D. Keali‘i MacKenzie
Legacies
I.
As part of her will the Hawaiian Chief Bernice Pauahi Bishop established Kamehameha Schools, an institution that seeks to improve
the capability and well-being of Native Hawaiian students.
Her will requested all teachers at the school be of the Protestant
Faith, the colonizing religion of Hawai‘i.
II.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions planted the cross in Hawai‘i.
The descendants of Puritan New England,
American missionaries taught Kānaka, taught us, the gospel, taught Christ’s love - Christ’s judgement.
We also learned ka palapala, writing, our metaphors
of a thousand years reduced to words on paper.
Ka palapala, a more powerful gift than religion, which sprouted realization: we could write our own histories, legends, culture … into the future …
Other gifts sprouted different
- shame -
for not wearing missionary clothes, woolen jackets meant for the bitter New England winters, but rather clothing appropriate for a tropical climate. Skin accustomed to the gentle fern bending wind turned itchy and overheated in an attempt at “civilized” “Christian” clothes.
We learned American disassociation from the body and its joys. Learned gender norms and roles, not as optional, but hand in hand as a second Gospel.
Learned to binary our gender, our sexuality, our families.
Anything different, or too Hawaiian, aikāne, punalua, māhū, poʻolua was labeled sin.
What was left but the sandwiching of our bodies between salvation and our storied past, renamed heathen, renamed dark, renamed so as to forget. Isn’t forced forgetting a kind of violence? But we didn’t forget,
did we?
III.
My father recalls how in a high school history class at Kamehameha Schools, students were required to partake in a debate on colonialism. They were assigned pro or con positions. They had to debate the merits of each argument.
This exercise, meant to sharpen the minds of the student body, give them critical thinking skills, but in good American reason.
IV.
I grew up, and was educated in, Massachusetts. The belly of the beast. The land which bred America’s fervent missionary sons and daughters, then ejected them into the world to spread Christian awakening.
In my eleventh grade honors history class we rushed through the 1890’s and America’s overseas imperial reach. In our textbook there was a portrait of Hawai‘i’s last queen,
Liliuokalani,
a scant paragraph stated the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, and that Hawai‘i became part of the U.S. in 1898.
I wanted more.
More explanation, depth, acknowledgement. This was not right. There was more to this story. But my teacher shrugged … “so what?” Move on. History needs to be addressed and while this may seem sad, it is not required for your education.
V.
My father said his group argued the con position in their debate. They pointed to India as an example of how colonialism harms a people, their country, and land.
Strips them of autonomy. His teacher, however, disagreed. He supported colonialism as bringing civilization, government, and development to “less fortunate people.” Of course no one questioned the American teacher or his support for colonial rule. This was not part of their experiment with the body politic.
VI.
Decades later dad mentioned how it never occurred to him,
or any other student, that they lived in a colonized land
or that their own colonization made it near impossible to realize this fact. What could they have realized had they even considered such a thing?
VII.
By high school most students and teachers assumed I was white. I remember how amazed they were when I said no: I’m also Hawaiian and Chinese.
One teacher said that explained my black hair. She never believed me that black hair also came from my mother's Irish side of the family. My friends were comfortable with me being Hawaiian, especially when my Chinese ancestry seemed so hidden, or absent from my body.
They were puzzled when I showed them pictures of my father’s family:
generations of mixed people blurring the lines of Hawaiian, white, and Asian. Generations descending into a mixed comfort so common in Hawai‘i, but still foreign in Massachusetts.
VIII.
My friends never questioned my sexuality. The longing glances at other boys or crushes ripened over years. Being queer, being gay, was never difficult for them. They did not hold fast to arcane Puritan rules, or see two people in love as a threat, and realized this part of me before I did.
IX.
There is much to realize, too. What of this body?
Descended from the same people as Pauahi and my father. A people who freely expressed intimacy, touch – pressed noses together to share air and mana as a greeting. This body
shaped by a history that sees my forebears as expendable, tragic, and no longer alive or worse: reformed savages whose lives and culture only feed the fantasy of paradise.
X.
What was passed down so that growing up I didn’t question others when they assumed or declared me as white? Why did I pass? What part of Native wasn’t good enough to bring forth?
XI.
Why did I let society define what my sexuality meant? I remember when boys in the locker room brought my name up. Could hear the scrape of faggot in their throat all the while silence scarred my lips. Safer to hide, deny and deny, and hide.
XII.
A story is told of my Hawaiian great-grandmother,
upset that her daughter, my aunt, married a man who was “too Kanaka” whose Hawaiian last name wasn’t good enough for her daughter.
But when my Grandfather married my Tutu, she was all right, Hawaiian but with a good blend of Chinese and white. Her English surname was more than appropriate.
XIII.
My great-grandmother would have been so pleased to see my skin this pale, so horrified that I love men.
How did this body inherit such silence about race and sexuality? How did shame become the first emotion to overcome? Where did we learn this? Shame at being Hawaiian.
Shame at being queer. Never questioning teachers, or family, or the whole structure crafted on dispossession.
All the while the faint echo of kupuna from before and after my great-grandmother’s life time beg me to remember:
… we are a people who love who we want …
… genealogy means we are always
connected
nothing dilutes lineage… even when you forget our names, or struggle to pronounce the names you do know … somehow
through the stories told by your father or mother …
you know
how the scent of white ginger … awapuhi … guitars memories of the house in Kailua … the taste of kalua pig or dried ‘ōpae recalls the salted kick,
of beach waves ...
your body remembers… finds ways to hold on.
I.
As part of her will the Hawaiian Chief Bernice Pauahi Bishop established Kamehameha Schools, an institution that seeks to improve
the capability and well-being of Native Hawaiian students.
