Ayase Leilani's Blog

Oh, tall is the tale of the mischievous one
Who fished out all the islands and captured the sun
His deeds and tasks I will unmask
So that you’ll understand
That before there was a Clark Kent
There was a Hawaiian Superman

Israel Kamakawiwoʻole - Maui Hawaiian Sup’pa Man

Every single time I think about the challenges facing Hawaii, I think of the great demigod, Māui.  The tale of Māui is an amazing one.  This is the demigod who was said to have created the Hawaiian Islands and to have gone toe-to-toe with the sun to arrange proper flow of the seasons.  His exploits are a huge part of Hawaiian folklore and are featured not only in stories and museums, but in the media.

There is a deep, personal passion in all of this for me.  As a girl with deep roots in both Shinto and Hawaiian Religion, when I look at the islands today and at how people have handled the last couple hundred years, I truly begin to wonder just what might have happened to make people forget their roots and what truly matters.  After all, Hawaiians are set not just to acquiesce to the interests and aims of the white man, but seem to openly embrace the toxic aims of the white man while moving to assimilate into them, forcing others to drink the “Melting Pot Kool-Aid” so everyone tows the line.

Just what in the world has gotten into the heads of the descendants of the likes of the great and proud demigod, Māui…?

Cry for the gods, cry for the people
Cry for the land that was taken away
And then yet you’ll find, Hawai'i
Could you just imagine they came back
And saw traffic lights and railroad tracks
How would they feel about this modern city life
Tears would come from each others eyes
As they would stop to realize
That our land is in great great danger now

Israel Kamakawiwoʻole - Hawaiʻi ’78

A fire fills my belly whenever I think about these things.  It is a fire far and beyond anything I have ever experienced in my life.  And I am, by nature, an extremely passionate and empathetic girl; I have experienced a great many fires in my day.  But to see Hawaii returned to the way it deserves to be and to see our descendants return to understanding and respecting their roots…  It has to perhaps be my greatest passion of all.

I finally realised that this is what I wanted to do today, even though I have been mulling it over and thinking about it greatly over the past many months.  It is because of an amazing and beautiful dream I had that contained a vision of what I need to aspire for.

This dream was on Oahu, but it was missing all of the modern tourist infrastructure and the evidence of white people.  And my fiancée, my caretaker, my mom, myself…and a bunch of other native Hawaiians were all hunkered down in a set of shops and builldings, taking shelter from a huge seastorm.  We were all watching television programming about the islands.  As the storms began to ebb, a native Hawaiian comedian showed up on the television, cracking jokes about how all the people were finally free from the white man, so now they wanted to move about and go other places (I promise it sounded funnier in my dream).

Then the storm ended…

I went outside.  Ships were crashed into the shore and the waves were still very rocky.  But over the mountains and the trees ahead of me, I saw the biggest, most beautiful rainbow.

I aimed at it with my iPhone to get a picture, just as a bunch of seagulls flew in front and the sky opened up to show clear, bright blue with spotty clouds.  It was an amazing picture.

And then my alarm woke me up.

Truly, I realised what I wanted to do with my fire and my passion after this dream.

And then, there is my fiancée, who is depressed, exhausted and tired about people not doing the right thing…  Her sorrow is a huge part of the reason I wanted to start speaking up.  While her and I want to see Hawaii return to its roots, everybody’s drinking the Melting Pot Kool-Aid and not doing anything.  And the way I see it, if nobody else is going to, I’m going to be the first.  After all, unless someone speaks up, nothing changes.  I figured I’d be that someone.  For my fiancée.  For us.  For our home.

I know how exhasusting it is for those like my fiancée…and because of that, I am standing tall. I desperately want to add my voice to this issue. There are so many stubborn and privileged people on the islands who don’t want to do anything about this, after all.  I am choosing to write everything in Standard English so that these very stubborn and privileged people–all of whom speak Standard English as a rule–can read it and get something from it.  Something’s gotta give.  It has to.  It just has to…

And thus, here I am, ready to stand tall and do what’s right. I am young, my blood is fresh and I am ready to do what’s necessary to get things done.  It’s time for me to drop the proverbial bomb.  There’s no such thing as too late or too soon.  The time is now.

It is time for me–and those who stand by my side–to do like our ancestors and the great demigod, Māui have done:  take back our islands so that we may once again be able to return everything to its roots.  If we do not do so, we will lose everything that matters the most by surrendering it to the white people who have taken advanage of Hawaiians for hundreds of years.

It is time for us all to stand tall.