As kanaka maoli, my family stories come from people whose kingdom was overthrown, so "Pearl Harbor day" hits a little different. With the intent of empire, the US turned a major food production area into a military base, separating us further from pre-contact self-sufficiency. --

In order to turn Wai Momi into Pearl Harbor Naval Base, a massive coral reef was completely demolished, the lagoon dredged, its fish ponds destroyed. What was once an elaborate farming system became an outlet of war. --

Not only did this destroy a painstakingly managed ahupuaʻa, it
painted a target on our ʻāina and ensured my people would be dependent on the military for generations to come.
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These are decisions brokered by the powerful: the voracious appetite of the US empire and the fledgling kingdom thrust into international politics while its people were dying from diseases brought by careless haoles.

(Haole does NOT and never has meant "soulless".)

So while the US honors the watery grave of young lives lost in service to her thirst for conquest, I pay my respects to a land and a way of life brutalized by empire. I look at Pearl Harbor as an occupied land awaiting liberation by the rightful heirs to her powerful riches.

As a child I went to Pearl Harbor, the Arizona Memorial, many times on school field trips. I always felt this strange gnawing while there, an unrightness I never understood. It wasn't adulthood that I realized how damaging Pearl Harbor day was to keiki me.

Having a baby kanaka stand in the Arizona Memorial and be graded on the historical significance of Pearl Harbor solely in relation to US power is the epitome of colonization. It has been years of painful research and introspection to begin dismantling it.

My work now is to ensure my children do not suffer the same way. To each our keiki that Pearl Harbor day is a US war machine commemoration and a day of grief for kanaka maoli for much deeper and more complex reasons.

Anyway, to my fellow kanaka who are also deeply grieving today and always for our precious ʻaina and kūpuna, I offer my deepest aloha and solidarity. We are Mauna Kea, we are Pōhakuloa. We are Kahoʻolawe, and we are Wai Momi. Never stop fighting. This is what we were born to do.