 what a great way to start if you could and you wanted to, if you could offer an opening as everyone is coming in, to set our intentions, if that's okay with you. Sure, just let me know when you want me to go. You know, Antie, whenever you feel like it's, you're ready. So you're opening now? Well, I'm just thinking as a way of setting our space as everybody is coming in. Okay, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do ehomai which is I'm asking for permission to enter and with the wisdom and knowledge set forth by our ancestors, okay? So. Ehomai kai ke mahi lunamai yeh. Oh nan no ea. Oh na mai. Ehomai ehomai yeh. Oh mai kai ke mahi lunamai yeh. Oh na mai. Okay, so direct message, yeah. I don't think she could hear us, but we could hear her. Okay, I, okay. Was that too loud? Or did you hear? Beautiful. That was beautiful. That was beautiful. It was beautiful. The sound was terrific. That was great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Kumu. Someone helped Caroline. She can hear us, but she can't hear us, but we can hear her. As we're waiting again, we also have, thank you so much, Kumu. You are so welcome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for opening the space in that beautiful one. And we're just, we also have our nephew, Keoni Rodriguez. Aloha. Our ancestors are with us, bui. Mahalo nui. Mahalo, mahalo nui, loa. Am I supposed to be hearing you? Keoni, Keoni, Keoni, is it okay? I can't hear anything. I have no sound. We'll offer a short little, not too long, Keoni, but just a way of opening up our space. Also beautiful about it is to hear a young warrior, a young warrior like you, if you can. Absolutely. I'll make a quick, this is a oliohoja. It's time for me and grieving everybody into this space. Mahalo everyone for being here. This is oliohoja. Oh, and then we got ha-ha-ha-ha-la-na-la-t-lip-a-la, ah-ah-ah-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip-a-lip. Ah, he's my, ah, he's my, no-ou-ow-way, it's-it's cool and, Aloha. Aloha. Thank you so much. We really want to Mahalo to our Kanaka Maui relatives from the Bay Area, to our nephew, Keoni Rodriguez, who's an amazing, amazing young warrior, one of our activists and the young leaders from Stanford here in the Bay Area working to protect Mauna Kea. Thank you so much for that beautiful offering to honor the ancestors from Hawaii, from Mauna Nui, extending that great love here to our relatives here on this occupied Oloni land that we're currently on. We also, for those of you who just came in, we want a really great humility and gratitude. We want to thank one of the elders, respected Kupuna in our Bay Area community, our auntie and Kumu, Rene Price, for offering that first chant, eho mai, to bring us all in in a good way, that first and foremost, always acknowledges the land that we're on, acknowledges the land of our ancestors from Mauna Nui and also the ancestors of this land that we're currently on, the Lushan Oloni for me from Oakland, California. For many of you who are also coming in or zooming in from San Francisco or where the San Francisco Public Library currently stands, that land is occupied land of the Rumatush Oloni, excuse me, Oloni tribe. So everybody's with great humility and gratitude that we thank you for joining us tonight. I know I can say too much, so what I'm going to do, please forgive me, I'm just going to read from my notes. So we welcome and thank you and your families for joining us tonight for the program, our Mauna Nui, we are Pacific Islander Studies. Beloved relatives, we express our gratitude and we honor our va or sacred relationships that bring us here tonight. Firstly, we honor and we thank our indigenous ancestors and the relatives from this occupied and unceded land that we currently are on, what is now known of course as the United States or here as California, or known as California. The land that I'm currently on as I just said is in Oakland, which is the original homelands, the original stewards are the Lichon Oloni. Also the land that currently hosts the San Francisco Public Library, which are our wonderful, just our wonderful relatives who sponsored this program is lies, the San Francisco Public Library lies on Rumatush Oloni land. Next, we honor our great ancestors from Mauna Nui, that's Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia, and with the greatest humility, we also thank our ancestors for bringing us here tonight, relatives, Mau Aula Ival or the honorable Albert Wendt. For those of you who are just joining in, relatives, I really wanted to let you know that it was only very recently, it was only on Monday actually, Monday afternoon, that we were notified that we that honorable Albert Wendt was going to join us for the program tonight. And I said this in the previous meeting, but really when we heard this news, when we heard this news, we wept. We wept and we gave thanks to our ancestors, to our ancestors from the past, the present, and the future for this great miracle that we have here in the diaspora, that we have here, that we can witness and participate in a ceremony like this in our lifetime. It's with great humility. And we want to say thank you to our ancestors for bringing this great ancestor, honorable Albert Wendt, here tonight. We also with great humility and gratitude, we want to we also want to thank one of our mentors and an important and important ancestor that's still alive right now. Honorable, as well, Professor Sina Vaayana Gabbard, for all her help to make this dream come true for all of us here tonight. Also, I recognize that my time is limited, but for everybody that's here, I just really want to talk about another relationality that's really, really important. One of the reasons that we have created