LAND OF THE RED GIANTS OF IXTLAN

Chapter 14 - Hawai'i: "Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo"

The residents of Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo hope to serve

as an inspiration and a model for the many Kanaka Maoli
struggling throughout the Islands today to regain control
of their lands and their lives. The long range vision of the
village is one of self-sufficiency, with a harmonious balance
of ancient and future systems, from lo'i kalo (irrigated
terraced taro fields) and la'au lapa'au (healing with plants
and prayer) to renewable energy, the Internet, and other
appropriate technologies.
Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo is like fertile soil for the seed
of sovereignty, an ancient seed that has lain dormant for
over a century. Now we have planted it, watered it, and
are nurturing the seed as it sprouts and begins to grow
toward the sun. We have come a long way, and have a
long way to go.
With perseverance and aloha, and most of all trust in
Ke Akua, we envision a bright future for Hawai'i and all
her children. We pray that the efforts of the villagers of
Pu'uhonua o Waimanalo will bear fruit for many generations
to come.
- Nation of Hawai'i website

Waimanalo was my favorite beach on Oahu. Of course that's a relative statement of

preference when the whole island, and the chain of Hawaiian Islands stretching out across
the North Pacific, is an unbroken paradise - except for the many USA military
installations dotting it from Pearl Harbor to the secret submarine bases and nuclear-
contaminated zones of Lihue and Midway. In 1955 my family and I landed at Honolulu
and Midway for refueling stops on our way to Japan, where my father was stationed for 3
years as a USAF pilot and intelligence officer. In 1968 I was married for the first time, in
a traditional native ceremony in a palm grove, on the Big Island at Kailua-Kona, and
became aware again it was one big floating fortress in the Pacific Empire, sailing canoes
with some local guys all summer around the volcanoes and pineapple plantations that,
they told me in the lovely native language, and in their poor huts in Hilo and on Moloka'i,
had run them out of their homes back in the 1890s when the US Marines bullied their
way into Queen Liliuokalani's palace at Iolani, on Oahu, and instituted a coup d'etat in the
neighborhood between where the many missionaries lived and Pearl Harbor, the only
swampy and unlovely area in the whole nation, which had brought syphilis and rum to
decimate at least 800,000 natives between the 1700s when Captain Cook landed and
1890. Paradise must have been a little what Atlantis was like, or at least the Mu or
Lemuria of Pacific Oceania that Madame Blavatsky and James Churchward wrote about
in their celebrated books at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. As the Pearl Harbor of
Polynesian culture the USA came in crushing pineapples and building the luxurious
"Tourism Industry" to celebrate the perfect waves, where it was 80 degrees fahrenheit all
year round.
By 1992 I was invited by the University of Hawai'i to Honolulu and Hilo, again, but
this time my good fortune required my participation in cultural seminars and a film
festival. Like a pig at a luau, I had to be fed to the neoliberals before I could go drink
okolehao and passionfruit juice on the beach, ogling gorgeous bikinis with my fellow
vacationers and ecdysiasts. I was in dire peril of losing my ethical cherry, along with a lot
of other revolutionaries who'd been bought off with "Peace" and success.
But I was shocked to learn that not everyone was happy in paradise, nor were the
natives restless just for the hula of it. Fattened up pretty well themselves by all those
Hana Bay rums with carbohydrate juice, the Hawaiians were downright surly in their
flowing muu-muus and pikake leis. At one panel discussion Mililani Trask in her
ballooning dress viciously insulted a kindly old Korean gentleman who asked a simple
question about how residents of the Islands could get along.
"We can't, buddy," she snarled self-righteously, "get out of our Country!"
"But ... I've lived here all my life as a laborer in the cane fields and so did my parents
and -- "
"You're invaders. You have no right here at all. How dare you!"
King Kalakaua, Queen Lili's Dad, in 1888 didn't think that way at all, when he wrote:

"Notwithstanding the many sharply drawn and wonderfully-

preserved historic legends of the Hawaiians, the early settlement
of the little archipelago is shrouded in mystery. The best
testimony, however, warrants the assumption that the islands
were first discovered and occupied by a people who had
drifted from southern Asia to the islands of the Pacific in
the first or second century of the Christian era, and by
migratory stages from the Figis to Samoa and thence to
Tahiti, had reached the Hawaiian group in about A.D. 550.
The first discovery was doubtless the result of accident;
but those who made it were able to find their way back
to the place from which they started - either Tahiti or Samoa -
and in due time return with augmented numbers, bearing
with them to their new home pigs, fowls, dogs, and the
seeds of such fruit and vegetables as they had found to
be wanting there.
"The little colony grew and prospered, and for nearly five
hundred years had no communication with, or knowledge
of, the world beyond. At the end of that time their geographical
traditions had grown so faint that they spoke only of Kahiki,
a place very far away, and from which their ancestors came.
First landing on the large island of Hawai'i, they had spread
over the eight habitable divisions of the group. The people
were ruled by district chiefs, in fief to a supreme head on
 some of the islands, and on others independent, and the
lines dividing the masses from the nobility were less strictly
drawn than during the centuries succeeding. Wars were
frequent between neighboring chiefs, and popular increase
was slow; but the tabus of the chiefs and priests were not
oppressive, and the people claimed and exercised a degree
of personal independence unknown to them after the
eleventh century."
- King David Kalakaua

