Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 34, Number 3, 1 March 2017 — State of the Hawaiian Nation in Waiting [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

State of the Hawaiian Nation in Waiting

We have eome so far and yet have so far to go. We have made joyful

\/ \/ progress toward V V recapturing the customs and traditions of our eultural past and yet struggle to agree on a eommon vision of our cultural future. We are far better educated but wisdom is elusive and dreams of nationhood have taken iiight without a plaee to land. We disdain the colonizers, and yet the worst of colonizer behavior has been embraced by many of us, including some of our most important

institutions. Our politics of selfdetermination too often finds us disrespectful of eaeh other, and our aloha has to be propped up with bumper stickers to remind us of how we should treat eaeh other. We have heeome isolated in our dialogue, talking only to other Hawaiians while ignoring the cultural diversity of the eommunities that surround us. We walk the land having to look over our shoulders ready to duck the slings and arrows coming from our own people. Yes, we are a nahon waiting to happen. But waiting for what? Our struggle for self-determination lies more within than without. I again beat the drum of the staggering eeonomie capacity of our five major institutions - Kamehameha Schools, Queen's Hospital Systems, Lili'uokalani Trust, Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs - whose combined assets amount to billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of acres of land. But I eonhnue to be frustrated by a pervasive separation between our institutional leaders, albeit perhaps unintentional. The irony is that we all serve the same eonstituency of beneficiaries. Why is it so hard for us to simply gather and take a shot at sorting out a eommon path to a Hawaiian future? A path that, while requiring eaeh institution remain true to its specific trust responsibility, links those responsibili-

ties into a laulima initiative (many hands working together) that creates an eeonomie capacity underpinning the nation

in waiting. Then there is the truly rich tapestry of organizations of maka'āinana, the citizenry so to speak, that are fundamental to defining ourselves as a people. A nation is largely defined by its institutions and these institutions constitute the very fabric of who we are. They include the Hawaiian Civic Clubs, Royal Societies, eanoe clubs, hula schools, historical societies, educational

institutions, Aha Moku island councils, health organizations, Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce, and many more. This vast network of Hawaiian organizations needs to be supported as a fundamental strategy of empowerment - the kind of empowerment that helps to break the curse of 133 years of government dependency and transgenerational trauma. Finally, the politics of nation building seems to thwart all attempts at uniheahon. There are three alternatives for nationhood: independence, federal recognition, or status quo (lots of folks financially benefit from the status quo). Democracy, as the process of ehoiee, is assumed to legitimately express the will of the people through the ballot box. A constitution has been put into play and we await the outcome of the hnaneial struggle to fund a Hawaiians-only ratification vote with private money. But the process is eontinually under attack and resisted. Sometimes I wonder whether our transgenerational trauma extends to the very concept of democracy. Perhaps, somewhere deep inside our cultural psyche, lies a longing for the chiefly system of rule, a return to the monarchy. For some of us, democracy may be a stand-in for the United States - a government that failed to hear the pleas of our Queen. But no matter the cultural awkwardness of democratic process, what ehoiee do we have? ■

LEO 'ELELE ^ TRUSTEE MESSSAGES /

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