these programs, these series of programs on Pacific Island Studies is because we had some some of our because our own children are in crisis. Very recently, we had a few of our young people had attempted to take their lives, and this broke our hearts. As many of you know, our Pacific Islander communities are one of the communities that are ravaged by COVID. We have one of the highest disproportionately one of the highest infection and death rates from COVID. And yet we're invisible. And so our children, our children are suffering, many of them are suffering from high levels of depression and feelings of loneliness. And in our conversations with them, they all talked about in academia, they felt really alone. They felt so invisible as people from Oceania. They talked about the white supremacy and the header patriarchy that was prevalent in all these institutions, including their lives here in California. So relatives, this is why we're here tonight. And this is why we're also this is why we're also using a traditional Pacific Islander cultural practice that's called poetry. And this is why we're bringing the poets up to the forefront, because it has always been the role of poets to be up at the forefront, especially in a time of crisis, especially in a time of war. When our young people are feeling hopelessness, it's a role of poetry to bring light. And so we want to thank you and your families, and we want to say we love you to our young people, our Mokopuna, or what our native relatives call the next seven generations. We love you. And the last, the last relationality of our we really want to acknowledge is we want to thank with great humility, the honorable Kim Shuck, our indigenous relative who is the poet laureate of San Francisco. You know, brothers and sisters, Pacific Islander communities, we have been here for centuries. As I was talking about in our earlier meeting, according to our oral narratives, we have had relationships with California Indians way before settlers came. And yet we remain invisible in this land. And it was only because of our indigenous relative, Kim Shuck, who invited us to the table. So I want to say, I want to talk about the importance of representation. And I just want to say Kim Shuck and to the San Francisco Public Library relatives, John Smalley and Anissa, we want to say thank you so much. Thank you so much for seeing our community. Thank you so much for inviting us to the table. Well, and I'm grateful now that I'm done. Please forgive me. It's really, I feel so much in my heart, especially with so many of the wonderful poets here. I still can't believe that this is real. So I give my time over now to a wonderful young scholar and a warrior in our community, Samantha Damale, who is going to introduce Corina Gold. Hello, my name is Samantha, and I'm a settler. I'm a Wakama, Olin, New Land with ancestral ties to the islands of Tonga, Samoa, and Fiji. I was born and raised in the Bay Area, but I am not a Bay Area native. As someone with pride in my Pacifica heritage, who has had to deal with the erasure due to the AAPI label, I know how important the language we use is. It is also my Pacifica heritage that has taught me that as our Fattonga, our responsibility to care for both Moana and the land. The Fattonga is not limited to our islands, who must also extend to the native lands we have settled on. The ways in which I have seen our islands come together to stand for Monacaia, or address rising sea levels across Oceania, who must also come together to stand in solidarity with our native Gainga here on Turtle Island. The next speaker is someone I not only hold in high regard, but have had the honor to learn so much from as well. I have had the privilege of standing with her in solidarity from Monacaia and the Free West Papua Movement. Her work has taught me that the responsibility to protect local native lands and sacred sites belong to all who call the Bay Area home. Creena Gold is a tribal chair and traditional spokesperson for the confedera villages of the Lichana Loni. She is an activist and internationally acclaimed speaker who centers Loni sacred sites, protection, and preservation, as well as cultural preservation and revitalization projects for Loni peoples. Creena alongside Janela LaRose, the founder of the Segrete Land Trust, a native woman led urban land trust. Creena stands at the forefront of the State of the West Berkeley Shulman Campaign, which aims to protect one of the oldest Loni sacred sites in the Bay Area and in doing so, works to reverse a shameful legacy of destruction loss in the razor of Loni lands, peoples, and culture. I encourage all of my Creena, who have gathered here today, to not only voice support for our Lichana Loni Creena, but to put action into that as well. I will post a link in the chat to the Segrete Land Trust. Please consider paying a shumilan tax to support the great work being done. I will also post a link to the State of the West Berkeley Shulman Facebook page. Please follow to keep up to date on how you can support the ongoing efforts to protect the Shulman. It is my honor to introduce to you all Creena Gold. Thank you so much, Samantha. Thank you, relatives. Good evening, relatives. My name is Creena Gold, and I am the spokesperson for the Confederated Village of Lou of Sean. I have the great honor of doing an opening for all of the beautiful people that are here, and it touches my heart to be able to be a part of this beautiful gathering. You know, in our ways, just like in many Pacific Islanders' ways, we would all be sitting around eating food and gifting each other and having a good time before we got down to them. We believe that, you know, that it is a good way to come into a space and to acknowledge each