Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 3, Number 8, 1 August 1986 — A Time to Choose [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

A Time to Choose

By Poka Laenui (Hayden Burgess) Trustee, Oahu

Today, we are acutely aware of the great historieal injustices our ancestors suffered at the hands of American invaders. Ten years ago, that awareness did not exist. We are now beginning to appreciate the direct connection between those injustices and our present condition — our

loss of cultural identity, the false division between "native Hawaiians" and "other Hawaiians", the "legitimate" invasion of foreigners upon our shores, taking up our lands, our jobs, our space and pushing us onto the beaches or across the Pacific to other lands. Five years ago, that appreciation did not exist. We are now voyaging upon a new horizon — perhaps the most difficult one so far; because, this horizon does not reveal any further analysis of our condition but forces us to make choices. We ean no longer lament the atrocities our people have suffered, eomplain about our poor eeonomie, health, cultural and attitudinal conditions, or cry on one another's shoulders as we watch the eonhnual rape of our waters, air and land. Rather, we must now choose the course of our people. Are we to be the navigators of our future; or, shall the Americans control it for us? There is no question more fundamental than this for our people today. This is the same question asked throughout world history . This is the soul of self-determination. Whenever and wherever this question is posed, the rafters shake, the earth quake and the weak-hearted faint. When Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry proposed independence for a batch of eolonial territories from Great Britain, they shook the britches of the "more responsible leaders". When Gandhi proposed the independence of India, he was the laughing stock of the "realists" of the day. Within our own Pacific waters, the movement to selfdetermination is widespread. Witness the independenee of the Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Free (Western) Samoa (names foreign to us who are products of American controlled media). Within a decade, if not sooner, we should witness the independence of even more nations, such as Guam, New Caledonia, Tokelau, Belau, Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands. And what about Hawaii? Are we to be kept imprisoned by American colonialism, too timid to dream of independence, always running away from the boogi man the U.S. scares us with by their screams of "eommunisim", "military protection", and withdrawal of the "Yankee dollar"? Are we to navigate our own future? My ehoiee is no secret — of course we should. What is yours? Aloha 'aina.