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.