It is AAPI month and honestly… I’m just not feeling it.
There really isn’t support. It’s not really a thing other than kind of like a participation trophy and if you are a Pacific islander, you’re kind of not even up on the podium. And obviously I grew up in a very Asian focused culture because that’s how Hawai’i is. There are other contributing cultures but primarily since the plantation days it has been Asians and of course the Portuguese. Which are not considered Caucasian. I think it’s a lot to do with working the cane fields alongside of everybody else compared to the civil war era minded white Americans that came to run the plantations and were not very well liked.
But that’s a different kind of fish.
I have struggled to find a balance between my cultural framework and writing for a mainland American audience because oddly enough is the years go by I find myself distanced more and more from the homogenized American culture than I thought I had been. A lot of things that I believe other people understand as what to do in a situation aren’t necessarily what somebody’s sitting beside me would think. I know that sounds vague but I’m really not too sure how to put it.
I didn’t think I was really that Asian until a friend of mine said I don’t know who you know but you’re Asian as fuck. I mean I can see it because a lot of my base foundational beliefs and mythologies and of course cultural influences are Hawaiian and Asian-centric as well of course some Portuguese.
But what I don’t feel seen as is a Pacific islander, especially during the AAPI month.
A lot of that has to do with The fact that there is a very dominating dismissive colonizer mindset were Hawai’i is concerned. As I’ve said before, I can’t even count how many times I’ve been told if it wasn’t for us you’d be speaking Japanese and really honestly my response was fucker we were already speaking Japanese, Where the fuck have you been? We also spoke Filipino and Portuguese and all sorts of languages.
Which then of course comes to my favorite memory of interviewing when I was sitting down with the marketing VP for a very large baseball card company who looks down in my resume and asked what language was my middle name.
I told him it was Hawaiian.
He then asked me if we had to wait until the white people came before we had a language.
Because you know we spoke in dolphins squeaks and bird songs before the white saviors hit our shores.
That’s kind of what AAPI month is like. Like we are being thrown scraps of recognition because someone has decided Oh look here are these people who we probably should feed some social crumbs to recognize their existence.
But the thing is we don’t get recognized for existing. We get told that we Don’t really matter or that anybody born in Hawai’i is Hawaiian even though you know Hawaiian is an ethnicity and not the identity of somebody who lives in the state. That would be a Hawai’i local or kama’aina.
Hawai’i is not a part of America. Not culturally. The culture and the society is vastly different than mainland America. I can’t speak to Alaska because I have no connective knowledge to whether or not It relates to that social construct of mainland America. So I’m going to put that aside. Kind of like they do in the ocean map where Alaska and Hawai’i kind of float off shore of California.
Now mind you I’m not bitter about AAPI month not really kind of recognizing Pacific Islanders. It’s a struggle for anybody in Polynesia. There are a lot of us and we are very different and at the same times kind of similar. We definitely share a Maui but we don’t share the same kind of dances. We have some words that are shared and other things that mean something totally different. And we all are individuals with our own ideas of what makes our culture unique and strong. We also have a clear understanding of what weakens us, things like addiction and the ingrained conditioning that being educated means that you are less of a Pacific islander than the person standing next to you.
And see that is a big problem because the lack of initiative to be educated is something is passed down from generation to generation. And I’m not saying everybody is like that but it’s a really strong thread and one that is hard to beat.
I grew up being told that my reading was somehow wrong. That my love of reading was not only discouraged but at sometimes violently discouraged. Many of you know that I have issues with my father which you know I’m not going to drag back up here but your success is in education oftentimes are only celebrated when someone needs to have something to brag about but behind closed doors you’re often taunted and sometimes struck because there is this belief that you are somehow trying to better yourself so you can look down on others.
I heard that a lot. My face and body felt those punches a lot. It’s always interesting to explain to a new dentist about why there are so many bone chips along the inside of my mouth. Something I hadn’t even realized other people didn’t have until I went in to an orthodontist and he asked if I was safe because of the signs of abuse and breakage on my face.
How do you tell a stranger that it’s a result of your childhood and a society that discourages education?
So what is this all have to do with AAPI month?
We don’t celebrate our Pacific rim educators or scholars as much as we should. There are a few people who others lift up as icons of the revolutionary movement to restore Hawaiian culture and some I agree with and some I do not. I struggle with those who exploit our traumas in order to lift their names up but at the same time I also know that our history is not taught in mainland America. But honestly the same can be said about a lot of marginalized groups.
If we’re going to talk about the Pacific Islanders or rather in this case the Hawaiians I would say we should not only try to elevate the creators of fiction, dance, art, poems and of course chants… But we should also talk about our history and speak about the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom… Talk about the loss of our kings and queens through disease and their struggle to go from a pre-industrial society to being thrust into a world where men viewed them as nothing more than animals. Of how the past Musks and Bezos slaughtered our people and threaten to kill more in order to strip the land that we held for millennia just so they can grow pineapple and sugarcane. About how people from the mainland move to Hawai’i because they view it as This paradise But they have no connection to the land, price out the local people from their homes, and then throw rocks at our sacred animals.
No Hawaiian monk seals should be afraid of a person on the beach. Imagine being so much of an asshole that you think you have the right to injure or kill an innocent creature just because they exist and you don’t want them to.
That’s kind of what it is like to be the PI in the AAPI.
The concept of us is enticing and alluring and of course we embody paradise and a life lived simply and beautifully and lush mountains and clean oceans but the reality is many people will erase that paradise just as they try to erase the people living there because they don’t understand or respect the culture or the environment.
It isn’t new to exploit the Hawaiians and their culture or the Hawai’i local food. There are many restaurants who slap pineapple in something and call it Hawaiian which is so offensive in so many levels not only because pineapple is in Hawaiian but also is a symbol of the invasion in overthrow the Hawaiian kingdom by people who wanted to grow pineapple.
I know this is rambling. You know I ramble. I would ask all of you out there who come across this to find a Hawaiian or somebody else in the Polynesian circle and celebrate their contribution or success. Learn about how Duke Kahanamoku introduced surfing to many parts of the world or discover The exploits of Eddie Akau, a legendary surfer and a crew member of the Hōkūleʻa, who passed away tragically trying to get help after the vessel was nearly lost at sea. And there is Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop who had a dream of securing her people’s culture and future But who died before being able to see that to fruition and her American husband picking up that mantle to fight for his wife’s people.
Each of them fought very large battles on what seems like a ever-growing smaller stage but they refused to be diminished and there are others… So many and way too many to name here.
Long story short, the PI in the AAPI for this month is mostly performative but we can do better than that. Find a Pacific islander author. Go watch a little bit of Merrie Monarch. Learn about the C& H sugar company and Dole. Discover Hawaiian heritage jewelry and how it is connected to Victorian mourning jewelry. And perhaps even learn a little bit about the Hōkūleʻa and how she became a symbol of our resurrection as a people. All of these things are out there and of course more.
I wish you the best of journeys.
Rhys Ford 