in a Hawaiian paradise.
Risk-takers all.
Awa stood
and introduced the next speaker, Nālei Akina, administrator at Lunalilo
Home, another social institution and private operating foundation
established by a Hawaiian monarch. Akina opened with an oli, a Hawaiian chant. Then she introduced and identified
herself by describing her family and her teachers—her genealogy, kumu hula (hula teacher), and schooling. A graduate of Punahou (Barack Obama’s
former high school) and Cornell University, Akina
spoke of working for Alvin Ailey Dance Troupe in New York City and the
pleasure she felt upon returning to Hawai‘i. Then she described her work at Lunalilo Home and in other non-profit
organizations. Later, during a break,
I asked her about visiting Lunalilo Home and she
agreed to give me a tour.
William
Charles Lunalilo was the first elected king of Hawai‘i
but only served for just over a year.
In 1874, at the age of 39, he died of tuberculosis. Known as the People’s King, he was a
compassionate and caring leader. It
caused him great pain to witness poverty, homelessness, and disease spread
through the island kingdom after Western contact. So, on the advice of Bernice Pauahi
Bishop and her American banker husband, William Lunalilo
created a will in which he directed his vast landholdings across five
islands be set aside in a trust after his death to establish a residential
care facility for elderly and destitute Hawaiians. Lunalilo
Trust. Lunalilo
Home.
One afternoon,
I visited Lunalilo Home. Nālei Akina showed me through the facility, introducing me to
staff and to the Home’s programs and services. Then we stood outside under a tall
spreading shade tree and she answered questions about the financial situation
Lunalilo Home faced. The once wealthy Trust— endowed with the
largest private landholdings in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i—was
now dependent on gifts and donations.
How could that be, I wanted to know.
There seemed to be little information available about the trust and
its management by Americans who served as the initial trustees of Lunalilo’s estate.
“Very
little’s been written,” Akina responded. She mentioned a children’s book about
William Lunalilo published by Kamehameha Schools
and a master’s thesis about Lunalilo Trust
written by a student at the University of Hawai‘i. Abruptly she stopped, turned to face me
squarely, and stared as if right through me. “You said you’re a researcher and
writer,” she stated. “Why don’t you write about Lunalilo
Trust?”
Islands of Hope began as a look into the ways in which a
wealthy and land-rich trust, established to care for elderly and destitute
Hawaiians in the Kingdom of Hawai‘i in the late 1870s, was drained and depleted by American businessmen
and lawyers who, as appointed trustees of a king’s estate, became wealthy
at the expense of generations of Hawaiians to come. It is seemingly a case of individual and
corrupt self-interest trumping an entrusted responsibility to serve the
greater good of the community, of the nation. That initial “look” into circumstances
surrounding Lunalilo Trust expanded into a
broader examination of patterns in our American history and political
policies—patterns evident in national debates and policymaking today. Further spurred by the raucous political
debates that ensued during the 2016 presidential election campaign, Islands of Hope is an attempt to
illuminate the ongoing struggle between individual, community, and national
interests, values, and ideals.
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