Understanding Kau Inoa

[kimo wires]

There is an underlying tension naturally due to the strained relations between the US and Hawaii. A real solution is needed. From what I understand Kau Inoa is a trick dreamed up by OHA to get signatures of uninformed Hawaiians and attach them to the Akaka Bill. This would do nothing more than Provide Federal Recognition to Hawaiians making them pawns of OHA with no real voice. It's not the way to enrich Hawaiians. It's a way to enrich OHA.

[MarkP]

I agree with esnap. It is part of the human condition to show favoritism, first for family and then for successively more far-flung social groups.

Sadly, I also believe in absolute racial equality. The entire world over, there is no race of people who is not racist, sexist, elitist, superstitious, greedy, prone to religious favoritism, violent, etc. The only thing that makes the world liveable is the rule of law, logic, and common sense. It is hard work for society to police itself and maintain these standards. If things start seeming too easy, they probably are. The statements made in favor of Kau Inoa describing native Hawaiians as spiritual people, related to God, with a special innate link to the land and the sea are easy to make because they feel good. Viewed objectively, these same statements are technically racist. Imagine anyone in todays society suggesting that white people are closer to God and have innate abilities that make them more worthy than other races? Oh yeah, they're called white supremecists. Replace Native Hawaiian with Caucasian in these statements and there would be race riots.

I myself am an athiest, but I agree with the christian philosophy that we are all sinners who must first accept that fact and then work night and day to rise above our propensity to sin. Our innate sin is that we all have an animal nature that will allow us to rationalize anything to improve our personal status or well being versus others. Socialization is the process of educating ourselves to see how we are actually better off in the long run when we help those around us. This is only true if others are being socialized as well of course. This happens almost effortlessly in a social group as small as a family. It is much more difficult to coordinate the process among racial groups from opposite sides of the globe.

I tried to learn modern physics in college. I failed despite the help of an institution designed to educate me and the efforts of those who went before me and figured the stuff out. Albert Einstein developed the theory of relativity despite being heckled by the rest of the scientific community. It is almost unbelievable how smart, analytical, and able people can be. It is also almost unbelievable how people can not apply the same logic to the words they speak, which, when specific words are arranged in a specific order in a specific language, have one and only one meaning. Some of what is said by proponents of Kau Inoa is very specifically racist.

There is also a culture of atonement and entitlement that exists today that did not exist in less enlightened times. Even the story of the Law of the Splintered Paddle, which has an uplifting moral message, wouldn't make sense unless it was in fact true that at a certain period in pre-western contact Hawaiian history one stratum of Hawaiian society, defined by blood, had an inhumane degree of power over another stratum. When the events transpired, it was understood that Kamehameha was initially giving in to baser impulses unbecoming to a statesman, and that he wouldn't have been the leader he was if he hadn't seen his error and decided to do otherwise.

I believe I am aquainted with Butch Helemano, who is one of those quoted speaking on behalf of Kau Inoa. I don't really know him but he seems like a nice sincere guy. The stuff he was saying about Hawaiians having a special feeling for the sea probably felt good and socially uplifting for Hawaiians but again, if I said that I as a caucasian had a special feel for business, necessarily implying that he should go farm taro and fish while I handled financial and scientific matters that I was innately better at, whoa, get ready to duck.

[JWFITZ]

Nicely put.

Having grown up around a lot of "white supremacists" as well I know the trick of using carefully selected language that may mean different things to different groups. What can be ladled to the press, kinda, as a spiritual message to masses of ignorant rednecks in Northern Idaho is gasoline on a fire. This stuff is dangerously close to that, to my mind. And that's a delicate understatement.

[oink]

Jay,
slowly working your way around to being more blunt?

Pua`a
S. FL
Big Islander to be.

[JWFITZ]

LOL.

[JWFITZ]

Actually, I think there's a much needed place in this world for candor.

[DrJ]

Mitzi, a lot of 'mainland' tribes were displaced within the last 200 years. So their history is just as relevant and recent if you want to go down that road.

I agree totally with JWFITZ's 3 posts on the subject.

To believe that your race is inherently better at certain traits and more deserving of certain land is exactly what Nazi's believed when they created the Third Reich. They believed Aryans were the purest blood. That they were smarter, faster and stronger than the world. They believed that they had a right to push people who were not Aryan off of their land that they believed was their right because of their ancestry.

When i read that article I fail to find many differences between what Kau Inoa is proclaiming vs. what the Nazis believed. Nazis also felt that they were pushed off their land and unfavorably treated by those who claimed it and who lived there. That's what started the war.

It might be portrayed better to our senses today from Kau Inoa but you have to remember that it was presented very beautifully to Germany also.

I feel that instead of striving to prove the differences between races, we should be striving to prove what unites us. If you open us up, we are all the same on the inside. If we continue to push our differences as a campaign platform or community outreach platform, then we'll never see the end to racism.

[JWFITZ]

Ok, I can't resist a diatribe. It has nothing to do with Hawaii, but it might with perspective.

I've got a bit of an unusual family and family history. The FitzGerald family is a big one, and an old one, and nearly big clan, and I can trace my linage back to 8th century Tuscany. Not many can. We've been all the rage for the last couple of years because of all the DiVinci code stuff, as that's my family too, and the Mona Lisa Ghiardini is Grandma. Do I think I'm a decedent of Jesus? Honestly, I don't care. Do I think I see magic or I'm a decedent of God? Nope, I really don't. If I did, and claimed secret knowledge in my DNA, you'd all think I was an ass.

The most interesting thing to learn from my family's history, at least from our line, is this--there has only been ONE generation in what, 1200 years of human history, that was born and died on the same soil. Everyone else was running for their lives from one plague, war, incursion, or famine, for the entire period of that history. That would be my Grandfather, who died in 1984. One. That gives me a lot of perspective on the human condition, or the real human condition, than I think many have had.

Take from that what you will.

[JWFITZ]

Oh, and what did we do, professionally, as a clan?

We built fortifications.

Kinda curious how that all works out.

[David M]

Hey, my paternal grandmother was a Fitzgerald...

David

Ninole Resident