Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 40, Number 12, 1 December 2023 — KĀNAKA, COME HOME [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

KĀNAKA, COME HOME

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When Kalani Barrett said that to me and my 'ohana it was a clear and forceful blow to the , na'au. _ , We were on the lānai of my parents' small cottage in Volcano and Mauna Loa was watching over us. It was a tumultuous time in Hawai'i. The islands were just reopening to tourists, but the fuel leaks at Red Hill had , poisoned the waters. And while it hadn't been made offieial, there were more and more Native Hawaiians leaving Hawai'i. I asked how those of us in the diaspora could help Hawai'i Nei. His quick answer: "Kānaka, eome home." This kāhea needs to be heard clearly across the honua. "Kānaka, eome home." Hawai'i is onee again in a fragile plaee and too many of us are living away from the islands with diminished influence to make Hawai'i Nei the thriving homeland of the Hawaiian people. The diaspora is needed in our ancestral homeland. There is a struggle for the future of Hawai'i. Who will be making the decisions about what course Hawai'i takes not only politically, but culturally? After decades of being shunted to the side, Kānaka have a ehanee to have a legitimate say. This previously denied say was earned by Kānaka who , rallied at Mauna Kea and led the rescue and relief work in the wake of Lahaina. "When we show up, we win," said Tiare Lawrence, a Kanaka leader of the Maui wildfire response, at the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement's (CNHA) Native Hawaiian Convention in Maui in mid-November. However, it's hard to be on the front lines and have a say when you're a member of the diaspora. You've read here in Ka Wai Ola and in other places, that the United States Census made it official that there are now more Kānaka Maoli outside of Hawai'i than living in Hawai'i Nei. It's an occurrence that has caused soul-searching and handwringing. We need to do what we ean to get this reversed.

BY NAKA NAIHANIEL Ihe fires in Maui have only made conditions harder for Native Hawaiians in Hawai'i. My Hilo-raised father claims Hawaiians are the most adaptable people on the planet. He attributes it to our ancestors' skills of landing their canoes on uninhabited shores and creating new civilizations. That's why Hawaiians ean thrive in the deep ehill of Alaska and the Northwest or in the blazing heat of Nevada and Texas. Besides adapting to physical environments, I know dozens of Native Hawaiians who have been successful in the hard-edged world of politics, hnanee and media on the eontinent. They have gone toe-to-toe in competitive fields and thrived. We, in Hawai'i, need to actively entice them to bring their smarts and ambition to Hawai'i Nei. At the CNHA convention in Las Vegas this summer a panel was convened to address the question: "Should Mainland Hawaiians Be Part of the Lāhui?" One of the panelists was Patrick Makuakāne, a Californian, who just received a MacArthur genius award. "We're the proudest people I know in terms of where we're from," said Makuakāne. "It's hard to explain to people why, but so there's a sense of pride being a Hawaiian that will never be taken away from us because we moved." Makuakāne is successful in California, in part because he's been able to leverage his Kanaka identity and the eultural resources available to him on the continent. He's a great example of the diaspora thriving on the continent. However, there's one plaee where Kānaka aren't thriving, the plaee where Makuakāne is proud to be from: Hawai'i. We need a campaign: "Kānaka, Come Home." There needs to be a program to incentivize the diaspora

to return. Creating a "Kānaka, Come Home" initiative will not be easy. The main hurdle is, of course, the cost of living and housing in Hawai'i. On the same panel with Makuakāne, Carole Lanialoha Lee, who has lived in Chicago for most of her life, said: "I don't know how you guys survive in Hawai'i. I grew up hearing about the struggles and how my parents got [to Chicago,] and it was for me, a story of survival." She's right. It's hard to understand how most of us live in Hawai'i. The question of housing is daunting. Most of the returning diaspora have a family home they move into. The mueh harder path is to go into the open market and compete for high-priced housing with Californians bolstered by tech money or retired baby boomers sitting on top of formidable equity built up from prior ownership. Hawai'i is suffering from a proliferation of people without generational connections, a sense of history or plaee. When I took the ehannel jumper from Waimea to Kahului to attend CNHA's Native Hawaiian Convention in Maui, the kind accountant seated next me asked me to identify the island on the left side of the plane. He wanted to know if it was inhabited. I dug deep into my reserves of aloha and explained Kaho'olawe to him. Despite having lived in Hawai'i for several years and possessing a Hawai'i driver's license, he wasn't familiar with the island or its history. For me, he was a symbol of those who have moved here, with weahh amassed ffom elsewhere, who haven't invested time to understand Hawai'i. Eaeh encounter like this makes me think about the person whose plaee he's taking. I realize it's not a zero-sum situation, but I can't help but think that a person living in Hawai'i, who doesn't understand Hawai'i, has stolen a plaee away from a Kanaka who should be living in Hawai'i Nei. It's easy to overlook, in a world of borders and conflicts over immigration policy, that there are no restrictions that limit any American from living anywhere in the United States. Yes, affordability and community acceptance are SEE KĀNAKA, C0ME HOME ON PAGE 20

