Suck on Dis Sovereign Bone
A Post-Modern American Tragedy in the Nation of Hawaii
As Told by a Sovereign “Po’ele” Dog
Livin’ in a Sovereign Land
As I sit in the cradle of the full moon, cascading through the amorous sky. Hina's crescent cheek bones glimmer down upon the landscape of Anahola. Her flowing locks of pale moonlight glow in the clouds as it collides through the prominent peak of Kalalea and Konanae.
There is a glimmer of hope in the stars that shine above. A present star that twinkles from a far away place as a reminder of the burning kukui torches that once shone in a distant time, in a distant shore from this place.
I am saddened as I recall some memory in my ancestral past. That same glimmering star reminding me of some forgotten thought. It passes. It's gone.
Yet here we are, threatened by the continued onslaught of terror upon Kanaka Maoli within their own nation, and on their own ‘aina. Kanaka Maoli who have already been driven to the sea from their homes. Awaiting to make their next migration to escape the desolate lands their ancestors have struggled to keep.
Pieces of land left desecrated by the newcomer's who ravaged our great ali'i, lay our kingdom in a pile of torn shreds of paper, and burned our national symbols to make Kanaka Maoli forget that it ever existed.
Pieces that have been left to be picked up and put back together like a lost treasure map by one of the greatest and most enduring people of all time. Our links to the clouded past becoming like our lost national treasure. The truth forever locked in a place in time like our beloved and betrayed Queen Liliuokalani, who seems to stare from beyond the vail of her imprisoned palace walls, hoping for someone to unlock the truth.
A map to that place in time that many believe will lead us from imprisonment and into everlasting freedom. A place where America’s path to world annihilation and imperial conquest is at the end of its terrible regime.
A map that takes us on a tour of a world at war soon to be left in ruins, but starts in a little, well-known, place that will forever be my true country.
A country I hold dear to my heart with strong national pride.
Hawai'i.
Hawai‘iloa.
Ko Hawai‘i Pae ‘Aina.
The great nation of Hawai‘i.
A nation who's prosperity has reached beyond any American dream. A place that captured the hearts and minds of many nations and cultures, which fueled their passion for new beginnings from across the vast globe.
All this great excitement spawning from the tenacious King Kamehameha, who discovered the Western world with his expertise in utilizing Pacific trade and commerce. Welcoming the Haole's wrath with open arms as cannons of war rang out into the air. The blood of a hundred-thousand Kanaka Maoli warriors filling the waterfalls, streams, and oceans like Pele's flowing wrath on the lehua forests of Puna.
This gaping wound was an invasive world of never ending politic's, fueled by imperialism, rampant war, and disease. Acts of unconscionable immorality being infused into our domain with the Westerner's expertise of dishonor and contempt. A Western world that would soon begin to seethe, fester, and infect a place so rich with unheralded values into those of rampant greed and hostile prosperity.
This is the birth of the Haole. That, which has no breath. A foreigner. Foreign in thought and in mind. The birth of the antithesis of our traditional values, which constituted nothing but to take, have more, and take more after you've already had enough. "A'ole aloha. Ha 'ole."
No Aloha. Without breath.
Haole.
A spawn of Western Human behavior that continued in a terrifying multiplicity of newcomers searching out the dream for a new enterprise, a new beginning, and a new land. A new land that the Haole used to lure other unsuspecting foreign nationals to believe in their dream.
Take more.
Haole.
A lie to entrap other foreign nationals into believing in a dream that would only lead them to becoming slaves to a system, mass producing Western commerce. Piracy is a simpler term to use if you want to look at it from international standards measured by today's United Nation's policies regarding foreign national relations.
Chinese. Japanese. Filipino's.
Slaves who's dreams never came true because of the haole. Becoming trapped behind dust masks, a cane knife, and billowing clouds of black smoke of burning cane fields and their dreams. Land burning in the name of sugar and sweets for money. People starving, dying from disease and hard labor, and singing songs as if they'd rather it pohaku than continue on with the slave labor of the haole profiting off the backs of the kanaka and their land.
Migrant working slaves, who furthered the alienation of the kanaka who were already fighting to move to the down beat of an ipu heke in an already fast changing world.
So we learn, we change, and we grow. Our adaptations and tools of modernity became something like a shield of defense as we quickly began to combat and thwart the Westerner’s concept of diplomacy and politics.
