Repeat Offenders

One of the peculiar things about being a haole here in Hawai`i is that I am a foreigner. Frankly, most people here are, but it's only a few generations ago this island really did belong to the Hawai`ian people who arrived thousands of years ago. They had their own language and culture, and it was wonderful, unique, beautiful, and even cruel.

But of course, the white men took it. We take a lot of things. Like North America, or South Africa, or Hong Kong. We're conquerors. It's nothing personal, it's just how we are. Everybody else does it too, we've just historically been the best at it. And besides, if the Polynesian people who live here now didn't speak English, they'd be speaking Japanese, right?

You know what? None of that makes it OK. Really, it doesn't. Saying "Oh, well, somebody else would have done it if we hadn't" doesn't make the Trail of Tears OK, and it doesn't make the overthrow of Lili`u`okalani all better, either.

Head Chef and I and a cadre of other haole friends had the (oddly) rare occasion to hang out with a man the other night who is half Samoan and half Hawai`ian, and he was a beautiful, gentle person who embodied Aloha. He blessed us in the ocean, and told us not to worry about the Hawai`ian people, as they'd be just fine.

And of course, he's right. Hawai`ian blood may be diluted now, and the culture may have gone through astonishingly rapid change over the past one hundred years, but the people are still here. Still here, in the form of men like him, gently or even sometimes not-so-gently reminding us that we're blessed to be here, but that they were here first. And letting us feel welcome anyway.