UKIRT To End Maunakea Operations September 15

[randomq]

Colonizers, are the folks, you (I assume) and I, all of us that practice, who are the cultural descendants of those that brought private land ownership, private personal gain over the ohana, money, to these shores. It’s not as if it’s a choice, we all are living in, under the guise of, a modality that in essence is the outcome of the colonization of the islands.

It’s like the Hawaiians giving the missionaries the land because to the Hawaiians it was absurd to imagine people owned land. Land ownership, especially when juxtaposed to the concepts of Aloha, is a horror that’s been imposed upon the Hawaiians that even to this day they have to unravel, make peace with. A trauma many spend their lives working through. Psychologically it is devastating. The mind of the colonizer is contrary to the mind of the colonized. Its ways are incestuous, they permeate everything.

Maybe the best way to understand is to contemplate the difference between a mind raised with ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi as its mother tongue verses one raised in English. The neural network created by either is incredibly different than the network created by the other. It’s not just a different word for the same thing, but different ways of looking at things entirely. Although, from an English perspective, as long as our ways are right to the viewer, it is probably impossible for them to comprehend the ways of the other. But, in a nutshell, it is colonization.

We're all cultural descendants of cavemen, royal subjects, revolutionaries, democratic citizens, etc...  Doesn't mean we inherit the sins of our forefathers along the way.  The best thing we can do now is treat everyone fairly, help lift up those in need, etc.  So when you use the term colonizer, you're basically accusing your neighbors of some kind of "original sin" they were born into.  I don't see how the accusation or the mindset helps any of us move forward.

There is a *huge* tendency to paint Hawaiians (and most other non-western pre-contact societies) as somehow having a magical commune with nature, balance with the ecosystem, having "everything figured out", "simpler and better lives", and living in peaceful harmony until contact with the outside world.  It's a load of bullshit.  People suffered, stole from each other, died from famine, were sent to meaningless wars to satisfy cruel ruler's egos, exploited the environment to the best of their abilities, caused species to go extinct, etc...  This is not dumping on any particular group; all cultures have done it and some continue to do it.

As HotPE pointed out, the average citizen these days has way more rights than someone living at the whim of the ali'i back in the day.  If there are problems with the system (like modern day ali'i hogging commercial land all to themselves, blocking development with endless regulations, and rent-seeking the rest of us to death) we should *unite* against them, instead of *dividing* into camps pointing fingers at each other based the color of our great grandfather's skin.  I'm pretty sure no one on this forum has inherited their billions in wealth from the colonizer or ali'i sides.  We're all just citizens.  Together.