We move our pieces into place, check.
Always diligently casting imperial foreign political motives into the deepest ocean chasms, only to have another dreaded beast rear it’s head on to the shore and begin eating everything in it’s wake.
You cut off the head of the British, the French roll up. You chop off the French, the British come back with 2 more heads. You whack off those British heads again, the monster falls and the people are free.
Our great warriors fall from exhaustion.
Others step into their place, but this time the monster that looms its head in our direction is the great and terrible American giant.
When we finally figured out that chopping its head off wasn’t going to work, we
tried doing the next best thing. Killing it with kindness by feeding it until it was full and trying to kill it while it slept.
When that didn’t work and the food and kindness ran out, we suddenly realized we were too late. As it awoke, it grew hungry again and was already eating our neighbor’s family. Then it went on to cannibalize the rest of the community until it had its fill. Leaving behind a mess of bones and flesh in its ravenous wake.
Once the giant was full it would sleep, but when it awoke from its slumber it would begin its bloodthirsty feast all over again.
Again and again it fed until all anything anyone could do was hide and pray that the terrible giant wouldn’t sniff you out next. After every feeding the hungry giant would rest his head until the next feeding. While he slept, some of the villagers would leave their hiding places ever so quietly and drift off into their canoes, sailing into the sunset.
The few others continued to stay quietly hidden. Moving only by night. Learning to hide in caves and desolate lands left in ruins from the giant’s wake of destruction. This caused great division and rife amongst the few people, as there weren’t many places to hide anymore as more and more giant’s from other lands began to crowd the shores and pick off those few still skilled in dodging the hungry giants.
The few of those left laid low and began to talk about what to do next. They planned and planned and while the giant’s fell back asleep they wrote down everything until the next generation was ready to present itself and was strong enough to fight the terrible giant’s, who selfishly invaded their land.
The plans that were laid were already pre-conceived by the great kahuna’s of that time, who dwelt heavily on the changing of the tides and the howling migration of the winds. Kahuna’s who saw the importance in remembering every detail, every last thought and remembrance of those places in time.
They hid the truth in their oral history, which later turned into legends and myths with kaona so deep that to reveal it would one day unleash a wind that would carry the giant’s back into the world from which they came.
Kaona that would only reveal itself to the people when it was ready.
There is a happy ending to this story, but we must journey through the darkness before there is light. Po. I ka po loa. O ka lipolipo o ka po.
Into the po'ele'ele. The deepest dark. The blackest dark.
The rest of the story is a friendly reminder why Kanaka Maoli are going to move forward through time, while the great giant’s bicker amongst themselves and kill each other off for the few scraps of meat left on a measly carcass surmounted with flies and a carpet of maggots.
Unfortunately this has led the Kanaka Maoli to be misled into being displaced from their land and their homes as early as the 1800‘s by British, French, Spanish, and the latter American foreigners.
The displacement from their land has sped into the 21st century after the U.S. landed in Pearl Harbor in the 1880's and decided to never leave.
Expanding and colonizing Hawaii into an illegally seized foreign provisional government. A fake Republic when the provisional government didn’t work out.
Then on to a war torn WWII territory. After dropping an atomic bomb on Japan, the U.S. finally got to stamp that dull fiftieth state star on a false national flag that was slowly beginning to burn in places of contention like China, Korea, Vietnam, and Russia.
But America was not at war. They were busy shielding the truth that the world was slowly growing into dark, dark place, while they increased the export of American made weapons, technology, and intelligence to the rest of the darkening world.
Only the light from gun fire and burning homes could be seen in some places of the world, while America forced oppression on to those countries who didn't have the right connections to make the headline news.
America's freedom, Howdy-doody, and the good ol' American Pie was burning in Betty Crocker's oven as contention grew into overwhelming, world chaos. An imperial American tower living off the genocide of people standing in their way with hunger, war, disease.
"Who needs water let the motherf***er burn!"
When the flags began to burn around the world maybe they smelled the rotting flesh and exposed bones coming from Hawaii's soon to be desolate shores. There was no people to eat anymore. The only thing left to eat was the land and the dried bones buried in it.