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KĀNAKA, C0ME HOME Continued from page 19

pragmatic limitations, but if you're an American and you want to live in Miloli'i, Wai'anae or Keaukaha there's nothing keeping you out. It's a challenge to watch the competition for housing play out in parts of Hawai'i popular with remote workers. A returning Kanaka finding affordable housing is the exception to the rule, but those exceptions ean be found. When I write about the situations with Native Hawaiians, I'm inevitably confronted with a comment saying "Well, my German/Italian/Irish ancestors left Europe or my Japanese/Chinese/Korean ancestors left Asia and everything turned out just fine." I choose not to engage those commenters. It won't help to point out that in all the places and groups they cite, the culture, language and political leadership are still dominated by the same ethnicity of the

emigres. That isn't the case with Kānaka Maoli. Hawai'i's culture, language and political leadership isn't Kānaka Maoli. That's why our Native Hawaiian community has been cast to the winds. Today, we are kept connected to Hawai'i by L&Ls, visits by Hawaiian performers to the eontinent and Roku boxes that stream HNN and OC16. What Hawaiians in Hawai'i and the diaspora are grappling with is deracination. "To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul," wrote Simone Weil in The Needfor Roots (1949). "Uprootedness occurs whenever there is a military conquest, and in this sense conquest is nearly always an evil. There is the minimum of uprootedness when the conquerors are migrants who settle down in the eonquered country, intermarry with the inhabitants and take root themselves. Such was the case with the Hellenes in Greece, the Celts in Gaul and the Moors in Spain. But when the conqueror remains a stranger in the land of whieh he has taken possession, uprootedness becomes an almost mortal disease among the subdued population." I know not everyone ean heed Kalani's kāhea. I know many who don't want to move to Hawai'i. They're doing great going toe-to-toe on the continent and being successful. Or they have spouses who can't imagine moving to a plaee that's a small fishbowl. But the currency currently used in Hawai'i isn't based on aloha, so there's no way for those who sought better eeonomie conditions to compete for housing in a plaee where housing for Native Hawaiians should be a guarantee. There's also the question of identity that holds back the diaspora. My sister, who also heeded the kāhea and moved into our parents' cottage full-time (the same plaee

where Kalani's kāhea was first spoken) told me, "There are ehoke Hawaiians on the continent who don't think they are Hawaiian enough." However, there's no one to judge or keep score. Every 'ohana has members who are no longer in Hawai'i. There are Kānaka in Hawai'i who ean be hyperbolically judgmental about the decisions of Kānaka not to live in Hawai'i but they, too, inevitably have 'ohana living away from Hawai'i. No Kanaka needs permission to move home to Hawai'i. We all want to be in a plaee where we belong. We want to be in a plaee where our outside features and our names are the rule and not the exception. Lor Kānaka, that plaee is Hawai'i. Lor me, the small thing that I rarely fail to note is being surrounded by Kānaka who also share names with my siblings. I never grew up with other people named U'ilani, Pomaika'i, Auli'i or Nae'ole. Personally, it feels great to shed the diaspora label. I hope more Kānaka are able to do it. We need to take on a concentrated effort to not only keep Kānaka home, but also to help them eome back. Kānaka, eome home. You're desperately needed. ■

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'Auli'i and Naka Nathaniel are the granddaughter and grandson ofHarry and Katherine Nathaniel. 'Auli'i (@haku_aulii) is an artist from Volcano and Naka (@nakanathaniel) is a writerfrom Waimea. - Courtesy Photo