"Then there were none"
I was recently given this book as a gift by one of my Aunties in my halau. I have been reading off and on days after receiving it. It's easy reading. The author talks about factual events that lead to the dwindling numbers of Hawaiians from the onset of foreigners in Hawaii and it's devastating impact on the Kingdom of Hawaii as a whole. Though the author does a good job at pointing out objective facts, She tells it in a subjective way, but still impacting. Upon reading this book, I came upon this, Page #64:
Our very concept of ourselves was challenged. English was the language of education, and teachers punished our children if they spoke Hawaiian. Hawaiian scholar Mary Kawena Pukui (1895-1986) told a story of her experience as a boarding school student at Honolulu's Mid-Pacific institute. Kawena, half-Hawaiiand and half-white, was fluent in both Hawaiian and English, but some of the new boarders at Mid-Pacific spoke only Hawaiian. One girl in particular had trouble understanding the teacher. Kawena turned to the student and translated the teacher's English language instructions into Hawaiian. For th is Kawena was physically punished and told not to speak her native tongue again....
...But the Americanizing dug deeper than official disapproval of our language. Many Hawaiian parents, concerned for their children's future, would not allow their own children to speak H awaiian at all. And it wasn't just the Hawaiian language that was suppressed. It was Hawaiian ways.
I think perhaps this best sums up why my family probably did not practice Hawaiian ways. In addition probably why na keiki of my generation do not speak ka 'olelo Hawai'i. It's amazing that this one page spells out so much for me and how my passion for researching my heritage is important. I may not be a scholar like Ms. Puku'i, but I will do MY best to be the best Hawaiian I can be. Reading these words instills a bit of a somber mood in me, and causes that fire to keep burning to learn. But yet the following page in this book had this:
I must thank my father for saying that "You will be living in the haole time, and the wise thing to do is to move with the time, because time is a thing that belongs to no one....There's only one thing I ask of you, my children - You are Hawai'i, and I would appreciate that you remain Hawai'i."
-Pilahi Paki (1910-1985)
As bleek as our Hawaiian history has been documented, there is still the ever burning desire to remain true to a never forgotten race of "children of the land", kama'aina... Hawaiians.
November 28th 2005, my first Detroit Red Wing game... my second LA King's game. I hadn't been to a hockey game in over two years. I'm not really a sports fan pe se, but when I worked at Cinesite, a child company of Kodak. We used to get free box seats at the Staples Center. See Kodak had a box seat there mainly for their clients and what not, or whoever they were trying to schmooze. Sometimes when they had no one to give tickets too, they would kick them down to us peon artists at Cinesite, and we would take 'em and run. Well this was not the case. We needed tissue for our noses for where we sat. Not that they were bad seats, actuallly they were cool seats. We could see everything from up where we were at. 
Before getting to our seats, we stuck our head in the arena at one of the leves to see the teams practicing, very cool... you can see by my pic, my astonishment and excitment... After we grabbed our seats made our selves at home, then ran down to the concession stands... Man it's hella expensive at these places.. oh well..grinz grinz grinz... 
Oh and one more shot of us at our seats...