So the giant's began to gobble up the kanaka's land on through the 50’s and 60’s. Illegally evicting families from their homeland on the basis of lies and government conspiracies. Many cases where families had physically struggled to keep their land from the fraudulent government were losing their homelands left and right. Desperately hanging on to whatever it was they had left for three or four decades after the illegal overthrow and occupation of Pu‘uloa(Pearl Harbor) by the U.S. Military.
And as these false flags of American sentiment burned around the world, African-American's finally began to struggle for their civil rights in the American South. Places in Asia were beginning to rise up against French and British colonizers. People in South Africa were beginning to strike their drums of freedom to struggle against the post-WWII British Imperialist’s. A worldwide struggle against colonialism and occupation, which would mark the beginning of a dark apartheid that would genocide hundreds of thousands of indigenous people that would last close to 50 years.
The Giant’s march toward more destruction.
Decades of oppression, which have spawned small pockets of revolutionary outcries for peace and social justice in the same old, same old American country already founded on values notorious for racial discrimination, political conflagration, and national injustice on foreign policies. Foreign policies bordering upon the values of what American’s were beginning to describe in other countries as dictators, communists, fascists, and the soon to be infamous word that could apply to anyone in their midst, terrorists.
A libelous excuse to call anyone who looks at the Giant's in a the wrong way a “terrorist.”
A dictator falls and a preacher is shot. America’s summer of love is over. Protests end. War’s over. Everybody goes home happy as hippies sell out their tie dyed, acid tripping, protesting days for stockbroking, land grubbing, yuppy ways.
As the world was left in shambles and ruins from the two previous wars that rocked many nations, war continued to rage on. Brush fires of hatred, malcontent, and genocide swept across whole country sides from previous aftermath's left behind. Fire and smoke engulfing the American plain in a cloud of intolerance and well-laid hypocrisy as the twin towers came crashing down to reality upon a foundation of lies.
Almost 115 years after the illegal overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and her people, the Kanaka Maoli, still being deliberately forced into a silent oppression to stomach the American’s racial discriminatory standards, corrupt politics, lack of culture, and their fallacy of national pride. Their effort to erase us out of existence only increases in the most turbulent of times.
The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Terrorists, insurgents, unlawful combatants, guerillas!
Whatever you call them these days these words still float off American tongues on to the stinking pile of hatred still permeating the air. They all look and smell the same in my book, like words of hate. Words to inspire lascivious acts of American imperialistic war.
Words, words, words. American Human beings are full of these used and broken hate words.
Need an invasion to jettison personal commerce, interest and profit, let a few national buildings blow up in your face and blast it on the news 24 hours around the clock for a year and a half like its still happening.
Need to destroy civil human rights and ramp up an extermination program left behind by another fallen “dictator,” make up a word. Hmm, let me think. This one’s a hard one. Oh, I know, how about “homeland security!”
Need a “war on terror” write a fraudulent document that calls itself “intelligence,” and use the tools of media to make the general public believe in it too. As officials in designer suit and ties bumble around through press conference after press conference screaming "Weapons of Mass Desctruction! Weapons of Mass Destruction!"
Another great example of the misused American word, “intelligence!”
Ready to laugh?
Need more “intelligence,” put your “unlawful combatants” in a “holding facility” where American guards are trained to put dirty panties on the heads of “unlawful combatants” and parade them around naked for hours, while they threaten to kill their imprisoned wives and children so that they cooperate on their own "free will." And when they get bored and tired they can just put them in some horrifyingly grotesque sexual position in handcuffs through the rest of the night. But only until they are ready to wake up from a nap for the next shift.
After all, the original definition of “torture”(another horribly American defined word) didn’t describe psychological and sexually subversive, inhumane acts on fellow human beings as “torture.”
Phew! Thanks Donald Rumsfield for signing your name off on that one into U.S. Foreign policy. I think any smart person wouldn’t touch U.S. Foregin policy with a 12 foot pole. Thank you very much.
American’s have words for everything. Do you get the picture I’m trying to paint here yet?
Words with a purpose to hate. To hate that, which is judged by the few American’s who exclaim the right and power to have the voice of a people that is ready to point that smoking finger in a direction that’ll count as a solid nuclear hit. Russia, Iraq, Iran, Palestine, North Korea, China, Japan, Hawai'i.
The list could go on and on and on.