other in the right way. And so, you know, forgive me for not being able to do that with you right now. But I was talking to folks before we came into the space that if there is something that is good about COVID right now, it is the ability for us to see each other and be in space with each other across the oceans. And like Dr. Fui Fui was talking about, our relationalities for thousands of years have been with each other as our great grandmother, the Pacific Ocean, touches our lands as they touch the lands of all of our Pacific relatives in Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. I feel a connection to our relatives, and I am so grateful that you are here. I am in my traditional territory of Huqin on the East Bay side. I give honor to our relatives, the Ramatush, the chairman, Jonathan Cordero, the vice chair, Grave Castro, whose land San Francisco is in today. I want to bring in our ancestors, and so I would like to not take up too much time, but offer a prayer really quickly as we do in Indigenous ways. And I love the way that we talked about our young people and them having difficult times. Our percentages in all of the different ways are mirror the Pacific Islander relatives that are here in our territories. As Indigenous people, we must stand together. One of the works that we know that has helped our people is that we say culture is prevention. Doing the work of our culture, doing poetry and artwork and dance and song and language brings our young people back closer to home. And I share that with the great honorable Albert Wint when he talked about that with the young people today to continue to do that work. And so quickly, grandmothers and grandfathers, creator and ancestors, we thank you for the space and time. We thank you for our relatives far and near. We ask our ancestors to continue to hold us up from above and below, from our sides, from our back and front and above us. We ask that there are good times ahead that we open up our hearts and our minds to laughter and song and music and art. We ask that we continue to bring our young people into the center so that we can create change for the next seven generations and beyond. And as we move into this wintertime, we ask grandmothers and grandfathers for protection of those that are sick. Those that need your help right now are elders so that they make it through this wintertime that we have enough food and enough clothing and enough blankets and enough love. We ask grandmothers and grandfathers for protection of those of our relatives that live without a home. We ask for protection and blessing for grandmothers and grandfathers for our young people, for their minds, for their resiliency, for their health, for their souls. Grandmothers and grandfathers, we ask for protection and health for our brothers and sisters that are behind the walls, whether it's in prison or behind the walls of addiction or depression. We ask grandmothers and grandfathers for the waters that they continue to flow fresh for the next seven generations and beyond, that our mother earth heals so that we have good foods and medicines for the next seven generations and beyond, that our heirs are clean and those that fly in them have all that they need. We ask grandmothers and grandfathers for special blessings for our connection with the fires, that we go back into right relation with them. We ask for everything that we need right now to go into our hearts individually to take care of those needs right now and to take care of us as we connect at this time and that we connect in real persons at some time in the future. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And we want to bring on our honorable Kim Shuck who is our indigenous relative who has invited us to this table. So Kim Shuck was born in San Francisco, California, is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She received a BA in art and an MFA in textiles from San Francisco State University. Kim Shuck, malo, malo lao malie, malo, malo puke puke puke for noir. Thank you for your great work. Siro, Kim Shuck, thank you. Welcome on behalf of the San Francisco Public Library. I know that my colleagues that I've worked with a lot here in San John are both delighted to be here tonight, as am I. We've been thanked a lot at this point. The reality is that it's a huge honor to be invited to get into some good trouble, you know. I'm here in Ramatush territory where I was born, where my mother was born. We've been here a while, but we know we're guests. And I'm grateful to the only people that I know who treat me as a guest and I try to meet that. It's really important in education for people to both see themselves reflected and to see other people reflected. That is helpful for everybody, not just for our communities, but for everybody. And I remember when I wouldn't see myself reflected in the school curriculum. My people weren't there. And we had to fight to get that to happen. And you don't get there without allies. And I'm happy to be participating in this, to be listening to this, and anything I can do to make people's voices more audible. I lost my daughter eight years ago for a lot of reasons. But some of them have to do with the way that we're treated generally. That's not how she's got it. But the community needs everybody. There's something you have that we need to lean on. And you have to be here for the moment when we need to lean on you. So if you need help getting there, you know, I'm easy to get a hold of you if that means anything at all. I'm happy to talk to you. My daughter was not just Cherokee, but her father is Hawaiian. This is an issue. Your issues are very close to my heart. And I want to offer you this. We stopped writing war poems about the turn of the 20th