Her will requested all teachers at the school be of the Protestant
Faith, the colonizing religion of Hawai‘i.
II.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions planted the cross in Hawai‘i.
The descendants of Puritan New England,
American missionaries taught Kānaka, taught us, the gospel, taught Christ’s love - Christ’s judgement.
We also learned ka palapala, writing, our metaphors
of a thousand years reduced to words on paper.
Ka palapala, a more powerful gift than religion, which sprouted realization: we could write our own histories, legends, culture … into the future …
Other gifts sprouted different
- shame -
for not wearing missionary clothes, woolen jackets meant for the bitter New England winters, but rather clothing appropriate for a tropical climate. Skin accustomed to the gentle fern bending wind turned itchy and overheated in an attempt at “civilized” “Christian” clothes.
We learned American disassociation from the body and its joys. Learned gender norms and roles, not as optional, but hand in hand as a second Gospel.
Learned to binary our gender, our sexuality, our families.
Anything different, or too Hawaiian, aikāne, punalua, māhū, poʻolua was labeled sin.
What was left but the sandwiching of our bodies between salvation and our storied past, renamed heathen, renamed dark, renamed so as to forget. Isn’t forced forgetting a kind of violence? But we didn’t forget,
did we?
III.
My father recalls how in a high school history class at Kamehameha Schools, students were required to partake in a debate on colonialism. They were assigned pro or con positions. They had to debate the merits of each argument.
This exercise, meant to sharpen the minds of the student body, give them critical thinking skills, but in good American reason.
IV.
I grew up, and was educated in, Massachusetts. The belly of the beast. The land which bred America’s fervent missionary sons and daughters, then ejected them into the world to spread Christian awakening.
In my eleventh grade honors history class we rushed through the 1890’s and America’s overseas imperial reach. In our textbook there was a portrait of Hawai‘i’s last queen,
Liliuokalani,
a scant paragraph stated the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom, and that Hawai‘i became part of the U.S. in 1898.
I wanted more.
More explanation, depth, acknowledgement. This was not right. There was more to this story. But my teacher shrugged … “so what?” Move on. History needs to be addressed and while this may seem sad, it is not required for your education.
V.
My father said his group argued the con position in their debate. They pointed to India as an example of how colonialism harms a people, their country, and land.
Strips them of autonomy. His teacher, however, disagreed. He supported colonialism as bringing civilization, government, and development to “less fortunate people.” Of course no one questioned the American teacher or his support for colonial rule. This was not part of their experiment with the body politic.
VI.
Decades later dad mentioned how it never occurred to him,
or any other student, that they lived in a colonized land
or that their own colonization made it near impossible to realize this fact. What could they have realized had they even considered such a thing?
VII.
By high school most students and teachers assumed I was white. I remember how amazed they were when I said no: I’m also Hawaiian and Chinese.
One teacher said that explained my black hair. She never believed me that black hair also came from my mother's Irish side of the family. My friends were comfortable with me being Hawaiian, especially when my Chinese ancestry seemed so hidden, or absent from my body.
They were puzzled when I showed them pictures of my father’s family:
generations of mixed people blurring the lines of Hawaiian, white, and Asian. Generations descending into a mixed comfort so common in Hawai‘i, but still foreign in Massachusetts.
VIII.
My friends never questioned my sexuality. The longing glances at other boys or crushes ripened over years. Being queer, being gay, was never difficult for them. They did not hold fast to arcane Puritan rules, or see two people in love as a threat, and realized this part of me before I did.
IX.
There is much to realize, too. What of this body?
Descended from the same people as Pauahi and my father. A people who freely expressed intimacy, touch – pressed noses together to share air and mana as a greeting. This body
shaped by a history that sees my forebears as expendable, tragic, and no longer alive or worse: reformed savages whose lives and culture only feed the fantasy of paradise.
X.
What was passed down so that growing up I didn’t question others when they assumed or declared me as white? Why did I pass? What part of Native wasn’t good enough to bring forth?
XI.
Why did I let society define what my sexuality meant? I remember when boys in the locker room brought my name up. Could hear the scrape of faggot in their throat all the while silence scarred my lips. Safer to hide, deny and deny, and hide.
XII.
A story is told of my Hawaiian great-grandmother,
upset that her daughter, my aunt, married a man who was “too Kanaka” whose Hawaiian last name wasn’t good enough for her daughter.
But when my Grandfather married my Tutu, she was all right, Hawaiian but with a good blend of Chinese and white. Her English surname was more than appropriate.
XIII.
My great-grandmother would have been so pleased to see my skin this pale, so horrified that I love men.
How did this body inherit such silence about race and sexuality? How did shame become the first emotion to overcome? Where did we learn this? Shame at being Hawaiian.
Shame at being queer. Never questioning teachers, or family, or the whole structure crafted on dispossession.
All the while the faint echo of kupuna from before and after my great-grandmother’s life time beg me to remember:
… we are a people who love who we want …
… genealogy means we are always
connected
nothing dilutes lineage… even when you forget our names, or struggle to pronounce the names you do know … somehow
through the stories told by your father or mother …
you know
how the scent of white ginger … awapuhi … guitars memories of the house in Kailua … the taste of kalua pig or dried ‘ōpae recalls the salted kick,
of beach waves ...
your body remembers… finds ways to hold on.
D. Keali‘i MacKenzie is the author of the chapbook From Hunger to Prayer (Silver Needle Press). A queer poet of Kanaka ‘ōiwi, European, and Chinese descent; his work appears in or is forthcoming from Indigenous Pacific Islander Eco-Literatures, homology lit, Fahmidan Journal, Foglifter, and The Operating System Experimental Speculative Poetics. A past member of the Worcester Poetry Slam Team. He received an MA in Pacific Islands Studies, and an MLISc, from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.