American Anthem in the language of its original Mother

WILL HAWAI`I SECEDE FROM THE US?

Reblogged from The Koani Foundation 

Hawai`i is not, and has never been in or a part of the United States. 
So you cannot secede from something you've never been legally part of.

You cannot quit something you didn’t join. You cannot resign from something to which you don’t belong. You cannot divorce from someone to whom you were never married. Hawai`i regaining its independent status is a matter of reinstatement; of putting something back into its rightful place. Since Hawai`i was never lawfully made a part of the United States, its rightful place is still that of a sovereign, independent nation.

The current status of Hawai`i is that it’s people, lands and government are being held captive by the US. The Hawai`i independence movement is not seeking to secede from a bad union, it is seeking freedom from captivity, and the freedom to resume Hawaii’s status as a sovereign and independent nation. 

White Sandy Beach of Hawai'i, Braddah Iz

Makaha Sons, "Kaulana na Pua o Hawai'i" (Famous are the Flowers of Hawai'i

Kaulana nā pua aʻo Hawaiʻi Kūpaʻa mahope o ka ʻāina Hiki mai ka ʻelele o ka loko ʻino Palapala ʻānunu me ka pākaha	Famous are the flowers of Hawaiʻi Ever loyal to the land When the evil-hearted messenger comes With his greedy document of extortion
Pane mai Hawaiʻi moku o Keawe Kōkua nā Hono aʻo Piʻilani Kākoʻo mai Kauaʻi o Mano Paʻapū me ke one Kākuhihewa	Hawaiʻi, land of Keawe answers The bays of Piʻilani help Kauaʻi of Mano lends support All are united by the sands of Kākuhihewa
ʻAʻole aʻe kau i ka pūlima Maluna o ka pepa o ka ʻenemi Hoʻohui ʻāina kūʻai hewa I ka pono sivila aʻo ke kanaka	Do not fix a signature To the paper of the enemy With its sin of annexation And sale of the civil rights of the people
ʻAʻole mākou aʻe minamina I ka puʻukālā a ke aupuni Ua lawa mākou i ka pōhaku I ka ʻai kamahaʻo o ka ʻāina	We do not value The government's hills of money We are satisfied with the rocks The wondrous food of the land
Mahope mākou o Liliʻulani A loaʻa e ka pono o ka ʻāina     [alternate stanza:      A kau hou ʻia e ke kalaunu] Haʻina ʻia mai ana ka puana Ka poʻe i aloha i ka ʻāina	We support Liliʻuokalani Who has won the rights of the land     [alternate stanza:      She will be crowned again] The story is told Of the people who love the land

Hapa, "Redemption Song"

Originally sung by Bob Marley, this rendition of Redemption Song by the Hawaiian group Hapa is one of the songs I turn to whenever I need re-affirmation that there is goodness in the world. 99.999% of the time, it is not too late. There is redemption.

I admit; sometimes I can be so rararara speak out! that I sometimes forget that a whisper can be just as powerful as a scream. Sometimes it's the little details that make the most profound difference, rather than a huge act. A whisper can resonate the loudest across the vast expanse of the world and a pebble can produce the most enduring ripple as long as they are constant.

That being said, there is something so powerful whenever I hear a chant or a song from my ancestral tongues. Power. Mana, it is called in Hawaiian. Incidentally, Mana in Tagalog means inheritance. So in the words of my Hawaiian and Pinoy ancestors, Mana is a power that is inherited, passed on from a proud people whose cultures and traditions can never be vanished.

Sometimes I do worry, though, that someday my ancestral tongues will cease to exist. We had been silenced before  by missionaries and conquerors who told us our Native ways were savage. They used God as a justification for silencing our tongues, our songs, our chants, our identity. But they couldn't succeed, because Mana is not created by man and therefore cannot be taken away by man. And so we still speak, though not as loudly as we had before the time of James Cook.

What worries me is that there are some in my generation who think that modernity and progress means letting go of Nativeness, that in order to fly one must abandon roots. I am an American in my home country and yet in here, I hunger for the sound of Hawaiian, Tsalagi/Cherokee, and Maori tongues. I yearn for Bisayan and Tagalog that are not peppered with English words; bastardized BisLish and TagLish have become somewhat of a new status symbol that separates the elites from the non-elites. I long to hear pride and survival with each syllable spoken from my ancestral tongues.

Is that too naïve, too idealistic? Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but it is my truth.  


 

Harvard Lecture, free and open to the public

Here's an interesting upcoming lecture sponsored by my alma mater, to be held in January. Entitled Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Richard Langham's lecture posits cooking as a significant marker of human evolution.

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

When Wed., Jan. 27, 2010, 6 – 7 p.m.

Where: Harvard Museum of Natural History, 26 xford St.

Type of Event: Presentation/Lecture, Science, Social Sciences, Special Events

Organization/Sponsor: Harvard Museum of Natural History

Speaker(s): Richard Wrangham

Cost: Free and open to the public

Lecture and book signing with Richard Wrangham. In his latest book, Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham puts forth a bold theory — that our Paleolithic homo ancestors tamed fire and began cooking 1.8 million years ago, much earlier than conventionally believed. Wrangham will discuss how the cooking kick started a revolution in human evolution — driving whole scale changes in our physiology, behavior, and cognition that define our species to this very day.




New York Times book review after the cut: