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Life Onboard |
LAST UPDATE
March 13, 2007
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| January 28, 2007 |
Aloha Aina: Urging Love of the Land and Demilitarization of Hawai'i – Terri Keko'olani |
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| Native Hawaiian Terri Keko'olani shared the story of her people with Peace Boat participants |
To Terri Keko'olani, the land, sea, and air of Hawai'i are sacred. They sustain her physical and spiritual life, just as they have done for generations of ancestors before her. To destroy and contaminate the islands' nature would be an act of terror upon herself and upon other members of the Kanaka Maoli, Hawaii's indigenous people. To the U.S. military, however, Hawai'i is a strategic site in the Pacific. Since the late 1800s, the military has turned lush hillsides into artillery practice ranges, converted peaceful fishing villages into naval ports, built military highways through pristine valleys, and used the sea as a dumping ground for chemical weapons. To accommodate soldiers and their families, the U.S. has also used much Hawaiian land to build military housing, golf courses, and shopping centers. Much of this military development shuts out indigenous people from the areas that sustained their culture and history. |
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| The flag of the Kanaka Maoli |
Not stopping at its current 161 military installations in Hawai'i, the U.S. aims to continue its military buildup through activities such as the expansion of the Star Wars Missile Defense System and the importation of a Stryker Brigade to the islands. The brigade consists of 300 eight-wheeled high tech urban assault vehicles that will take an additional 25,663 acres of land – polluting much of it with chemicals such as RDX, TNT, and HMX in the process. Terri Keko'olani and other Kanaka Maoli, however, have long had enough. For the past three decades, they have been fighting to demilitarize the Aina – their sacred land – and restore the values of peace, non-violence, and harmony with nature to Hawai'i. Ms. Keko'olani joined part of the 55th voyage to educate audiences about this struggle. |
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| Terri introduces a book about Kanaka Maoli resistance, titled Ku'e, Thirty Years of Land Struggles in Hawaii |
Native Hawaiians became a minority in their own homeland ever since the U.S. military invaded Hawai'i in 1893, and ever since missionaries, foreign plantation owners and resort developers started to exert much influence over much of the islands, explained Ms. Keko'olani. Under pressure to assimilate to American culture, many people felt ashamed to look, speak, and act Hawaiian. “We were quiet for a long time,” said Ms. Keko'olani. The dispossession of their land and culture however, left native Hawaiians with problems that shouted out for solutions – such as high rates of homelessness, poverty, disease, and incarceration. Moreover, many found they could no longer bear silent witness to the shelling, razing, and contamination of many parts of Hawai'i by the U.S. military. |
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Terri offers a chant for forcefully uprooted indigenous people in Guatemala. Indigenous people around the world face similar land struggles and are joining together in solidarity |
In the 1970s, the Kanaka Maoli began to rise up and speak out. By 1993, 15,000 were marching to demand sovereignty and the restoration of the Hawaiian nation. Later that year, President Clinton signed a U.S. Congress apology bill to apologize for the U.S. role in the illegal overthrow of the independent Hawaiian nation. “Today, we are in the process of restoring our nation, and demanding that lands seized illegally be returned to us,” reported Ms. Keko'olani. One piece of land that has been forfeited already by the military after years of struggle is Kaho'olawe, an island that was once used for target bombing practice.
Though these accomplishments have given Ms. Keko'olani and others hope, much remains to be done to break the military's stranglehold on Hawai'I – a grip that has tightened in the name of national security ever since 9/11. “People have to rethink what true national security means,” said Ms. Keko'olani. “I think true national security should be taking care of and preserving your environment, and not living in fear.” To many Kanaka Maoli, she added, militarism has meant not protection, but the destruction of their homeland – as well as the unacceptable use of their homeland to launch attacks on innocent people in countries such as Viet Nam and Iraq. To learn more about the efforts to demilitarize Hawai'i, visit the website of DMZ Hawaii Aloha Aina at – www.dmzhawaii.org. |
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