century because we thought they hadn't worked. Our war poems basically said, let us walk among the grass, strands, and not be seen by our enemies. So this stands in the ripples of water and not be seen by our enemies. Well, you know what? They did work and we weren't visible for a really long time. And I think we need to start writing them differently now. So I'm going to offer this for you here now that we have to be at war. Let us stand in the sacred water. And each one of us shines so brightly that our enemies cannot fail to see us and that we transform them into community. Thank you so much for letting me get into some bad trouble. This is not like me. I'm usually very mysterious because this is deadly serious right now. And I'm here whenever any of you thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Honorable Poet Laureate, Kim Shock. And so coming up is also our niece, our Native American niece, Samara. Please forgive me if I stumble. I feel like my heart could erupt. So just bear with me. Quick caution, may you be in the light. My name is Samara Julian Jackson-Toby and I am a seventh fire of Gichidakwe. My ancestors call me ancient moonbeam. Named from my restorative gravity, I sift the crops of my ancestors for seeds of eternity. I am First Nations Mashiwampanag. I am from the people of the First Light and I stand in the mouth of the Great River. On behalf of myself and every Indigenous woman found in the possibility of words, I am humbled to introduce Professor Sina Viana Gabbard, a Samoan scholar, poet, activist, and environmentalist. For the duration of Professor's Introduction, I'll be using her honorifics. Sina Viana, bearing in mind this name carries her honor, lineage, wisdom, prosperity, and alchemy. Sina Viana is the foremother of Pacific Island literature. She is the gracious seed of resilience within all of us. In the early 1990s, Sina Viana founded the First Environmental NGO Olevaumatua in America, Samoa, and helped procure the first environmental NGO in the independent state of Samoa, Ole Siusio Manga. In 1996, Sina Viana directed an international project focused on environmental justice called Building Sustainable Community Through Communication Arts, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation as a team residency at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center in Northern Italy. Sina Viana's excellence in literary creations have been featured in national and international journals of scholarship, creative writing, and documentary films. In 2020, Sina Viana was named Woman of the Century. Sina Viana is the embodiment of opportunity for Samoans of the diaspora. On behalf of the committee, our families, and our ancestors, we are so honored to present Sina Viana. You look great. We see you and hear you. Oh, okay. Okay. Is it my turn yet? Sorry. Okay. Okay. So, Talo Palava, Oto Yaoto, Aloha Kako, Aloha Kako, and Hapa Adai from Samoa, where we're in the eyes of actually two cyclones, or we're near the eyes of two cyclones, one from both from the south, one from Tonga area and one in Irfige and Vanuatu. And then just this morning, I saw there's a new front, a third one coming from Sabai to the west. So, we're in this quiet moment here, which is very a great blessing. Also, I just wanted to make a note, a technical note on sound, and also internet connection. It may be, please let me know, Fuli, or someone, if the sound is breaking up with a connection. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Tuli. Fafatai Lava to the organizers, artists, cultural workers, scholars, allies, and elected leaders that have made this, organized this event today. Also, to the San Francisco Public Library, Fafatai Lava, and everyone involved in making this happen today. Okay. So, it is my great pleasure and honor to introduce Mao Lai Bao, Albert Wendt, who I think of in many ways, one as my brother from another mother. Also, as the godfather of Pacific literature, meaning in just the very best, very best sense of the meaning of the word godfather. So, Mao Lai Bao is one of Samoa and New Zealand and the Pacific's foremost writers and academics. He has published numerous novels, collections of poetry and short stories, and edited several notable anthologies of Pacific writing. His work has been translated into many languages and taught around the world. He has taught at all educational levels. His teaching and writing have changed how we perceive the Pacific and ourselves. He has been awarded many literary prizes and honors. In 2012, he was awarded the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in Fiction. Also, the companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, and in 2013, New Zealand's highest honor, the Order of New Zealand. Over the years, Mao Lai Bao has been awarded four honorary PhDs. He is Emeritus Professor of English at Auckland University and lives with his partner Reina Faituri in Ponsonby, Auckland, where he continues to write and paint full-time. They have 10 mokopuna. Mao Lai Bao. The second part, I actually have two more parts to my introduction to you, Ao. They're both poems. The first one is called What I Learned from Albert Wendt. What I learned from Albert Wendt was fury, how to be fierce despite being outnumbered, how to refuse, how to say no, how to be okay saying no, regardless of being Samoan, or the only brown face on the scene. Thank you very much. And how to do the aforementioned with words on pages, with stories, with sounds and smells, with visions and blood, with silence, with that laugh, his transcendent darkness, his resurrecting light. And by way of conclusion, to my introducing Ao, this is my long-delayed birthday poem Ao. I just finally finished for the occasion. A year later, so this is for Ao