Kate and I went into Lihue the back way. A remnant of a volcanic cone stood between us and the ocean. The road wound back and forth, over one lane bridges and beside small farmsteads with NO TRESPASSING signs. Can you imagine living in a place where folks felt like they could just walk onto your land?
Even 15 years ago when Kate and I came here the first time there was the beginning of the ohana (family) movement. It has blossomed and resulted recently in some big gains for indigenous Hawai’ians. It also fuels, and is fed by, a not too subtle hostility to haoles (strangers). The beach sign at the County Park here had several slogans, Go Home!, Give back our land! written on it.
I feel in turns sympathetic, even empathetic, and annoyed. Empathetic from a justice perspective, knowing how we annexed Hawai’i and how our treatment of the indigenous people here has mirrored the despicable record on the mainland. Annoyed because I have begun to see the earth as our mutual responsiblity and therefore all land and water as inherently the domain of all. I too can love these islands, this ocean and cannot be denied these sentiments because of my geographic origin or the color of my skin.
Over dinner Kate and I watched long boarders paddling around in the bay (in Lihue) and paddlers pushing outrigger canoes, four of them, down the beach head and into the bay. Our waitress said they hold competitions on the weekends from Hanalei to Lihue to Waimea, a long way. Not so long, though, when you consider it was in outrigger canoes that the first Polynesians found the Hawai’ian islands. An amazing feat when you consider the vastness of the ocean and that there were no road signs in the water.
Lunar eclipse hidden by clouds.
