Return Voyage spent the last week visiting, at the edge of the Everglades, in southernmost Florida. We were privileged to hike throughout this remarkable and exotic landscape, for the first time in our longish lives. In these past days, we saw all manner of bird life: Cormorant, Grey Heron, Peacock in the wild, Anhinga (a species I'd neither sighted, nor pronounced before then). I was pecked by a Pelican--nothing personal--he was after the fish in my bucket. For the nature-absorbed and absorbing Hawaiian by my side: There were all manner of mangrove, fern, and unusual growing trees and plants to commune with.
“It’s not that we have a right to life, but rather we have a responsibility for life.”
Several months ago, ‘Iokepa and tall, imposing Tiokasin GhostHorse shared a conversation across the radio waves in New York City, on Tiokasin’s First Voices: Indigenous Radio. This morning, after a particularly intimate and probing gathering, I am remembering the prominent Lakota’s words.
I will not belabor this. I will simply try to explain. This promised, "Ever Changing Page" has been unchanging for more than two full weeks. And like a kid who has missed the deadline for her term paper--"The dog ate it." "It was lost in the mail."--I feel more than a bit chagrined to be offering excuses. There really are none.
It was a beautiful, crisp day on the North Shore of Minnesota. Our Swedish hosts led us up one hill and down again. We hiked through the thick white stuff on the ground, and through the flimsy flakes in the air. Because these were exemplary hosts, they had warned us well: “Watch your step; there are ice patches under the snow.” We heeded them well: up the hill, then down it again. But within twenty feet of their front door, clutching a few Lake Superior stones in my left hand, I carelessly placed my booted foot – and the solid Earth slid out from under me. I fell hard on the open palm of my straight right arm.
Our road atlas has two full-page maps of Minnesota: one south and one north. But the top of that northern map stops short of a chunk of Minnesota that wraps still further north and east around the largest lake on Earth, Lake Superior. Tucked elsewhere on the atlas page, we located an insert that continued the job up to Canada. That is where we’ve spent this past week – about a quarter of a map inch from the Canadian border, in the winter wonderland of Hovland. Imagine a Native Hawaiian experiencing nightly saunas followed by dips in the icy January waters of Lake Superior, and you begin to picture how powerfully different – yet remarkably the same – this week has been.
Say the word spiritual, and a deathlike solemnity settles over a crowd. Watch a gathering of good folks work overtime to know, feel, or say the right thing. I have watched triathlon competitors swim, bike, and run, and look no less intense or competitive than when I watch spiritual seekers attack their goal.
The place: Cleveland Heights, Ohio. The setting: a huge table topped with clams casino, prosciutto, Grandma Antoinette’s incredible pasta sauce, a beautiful feta-topped salad, and champagne. The gathering: one old friend, and many strangers. They are scientists, medical researchers, writers, and accomplished artists. The time: one night after the Iowa presidential caucus. In sum: this was a group of serious intellectuals of a decidedly Democratic Party bent. Wiry, intense Sally began the conversation with: “Is Return Voyage political?”
When ‘Iokepa wrote the original words on the homepage for our website, he wrote: “If you have a single drop of Native Hawaiian blood, we invite you to join the conversation.” The aboriginal Hawaiians never judged their relationship between one another by the amount of indigenous blood that had – or had not – been diluted by intermarriage. You were Hawaiian even if you were born red-headed, blue-eyed, and aboriginal – if you claimed it, accepted responsibility for it, and lived it.
We are in Southwestern, Virginia, and for me--who reared young sons in Roanoke from 1986 to 1994--it is a coming home. Nowhere are people more compassionate, less likely to erect barriers to intimacy--or more falsely maligned--than in the heart of the old Confederacy. I was guilty of just such regional accusations and stereotypes--until I lived here. My small family came to depend on the kindness of total strangers in those vulnerable years, and we were never disappointed. I yearned to bring 'Iokepa "home" with me. He (with his long silver hair and his brown aboriginal face) has yet to meet a stranger here.
It did not feel good,” Maxine Hong Kingston wrote in Hawai‘i One Summer, “To be a writer in a place that is not a writing culture, where written language is only a few hundred years old.”
The rich oral traditions are lost to our Western world. We’ve made false idols of the written word. We assumed that what was written carried a weight, that what was spoken did not.
We have been in New York City for the past week, and we are loving the concentration and intensity of creative energy on this other Island. A new friend, in casual conversation, brought up the historic and current plight of the South African people. Her intention was to gently mitigate the seriousness of the aboriginal Hawaiian losses.
Perhaps, nine years ago now, we were camping (actually, living in a tent) at Kaheka--the Salt Pans Park-- on Kaua'i, when we met Lou. Over these past ten years, we have met hundreds of visitors to the Island, at that particular park. Some were there for a quick swim by day, others were camping for a week. They were vacationing from Germany, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Japan, and every part of the United States.
We first met John Talley at an Eastside Portland coffee shop. He was sitting one table away and couldn’t help overhearing ‘Iokepa speaking with an old friend. John was intrigued by what he heard, introduced himself, and apologized for eavesdropping. ‘Iokepa, for his part, was drawn immediately to the seventy-six-year-old Iroquois with the powerful face – etched deeply along strong native features – and the gentle voice. They agreed to meet again.