at 80. Now, back from Manoa Valley, returned to the motherland, to this cloud forest on Upolu, the lights of Apia and our Moana Nui, fanning out below, green, sloping down, to Vaya, reclining on his mountain, just beneath Malama and Penny's place. Apua, unseen, but present, all the same, like that center thing holding us to our lives. In the meantime, holding your place here, like Vaya on the lookout for your return. Thank you. And with that, I'd like to introduce my beloved friend, Albert Wentz, Maui Laival. Thank you, Sina. Thank you for that huge compliment. I feel really honored today, having this session and so many people who are, some I don't know very well, but who I will learn to love. So I don't want to get emotional because I normally do. Either I range from great anger, as Sina said in one of the poems, or great tears. I'll try and read some poems. I'll read two of the earliest poems I ever published. I will read two from the middle period and then two recent poems. It might be too long, but I'll try. Is that okay with everybody? This is one of the first poems I ever published. And it's from my first collection, Inside is the Dead. It's called I, God, Appeal. I, God, Appeal. The landed here, the see it over there, the sky it way up there, and man he claim he everywhere, but I, God, Appeal, no better. I know the land it will be here, the sea it will be there, the sky it will be up there, but man he rise, he shine, and he fall to rise no more. So sing now, sing now of land of sea of sky, sing now of me up here, but for man just weep, just weep for him cause there no other thing, no other thing he do but earn, but earn his sunset death. Okay. The second poem I have to find it. One of the places I love most of all are lava fields. And the lava fields of Savaii I love very much. I also love some of the lava fields in Hawaii when we lived there for four years. This one is called Lava Field and Road, Savaii. The naked road dips and dances, slips, stumbles and crawls on bleeding knees across impartial lava, under a sky stripped of the voice of birds and feathered wings beating to cool the sun. No trees where shadows may nest, no art for gods there live here, but lizards rustling through heeled scars in the face of the black land, hard as the noon sun's blade, the mask of Hiroshima twisting from mountain ridge to sea. This lava for a thousand years will not crumble to windblown dust. This was the world's beginning, the fire gods lacerating their bodies with shell knives, the blood breaking from mountains, wounds congealed black and cold, then the silence of the closed sepulchre door that opened to the miracle of resurrection when lava decayed and green fingers broke to the sun. This too is the world's end, the fatal silence after the flash when the blood coagulates to black stone and man is an imprint on the road that slips, stumbles and crawls from stone to stone into the husk of the wind. Okay, I now like to read a poem set in New Zealand. Just let me find page 88. I'm sorry it's taking the only row atohi. It's set in the north high up on the north island of New Zealand and Rainer mentioned in it is my partner, my beloved partner and Rainer is Maori and that has a lot of relevance to the poem. The only row atohi. We tried but no camera can take in one shot the whole stretch of the only row atohi as it paths the spirits of the dead up to Rainer. Rainer's dead from Murihiku journey here too. We saw the flax bending as the spirits passed, heard them whispering among the dunes and their rustling in the manuka. Later we stood in front of the lighthouse and photographed the sacred Pahutukawa down on the precarious eastern face of the headland. I imagined the spirits leaping from it into the prophetic current that will carry them to Hawaiki where the ancestral explorer Koope came from to name and detail in Maori's Ika. We photographed each other against the immense sky ahead the Tasman and the Pacific embraced in turbulent whirlpools. In Samoa, my dead gather at the fa fa at Falea Lupo where the last sets and the poor begins. On the beach the men bathe in one rock pool, the women in the other. Then they walk the lava path into the sea and dive for Puloto. Falea Lupo is the home of the Atua Nafanoa who ruled for 300 years until the first Catholic priests converted her congregation. You can still visit the lava cave where pilgrims threw her divining taulai to sort her help and prophecies. Once with Soifua her tour I visited her temple. A tiered pyramid of stones and boulders now overgrown with forest and Christianity. No one dares clear her refuge for for that long and sad science that weaves all things she held us in her green gaze. In times of trouble the Matai council still meets at night in Soifua's Mauta. They leave one row of blinds facing the west raised for Nafanoa to enter for the Inventor called Faltation. Her direct descendant is now Cardinal of Polynesia. Outlawed atua have surprising ways of conquering the present. Okay now I'm going to read two more poems, two of the latest poems which I published over the last two years and that would be my hopefully contribution to... I'm going to... let's just... She's own, sorry, page eight. This is the poem from the middle period of my writing. It's called In Her Awakening. It's a poem for Reina. When we lived our way for four years Reina and I would get up in the morning and walk to work and this describes the walk. In her wake, I walk in her wake almost every morning and afternoon along the Manoa Valley from home and back after work. In her slipstream shielded from the wind and the future, I walk in the perfume that changes from day to day, in the mornings with our backs to the Kolaul, in the afternoons heading into the last light as it