Perfectly functioning capable kanaka who seem to want peace and quiet from a world that the American giants continue to consume. A place that reminds them of a place in time when happy smiling faces crowded their coastlines and streets. When there wasn’t the threat of a new atrocious hotel development, or another landing strip for the military to drop a bomb on.
A place in time when the ukulele sang songs of a new tomorrow, and a treasured beginning to a happy ending. When people looked in each other’s eyes and still had hope. When people truly still had aloha.
We are suddenly shot to a startle at the sound of a loudspeaker and sirens.
A suddenly disquieted sleep to soft ocean tides off coast of Hawai'i, could go hand in hand with the sound of the beating pahu drums of war.
Suited police officers in riot gear, armed with tasers, gasmasks, mace, tear gas, and little plastic wrist tags. Politicians promising, better, more “affordable housing” as they sign off on multi-million dollar properties to collect taxes on land that has never belonged to them. A swarm of angry, intolerant, fear driven tycoons who work diligently to put away all the free and sovereign Kanaka Maoli dogs in kennels.
Kanaka Maoli standing lawfully in their own land, yet powerless to take a stand in a world of money-driven tyrants that refuse to recognize their nationhood and law. How does something already so frail and broken appease a beast who’s hunger does not end? Who’s hunger has already devoured everything in its path?
It now scavenges for the few remaining survivors.
Tents are torn open with knives as they take large trash bags and empty the last remnants of peoples lives into a durable-plastic, black trash-bag, oblivion. Old family pictures, fishing gear, and favored books. Jewelry not worth an American dollar, but handcrafted by a tutu in the early 20th century. A treasure kept as a reminder of an even harder past. Specially kept tokens and gifts left behind in unkempt ruins.
An old woman stands crying in the distance holding her dog and looking for her husband. Others who refuse to leave are hauled off to large vans by force. Officer’s swarm around the community of tents to do their business. They remove the “trespassers” as quickly as possible, go home to their suburban Hawaii Kai home, and forget about the day with some good Monday night television.
A scene that we think can only take place in news briefs from third world countries clear across the world happening right here. The deepest form of oppression happening right before everbody’s eyes, right here in paradise, genocide.
Genocide is defined as the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. Seems kanaka maoli can easily define themselves as this and check off all four on the basis of that definition. And this whispered genocide, continued occupation, and blatant oppression of our rights seems to be happening at a faster and faster rate.
What doesn’t strike me as surprising is the awareness of its effect on all of us as a community not only within Hawai‘i, but on a global scale?
So I decided I might try and get to the bottom of this strange predicament that Kanaka Maoli seem to be caught in, called genocide.
As I dug through documents and intensive research papers on racial discrimination in the United States of America I began to unlock the mystery that has been hanging over our heads most of our lives
The question that hangs at back of all our minds, “If their really is a scary, systemic demon out there deliberately trying to suck the living flesh from our bones to cease us from existing, why isn’t anybody doing anything about it?”
Then I began to wonder if everyone can even see it.
Do others take notice of disappearing faces in the sea of humanity? Do they pretend to be blind hoping that it won’t happen to them next? Is it a survival of the fittest, deer-in-the-headlights, run-with-the-pack-or-get-eaten kind of thing?
Or is it possible, that some people in this day and age really only think of themselves and their own? That other people are really that insignificant and lower then them. That it’s easier to just imagine we aren’t there, continue on with business as usual, and deny yourself the truth in what you see isn’t really happening. Are we in denial?
We as Kanaka Maoli have always been a well-traveled, worldly established people throughout Oceania at the beginning of our journey, and after first contact with Westerner's to the many various corners of the world.
As our homeless kanaka maoli shelter themselves in tents on the beach, on crowded areas of Hawaiian Homelands, looking out into the western sunset, we can only pray that another day rises where we will sing songs and tell tales of times that were melancholy under the rule of an evil empire a long time ago, in a far away place.
Then maybe, when we are well and ready, we can set sail for the sacred lands to the north, where the hidden land of Kane-huna-moku lies. Just past the setting sun, beyond the islands of Lehua and Nihoa.
If only mythology were such a reality today that to dip our paddles into the ocean, and raise our sails meant that our promised land would suddenly appear as reality in a grasp of our manifestation and thought.
We would already be there. Gone without a trace.
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