Colonialism, as the Tribunal Komike states, "is foreign domination, subjugation and
exploitation of another people's country. It undermines a people's national
identity, traditions, and culture." (1998) Hawaii has undoubtedly been dominated
by the United States for a century and a half, our people and resources
subjugated and exploited. An important part of that subjugation was the taking
away of our 'olelo maoli – our real language.
Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong'o explains that, "economic and political control can
never be complete without mental control." (Ngugi 1986, 16) This mental control
is achieved through, "the destruction or deliberate undervaluing of a people's
culture, their arts, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature
(oral traditions), and literature, with the conscious elevation of the language
of the colonizer." (Ngugi 1986, 16)
When the U.S.-identified oligarchy ended Hawaiian language public schools in 1896,
they ripped out the bridge to our kupuna, the bridge of our understanding of
ourselves as a people with a proud past. A generation then grew up for the
first time ignorant of the language and mo'olelo of their grandparents who
lived through the devastating losses in epidemics, denigration of all their
customs, and loss of their Nation. Ngugi has called this experience a cultural
bomb. "The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in
their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of
struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It
makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them
want to distance themselves from that wasteland." (1986, 3)
Compiled by Nalani Minton and Noenoe Silva