slithers across the range into the west. She struts and have paced my bad left knee and inclination won't allow me to keep up with and when I complain she says, you just hate a woman walking ahead of you. No, I hate talking to the back of your head. I'm dear to a thunder, she reminds me, when my pretensions as a Samoan aristocrat get out of hand. So kill my enemies for me, I demand. Okay, I'll send storms and lightning to drown and senderize them. Do it now, I beg. I can't. I've got too much breathing to act like that. How do you cure contradictions like hers? She loves Bob Dylan, the prophet of bourgeois doom and this morning I swam in her lyrics as she sang. Sweet Melinda, the presence called her the goddess of gloom. She speaks good English and she invites you up into her room. She takes her voice and leaves you howling at the moon. Yes, for over a year I've cruised in her perfumed wake protected from threats. She'll take the first shot or hit in an ambush. And if a car or bike runs headlong into us, my tour of thunder with the aristocratic breeding will sacrifice her body to save me. Nearly always she wears her favorite red sandals as she, like Star Trek, forges boldly ahead singing Dylan songs and me wanting to howl at the Hawaiian moon. Okay, I now want to finish with a fairly recent poem it's called and so it is. It's trying to describe where I and Reina are at the moment. As some of you know, I'm I just turned 81. That's not old age is it? The poem is called and so it is. One of our favorite places is our back garden which Reina, we Reina's garden. And so it is we want so many things and much what is real and not what is the plan. Our garden is an endless performance of light and shadow, quick bird and insect palaba. The decisive wisdom of cut basil informs everything, teaches even the black rocks of the back fence to breathe. Blessed are the flowers, herbs and vegetables Reina has planted in their healing loveliness. The hibiscus blooms want a language to describe their color. I say the red of fresh blood or birds. A lone monarch butterfly flits from flower to flower. How temporary it all is, how fleeting the attention, the boundary bound with the gigantic effer afro is a fecundness for the squabble of birds that wake us in the mornings. In two weeks of succulent rain and heat, our lawn is a wild scramble of green that wants no limits. Into the breathless blue sky, the pohutukawa in the corner of our backyard stretches and stretches. Invisible in its foliage, a warblock weaves a delicate song. I want to capture and remember like I try to hold all the people I've loved or loved as they disappear into the space before memory. Yesterday I pulled up the compost lid to a buffet of delicious decay and fat worms feasting. Soil, earth is our return, our last need and answer beyond addictive reason, fear and desire. Despite all else, the day will fulfill its cycle of light and dark and I'll continue to want much and take my chances. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sina, and thank you for everyone for listening. I hope I've contributed something meaningful to the session today. Love you all. Where do I press? Leave. Oh, yeah. With great gratitude, Mauala Ibao, Honorable Albert Wen. Well, to have lived to a day in my own lifetime, as well as with the young scholars and the young warriors who are here tonight who helped to organize this program. Thank you very much. For your great humility. Yeah, thank you. And we also have our, you know, one of our mentors, one of our important, four mothers of Pacific Island Studies and also Pacific Islander literature, Dr. Carolyn Sina-Vayana Gabbard. We want to also thank you to our, to our auntie, Carolyn Sina-Vayana Gabbard. Thank you so much. Thank you for, for creating, for making these dreams come true. Thank you so much. Thank you for your great love for our people. And we look forward, I'm sorry, Professor, we look forward to hearing your poems as well. And my, oh, please, please forgive me, everybody. Please forgive me. I, you know, just listening to the Honorable Albert Wen there, I forgot our schedule for a minute. We're, for me, we're going on our Oceania time. You know, we should have some kava, Honorable Albert Wen. Please forgive us. We should have a few pigs, some octopus and some fish, taro, galoa. We will give you the finance that we have. So, so one of the finance that we have as a young scholar, we'll have her come up. We have our young Samoan scholar, Miriam. Talo Falava. Hi, everyone. My name is Miriam. I go by Myrm. I am from Samoa, or my family is, but I have been living on the lands of the Menominee and the Ho Chiang people in Wisconsin. My family comes from the villages of Potsasi and from Lepia in Samoa on the island of Bol, and I was recently named one of the top collegiate scholars in the U.S., and so I am eternally grateful for having this opportunity to speak to all of you and to read my poetry for you, and especially for Maula Ivao, Albert Wen as well. You have no idea how much this means to me, how much I can't imagine any of this happening four or five weeks ago. So, this poem was tentatively titled just Albert Wen, but it is now titled Sa'o'u Lailua, or I Was Lost. So, thank you. History and titles pass down generation after generation, leaving the Samoan tongue with laughter, fear, hope, and alofa with mana. Maula Ivao, Albert Wen's a name unfamiliar and difficult to say with a pala ni tongs such as mine. Trying to give the honor, hope, amazement to a man like him and how much he deserves, from an afakasi like me with no knowledge of my history with my mana, running out, writes to you in a hope that you can hear me. I know our ancestors knew of you, they knew of what you would do for the world, for all