He also criticized christianity for scorning their old kapu religious laws and the way
the european missionaries destroyed ancient kii religious images. On the slopes of
Kilauea Iki and Pu'u'o'o volcanoes I saw on the Big Island in 1968, 1992, and again in
1998 when I lived there for 5 months, I could almost imagine I saw Madame Pele and
Maui spiriting the power of the Mu underworld up into the fiery, molten creation of the
islands of the world. It made me marvel, further, at how unhappy the people were who
lived there. In all that eerie beauty of rainbows and white surf and the mists from the
Mauka side of the emerald mountains, the 'Kumolipo" creation chant, like the 'Popul Vuh'
in Ixtlan and 'Genesis', chronicled dynastic incest, treachery, and greed. The ocean was a
Wild Blue Yonder all its own, out there, terrifying to my mind, almost limitless,
surrounding the puny human species with a power greater than any nationalistic or racist
prejudices.
College professors and Deans escorted me around the campuses, this time, like David
Stannard, who came running up to me in the cafeteria.
"Hey, great to meet you!" he exclaimed, pumping my hand. "Aloha!"
"Aloha to you, mahalo nui loa."
"This guy," he explained to a group of admirers, students of the PCU, "wrote the only
other criticism in 'The Nation' condemning the genocide of Indians, in their 150th
anniversary edition or something, besides Kay Haunani. All the others, a banana bunch of
famous writers and experts like Noam Chomsky and Jimmy Carter, praised the USA for
being the leader of the free world and the champion of democracy or something."
"Yeah, Victor Navasky wrote me a nice note thanking me for the essay. But you, Man,
I read your book about the holocaust of the Hawaiians, almost a million killed by syphilis
and rum. Good work."
"Thanks," he replied. He was in the anthropology or ethnic studies department or
something, with a Ph.D., and married to the big Hawaiian leader Kay Haunani-Trask. It
was strange to be schmoozing with bigshot academics, for the first time.
At the screening of the hollywood film that ripped off my book, over a thousand
people overflowed into the big auditorium to watch it and hear me speak about it, before
and afterwards. They were sitting in the aisles and crowding outside in the hallways. I
was amazed. It wasn't my movie; I had only written the book and eaten the shit of a lousy
option, but I had insisted Native actors only be hired in it, for just about the first time, and
my son and wife were in it, and George Harrison had put a funky imprimatur on it as a
fringe work of the avante-garde. I was feted and feasted as what the Dean had called "The
Auteur". Pretty, flirty Asian girls in short-shorts sat with me in the front while they
screened the flick, laughing at my wisecracks about hokey dialogue inserted by the
hollywood hacks, but it grew real serious when a woman in the back stood up, when the
lights came back on, and asked, "Do you advocate armed revolution?"
"Yes."
Half the audience erupted in wonderment and applause, but the stolid professors and
deans glaring from the front were silent and grim.
The stunned Dean of the whole university, a wonderful Japanese gentleman who'd
taken me to an excellent Chinese restaurant for lunch, joking that he didn't bomb Pearl
Harbor, asked, "Why?"
"Why? Let me give you one brief example. Last summer, in 1991, we had a big
council of elders of the 1851 Treaty, a confederacy of 7 Indian Nations, at the sacred
mountain of Bear Butte, in the Black Hills. Inside the great central tipi, a Ceremonial
Lodge erected after a lot of prayers, I sat next to Arvol Looking Horse, the new Keeper of
the Sacred White Buffalo Pipe, since his father has been ill and turned it over to him. It's
an hereditary chieftaincy. Arvol is a strong proponent of peace and love, and has met
with the Pope and the Dalai Lama and so on. But we were warriors in there, in the Bear
Butte Council. We all had 30-30s in our pickups, just like all the cowboys in the USA are
the most heavily armed people in the world. I read the other day there were 5 gun
murders in all of Great Britain last year, but over 11,000 in the USA. And that's every
year. I've lost a lot of good brothers and sisters over the years in the American Indian
Movement, not in too many direct battles with the FBI and all those drunken gun-toters
chewing tobaccy, but picked off by cowards in the dead of the night. Pedro Bissonnette
and Anna Mae Aquash got a .32 slug in the back of the head, on dark back roads, and left
to die alone. Hundreds more killed and maimed, just in the USA. Are you saying we
