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'Iokepa and His People
For the last six months, we were on the road with our new book, The Return Voyage; we drove across the American continent and spoke out on behalf of my husband's people. We return home to witness the budding fruit of years ofloving-labor on behalf of the sorely oppressed Native Hawaiian people, and their inspiring culture.
September will mark seven years since 'Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani and I took this low-tech, low-profile, ancestral-driven show on the road. That is seven years since we packed up our ten years of grooming on the beaches of Hawai'i and took the Hawaiian Grandmothers' wisdom and our stories to those willing ears and hearts across the United States. In these years, 'Iokepa has repeated his Grandmothers' words often. He's been nothing if now consistent. When the good folks in our audiences raise their hands and ask, "What can I do to help?," he has answered always, "When you hear something positive happening on the Islands, please offer a prayer for the Hawaiian people."
I have written about destiny. ‘Iokepa has spoken of it. He calls it the promise we made when we took on life. Yet there is persistent bewilderment among moderns who have refused it. Echoing the Hawaiian grandmothers, I have written: no one of us is born with the same destiny; we’re gifted with individual and cultural gifts to help realize our specific promises.
We’ve been off Island long enough to see (without blinders) the changes. After more than a full year away, it has felt important in these past months to explore our old haunts, to revisit the paths we’ve walked together for fourteen years, the beaches where we’ve sunned and surfed, and the mountain where we’ve slept to the accompaniment of bird song. So when there is sufficient money for gas, and leisure time too, we do just that. We revisit; we reminisce.
There was a time on our Island, not very long ago, when there were independently owned bookstores. But maybe thirteen years ago, the chain store Borders set up shop in the dead center of the Island. One by one the independents dropped off the map. It is pretty near impossible for an independently owned small store to compete with the mega-store and its deep discounts.
There are two distinctly competing versions of this story. Both are equally true. In both stories, ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani and I have just returned home to Kaua’i – the northwestern-most Island in the Hawaiian archipelago – after more than a year on the American continent. In both versions we loved touring the U.S. with our new book and in both versions we were yearning for home. In the first version: last Thursday, we put up our great-in-the-rain-and-cold, but less-great-in-the-tropical-heat donated German tent. It is our fourteenth tent in thirteen years without a house on the beaches of Hawai’i.
The material and successful life that ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Imaikalani surrendered fourteen years ago - to take up arms (heart and soul) against the deception, the greed, and the oppression visited upon his people and his nation - included a house on a lake, seven cars “and a hot rod.” Despite the fact that his lavish passion in these last years has been cultural - language, history and spiritual practice - for the first forty-six years of his life focused an equal dose of passion on cars that go very fast.
At the end of almost every Return Voyage gathering in these past years, well-intentioned folks have asked ‘Iokepa: “What can I do to help?”
He answers: “When you hear that things are changing on the Hawaiian Islands – and you will – I ask that you offer a prayer for the Hawaiian people.”
The very first American Court House erected on the Island of Kaua’i was built in 1837, with complete awareness and intention on the top of the bulldozed ruins of what was the oldest heiau on this Island.
Heiau were (and those that remain are) sacred stone enclosures for Native Hawaiian ritual and spiritual practice, prayer and ceremony. Every heiau was built in alignment with the planets and the stars – with an ancient people’s sophisticated awareness of the night sky. Each heiau sat within full view of the ocean horizon.
It’s Thanksgiving Day; ‘Iokepa is threatened with jail. The challenge of Return Voyage, always and only moved by ancestral guidance, intensifies. In the long, deep, ubiquitous story of freedom denied, of national identity obliterated, of oppression institutionalized – there have been wars waged, anger and violence righteously uncorked against oppressors.
‘Iokepa and I return to our Islands. But before we step off the airplane, we take ourselves to task. We remind ourselves that ends never justify means, and that our only hope of influence is by living example – our observable behavior. For many months and even more car miles, we drove the American continental freeways. But we spoke out, always, on behalf of this place and these people.
‘Iokepa and I read a New York Times editorial page column, and sucked in our collective breath. We were aghast that the editorial writer could have so completely missed the mark. In honor of the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood, the Times writer began: “The 50th state turns 50 on Friday, and the strange thing is how wildly and jubilantly the islands aren’t celebrating.” The writer explained the lack of celebration: “The reasons are sad but obvious… Tourism is in the tank.”
I live in a place that is rich in tropical flora, volcanic mountains, lavish waterfalls, and beaches. It sits--this most isolated archipelago on the planet--in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Paradoxically, I live also, ina place where the detritus of the continental United States floats to shore--literally and figuratively. Our beaches are strewn with the enormous, floating timber cut from the old-growth forests of the American Northwest. Our campgrounds are brimming with the continent's social misfits: Castoffs from several states' welfare systems--after the obligation to serve them has expired.
There is an other Islandreality than the one that 'Iokepa lives to speak. Anyone who has sat in a Return Voyage gathering, or has casually perused this website, or has shared a conversation with 'Iokepa over the past years, knows this: He cherishes the authentic wisdom within his kanaka maoli culture. He lives to convey that aboriginal wisdom to the world--and to awaken all peoples to the strength and possibilities within their own indigenous cultures.
'Iokepa Hanalei 'Imaikalani has often instructed me. "European and American sugar cane barons laid claim, almost two hundred years ago now, to the land that my people stewarded for thirteen thousand years. They claimed ownership of a land that, we knew, only the Creator could own.
There are whole categories of assumptions Americans make. One of them – especially post 9/11 – is this. All air travelers must carry government-issued identification. For so many years now ‘Iokepa Hanalei ‘Īmaikalani has traveled the length and breadth of the United States, by air and by car, without one. It has not been an oversight on his part; he didn’t leave his state or federally-issued ID card at home in a drawer.
‘Iokepa’s mother died yesterday. The only way we know to honor that momentous passage is a reprieve from doing – a seizing of “still.” The Return Voyage has slowed to a crawl. In our lives on Earth, it is absolutely required that we honor the pauses. That we stop in our tracks – permit, at times, what feels like a loss of momentum. Within our industrial world, there is an addiction to motion – and a consequent avoidance of still.