of us here, for all who are here with us even after death. I've only known you for a month, I've only read of you for a month with methods only our ancestors could dream of, but now is the time that I kneel down. I sit down with all you have blessed with all who has heard your amazing words with work unimaginable, like black rainbow unattainable, like bolioli, unreal, like the adventures of Vela. Fafatai, for giving me a Samoan to look up to as I write the words of a Samoan in the diaspora who has been living in blizzards for over two decades and is the descendant of our colonizers. Fafatai, Fafatai, Fafatai, Fafatai, Telelova, Maola, Ival, Albert, Wendt. Thank you. Oh, okay. Should I go? Should I go for it? Okay. Okay. Let's see. I'm just going to try. Oh, okay, good. Oh, okay. That was so beautiful. Thank you both. I'm just been moved to tears just over and over again. Okay. So a couple of, I'm going to just start with a very few lines and then a poem for my parents. So just by way of introduction, I'll introduce myself as their flying fish daughter. Mother was an air current and father an ocean wave. They took turns breathing each other in and out, in and out. Sometimes she got more watery like him and sometimes he got more airy like her. They shifted back and forth into each other in some way like music. So this is a poem called Agnes and Ben and I wrote it for in honor of their anniversary, which was Valentine's Day. I'm not sure what year they got married, 1930 maybe. This is Agnes and Ben. I'm going to try and move this. Okay. This is good. Good, good, good. Okay. Oh, wait. No, I want to see you fully so I can see it. Does it sound okay? Sound okay? Yeah, it's good. Good, good, good. Agnes and Ben, who flew us out in 1949. Was it a C-13 cargo plane, Pongo to Honolulu. Four of us then, Benny, Bobby, Mike, and me, seven, five, two, and three. Who did not want us sitting on the floor in the Samoan section of that movie house in Pongo while American sailors sat on chairs, among other things, who saw the handwriting in the sand with their eighth grade educations and launched our wee crew out into unknown waters, seizing their main chance, choosing the hero's path anyway, this human genealogy of flight from the motherland or home place comfort at the service of bringing something necessary for the people to survive. So around this time last year, I was sleeping in an SUV at a migrant children's prison near the border crossing at Torneo, Texas. My spot in the occupation with compañeros, the abandoned toll plaza south of El Paso. In Chihuahuan Desert freezing winds, we made paper flowers to decorate, chain link fences, and the big roadside altar, our Lady of Guadalupe, and candles. Juan made a Christmas tree from empty tear gas canisters a protestor's grim harvest festooned with tiny lights, the most beautiful Christmas tree ever. Regina came with her tall puppets on stilts so the children could see them over 20 foot high fences blacked out by authorities. First time we puppet marched the fences, a cry rose up from the other side, children's voices on the waves of afternoon, my 72nd Christmas, Feliz Navidad, Feliz Año Nuevo. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad, married on Valentine's Day 79 years ago to commence assembling a crew for our small boat. Six sons, one daughter, now scattered across unknown waters of the zeitgeist, Hejira rising, but still afloat nonetheless. Again, some odds come what may. Thanks to you. This next poem is called Low Tide, and it's dedicated to the Kali Yuga. Low tide of our oceans, the watery skin of earth pulled back to expose a webbing of coral, rough and prickly, to hide treasures of octopus and spiny sea urchin, her long black spikes of danger and allure, guarding that golden softness of sweet flesh at the center of ourselves and each other, other and other and other. Millions of tiny spines fused into this great wall of lacy color and refuge, towering from the reef bed laid for us on the ocean floor, layered over eons of lifetimes imprinted on this architecture of mind, streaming across time that finds us again, consorting on this ocean path, now run aground on the fecund reef, waiting for high tide to lift us again to the safety of deep water. And the last poem, just checking the time. Okay, I think we're good. So this is in honor of what we've all been going through recently, most recently. So what this is is a rendering of a text from the eighth century, a Tibet, generally referred to in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It is not a translation as I don't speak or write Tibetan yet. So I use the leading English translations of the text in addition to calling on my own practice of Tibetan Buddhism for the last 35 years. My aspiration here is to offer wider access to this practice of ancient wisdom that continues in the present day to facilitate the transformation of anxiety. Okay, which is there's this definition in psychology about fear, the definition of fear being confrontation with the unknown, which I think is a an apt description of this time of the world that we are in now together, moving through this passage in a kind of underworld together, just beginning to emerge. Thanks to the last election. So my sense of basically the idea here of death in this text that's referred to as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, in a popular kind of context is that basically we're always going through little deaths of different kinds. And that basically any time we're going into the unknown is a kind of death. It's a passage. So what this text is about is to give us support for moving through this passage. So with that, I'd like to offer this to you and to all of us in particular and to our planet, and everyone