Origins (inspired by JuDonn's TFA Diversity session)

O Leilani ko’u inoa, and I come from the ones forgotten

                            The ones who tried to forget

                    And the ones who savagely erased. 

 I come from those

                    whose bloodline dates back to  Maui and the Big Island

                Proud people with shark aumakuas,

          and stewards of ancient Hawaiian homelands

                  dotted with verdant greens from where echoes

        of mele and pule resonate like the drumbeats

                and heartbeats pulsing through history’s bones

        and coursing through my existence. 

But now I come from the chiefs of Wall Street

           tyrants whose eyes are closed and who foreclose

                          generations-old homes where grandmothers in slippahs and curlers

            stand over the stove that fill four walls with the scent of 

kalua cabbage, lau lau, and loco moco. 

             Love. For Sale.

Osiyo 

                  I am from Ahawi, half of whose bloodline

walked on at Fort Knox during Nunna Daul Isunyi

              In this Trail of Needless Tears that spans from one generation to the other to the other to the other to the other, my bloodline became another--

deemed the other.

              Trickled down through the years,

              I am from the one who was stolen from the wide open spaces of the rez and into closed doors and suffocating walls of  boarding schools by missionaries who believe in the salvation of savages through a god who picks selectively the worthy through a singular word supposedly written in stone

                        I am from the one whose Native tongue is silenced because he wants to be a human being, not a savage

                    I am borne from the genocide of a people who existed long before time had a name

but now invisible and forced to prove their existence by a government who wants us to check one box this box what...categorization

all for federal dollars and recognition

and my shame...

                For I am also from the ones who savaged and ravaged and pillaged

It is my self-imposed and inherited  shame, my dishonour, my brokenness that

Coursing through my veins is the echo of colonization and subjugation, 

I 

am also 

from those

who came to these lands on white-washed ships, bearing promises of salvation draped as blankets riddled with diseases. 

                                 I am from the borderlands of shame and pride,

                                             of hope and despair

Of being too much of different races and identities,

yet never enough of one

I am from “what are you?” and “if you had your father’s hazel eyes and your mother’s rosy skin, you would be beautiful” and racial ambiguity

                    I am from “Is Leilani an Arabic name?” post-911

                             “Are you Mexican?” post-Dream Act

I find it hard

To fully belong in a place other than the one I call my own

Mestizaness hapaness mixed-bloodedness

I belong to many tribes but at times feel alone in this

struggle to make sense of contradiction and duality

But still I try to navigate through these mazes in the hazes of faces layered across places and time

I am from the ones forgotten,

and so I remember

I am from the ones who tried to forget

and so I speak

I am from the ones who tried to erase

And so I see

I am from the Trail of Broken Treaties and annexations of a kingdom,

And so I stand here today and I speak

because though I come from history,

I am today,

eyes full of intent

shoulders straight

soul intact

heart full of hope and strength and fight

I am here

My people live on

Oye

WE NEVER VANISHED