Hawaiian Sovereignty Takes Center Stage in Lecture Series
BY BILL LASCHER

As Spring Break approaches many students’ thoughts are likely turning towards sun, sand and surf. To exotic locales. To paradise. However, these students likely pay little attention to the struggle to present the history of Hawai’i, undertaken by people such as Hauanani-Kay Trask. For Trask and other advocates of Hawaiian sovereignty, the characterization of Hawai’i as an exotic paradise and tourist destination is the most recent manifestation of a history of American imperialism in the Pacific island chain.
A slew of posters challenging these perceptions have appeared across campus in the past week as precursors to an upcoming lecture by Trask, described as the foremost activist and scholar of Hawaiian studies. Trask will speak on “Sovereignty of the Hawaiian People” in King 306 at 4:30 on April 3. Hers will be the the second lecture in the ongoing Indigenous Women’s Series of speakers sponsored by the Multicultural Resource Center, American Indian Council, the Women’s Resource Center, Zami, Sexual Assault Support Team, La Alianza Latina, and the Asian American Alliance. 
The goal of the series is to raise awareness of indigenous populations, and more specifically, the role of women within them, according to Asian and Pacific American Community Coordinator Katherine Shorb, OC ’00.
“I think it’s easy for people in middle America to think that native people don’t exist,” Shorb said. “But there is a thriving community of which women are often leaders.”
Across campus this week, bulletin boards, walls and other surfaces upon campus have been covered with unattributed posters displaying contrasting images of romanticized hula dancers and angry Hawaiians painting anti-western slogans such as “Yankees go home.” The posters include the motto, “Hawaiian sovereignty for Hawaiian people.”
Not attributing the posters was a conscious effort to stimulate students’ curiousity, Shorb said. “We wanted people to think ‘what’s up with this Hawai’i business?’ so that when they see the eventual publicity for the lecture they will be more motivated to come,” she said.
According to Shorb, a primary goal will be to dismantle the concept of Hawai’i as a prime vacation destination and educate Oberlin students about the adverse effects of this concept. She said that many Americans who know people who have vacationed in Hawai’i or have traveled there themselves do not realize that tourism hurts the local culture and economy.
In the introduction to her book, From a Native Daughter, Trask describes the negative effects tourism have had on Hawai’i. “On the ancient burial grounds of our ancestors,” she wrote, “glass and steel shopping malls with layered parking lots stretch over what were once the most ingeniously irrigated taro lands, lands that fed millions of our people over thousands of years. Large bays, delicately ringed long ago with well-stocked fishponds, are now heavily silted and cluttered with jet skis, windsurfers and sailboats.”
Americans do not have a complete understanding of Hawaiian history, Shore said. “I think a lot of Americans view Hawai’i as the paradise within America without really realizing that it was taken by force, that it has a large native population, and that it has an age-old culture that is about a lot more than just beaches and sand,” she said.
“No matter what Amercians believe, most of us in the colonies do not feel grateful that our country was stolen, along with our citizenship, our lands and our independent place among the family of nations,” wrote Trask. “We are not happy natives.”