shouldn't fight back? We shouldn't defend our families and children? Arvol didn't
condemn our War Council, not at all. In the larger perspective, it's the only way we can
win, and get our lands and our cultures back, and some decent, ethical civilization again.
For everyone. For you see, everyone's been so brainwashed by the Intelligence-
Advertising Agencies that Amerika is this big invincible Superpower that no one can dare
to oppose militarily, with any hope of winning, anyway. No. Look at history. Look at the
facts, like that big fat dumb shit Philbert in the movie. He's the fullblood dreamer and
warrior in the Sacred Lodge, where we were, trying to teach, to reach, Buddy the big city
AIM stud that the way to beat custer and the FBI is to keep fighting them. Buddy and all
the big AIM loudmouths have given up, gone over to the media and academia or
whatever. They've lain down their weapons, believing in this lie of amerikan superior
firepower.The AIM of Dennis Banks and Russell Means is dead, and everyone knows it.
It died of success. At the same time we were taking over Bear Butte last summer, and
believe me, the South Dakota and Denver newspapers and TV stations were screaming
from their front pages, in the 'Top Stories', about Indians reclaiming half of South Dakota
again. We had 'em foaming at the mouth. But what was John Trudell and Dennis Banks
doing, at the same time? Were they rushing to support all the elders and everybody
gathering around us and the Pipe? No. Not a damn word from any of them, from either
Denver or Minneapolis factions. What they were doing, in fact, at the same exact time,
was making a stupidass movie called 'Thunderheart', and staying in the Hilton suites over
in Rapid City! Yeah, a goddamn movie. 30 miles away and not one of them came over to
help us, not one word. And for those who may have seen it, starring Val Kilmer and
Graham Greene, it portrays AIM, calling it 'ARM' fer chrissake, as a bunch of helpless
fools who actually need the FBI and BIA cops to come in and save their asses from
themselves. It's total shit. And so was 'Incident at Oglala' being made at the same time
about the Leonard Peltier case, by the same director cruising around in his limo on Pine
Ridge. The point is, we can beat 'em just by standing up to 'em, because the US Army is
nothing but a bunch of cowards and bullies. That's all they are. Bluster and smoke. Look
at history, without the indoctrination and propaganda. They've never won a war. Russia
and China beat Hitler and Hirohito in World War Two. The USA just came in with a lot
of tanks and bombers to get themselves out of the Depression their own greed and
incompetence caused in the first place. Roosevelt didn't win in the Pacific, Yamamoto
lost. Mao Tsetung lost ten million men fighting Japan, Stalin lost twenty million, and the
big bad-ass USA of D-Day fame? Half a million. D-Day didn't tip the war against Hitler,
Stalingrad did, and Mao's Long March. When the other side doesn't make mistakes, like
Korea and Vietnam, the USA always loses. Because they're just a bunch of chickenshit
shopkeepers and salesmen. Crazy Horse and Red Cloud and Geronimo never lost a battle,
and neither did Stonewall Jackson. The Yankees ran every time, until they were
reinforced by their factories and propaganda machines safely a thousand miles behind the
front lines, cranked up more cannons and A-Bombs to safely blow away some civilians at
Hiroshima and My Lai and Sand Creek. The cavalcade of cowardice goes on and on.
How many guys did Castro have when he hit the Cuban beaches of the US-backed, mafia
dictator? 12 men. Don't make any mistakes. Don't sell out to the peace-lawyers waving
treaties, and merchants from the International Monetary Fund waving bribes and movie
contracts, and you'll drive the little boys home to Mommy every time. I guarantee it. At
Wounded Knee, at Bear Butte, we stood up to all the bullshit B-52s and 82nd Airbornes
flying over us all the time, and they did nothing. I'm still standing here, and so is Sitting
Bull and King Kamehameha and Madame Pele and Maui the smart-ass trickster!"
Needless to say, I was never invited back to the UH, or any other college after that.
My writing and filmmaking career ended before it began.

The greatest mystery, then and now, lay in the realization

that in places as far apart as New Zealand, Easter Island,
and Hawaii people of a common physical stock could be
found, speaking much the same kind of language, and living
much the same kind of life. Obviously they had a common
origin. Where was it? How long ago had they dispersed?
And by what means?
- 'Shoal of Time'