who is in particular people who are suffering the most. So just a note here, the pronouns, if there are any, I tried to work with the pronouns to make them inclusive, but they're meant, all of the pronouns are meant to refer to all the genders, all of them. Yeah, okay. And also you could just think of whomever you call on seen or unseen as a spiritual protector, really. Okay. So I named this text myself, The Fundamentals of Navigation. So I think of, okay, my question is how am I going to navigate this passage, whichever one I'm in, which in my case, often happens to be one like this one that we're all in. Fundamentals of navigation, honor and praises to the sublime assembly, all you mentors, archetypes and angels, with the power of your great hearts, please guide us on the path. When we wander in circles, driven by confusion, sacred mentors, holders of the lineage, may you lead the way on the radiant path of focus and reflection, study and meditation. May your consortium of angels cover our backs, deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. Quick note, so this term liminal refers to betwixt and between, okay, the passage. When we wander in circles, driven by keen delusion, may the king of clear skies go before us, turning the great wheel and sounding the conch on the path of radiant light, the way of all embracing wisdom. May his great hearted consort, queen of adamantine space, their noble union on the lion throne, a shimmering light, the first to float upon the world, may she come behind us ringing the great bell to cover our backs and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by intense hatred, may the azure king of the east go before us, ringing the great bell on the path of radiant light, the way of mirror wisdom. May his consort, lapis lazuli queen of the earth, their noble union on the elephant throne, cristaline light, a mirror lake of mind, may she come behind us flourishing the diamond thunderbolt of wisdom to cover our backs and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by overwhelming pride, may the golden king of the south go before us, ringing the great bell on the path of radiant light, the wisdom road of equality, may his sublime consort, queen of the ocean, their noble union on the equine throne, a jeweled light, exuberance of generosity and dignity. May she come behind us bearing the great gem, its gleaming harvest from the fecund earth to cover our backs and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by unabated desire, may the crimson king of the west go before us, declaring from his lotus seat on the path of radiant light the way of discerning wisdom, may his blazing consort, the queen of fire, their noble union on the peacock throne, a vernal light, blossoming of graciousness and heart. May she come behind us ringing the great bell to cover our backs and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by consuming envy, may the turquoise king of the north go before us, ringing the great bell on the path of radiant light, the way of all accomplishing wisdom. May his intrepid consort, Jade, queen of the wind, the swift one without fear, who answers the cries of the world in union with her noble consort on the back of a great bird, playing cymbals for the sublime pair, a light on the winds of summer, their emerald blaze, the flowering of skillful means. May she come behind us flourishing the diamond thunderbolt of wisdom to cover our backs and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by the five poisons, may the Lord victors of the five clans go before us, declaring on the path of radiant light, the way of consummate wisdom. May the queen victors of the five clans come behind us, emanating pristine space to cover our backs and together deliver us from the beguiling lights of the six realms, the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by overwhelming instincts, may the legion of wisdom heroes go before us, calling on the path of radiant light, the refulgent way of ecstatic wisdom. May the queens of space and hosts of angels come behind us answering and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. When we wander in circles, driven by fierce hallucinations, may the blessed ones, peaceful and wrathful, go before us, deflecting on the path of radiant light that conquers the phantoms of hate and fear. May the queens of space and hosts of angels come behind us circling to cover our backs and together deliver us from the dreadful straits of the liminal and carry us to the shores of freedom. May the elements of space not rise up against us. May we see them as the field of the sapphire victor. May the elements of water not rise up against us. May we see them as the field of the diamond victor. May the elements of earth not rise up against us. May we see them as the field of the golden victor. May the elements of fire not rise up against us. May we see them as the field of the ruby victor. May the elements of air not rise up against us. May we see them as the field of the emerald victor. May the rainbow elements not rise up against us. May we see them as the fields of all the victors. May awesome sounds, lights, and rays not rise up against us. May we see them as the myriad fields of the mild and fierce ones. May we come to know all sounds as our own sounds. May we come to know all lights as our own lights. May we come to know all rays as our own rays. May we come to know the reality of the liminal as our own reality. May we arrive at the fields of the awakened ones. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. Love you so much. Thank you. So much love and respect for you, Professor Sinavayana Gabbard. Thank you so much. Again, thank you so much again for your great work. We're here because of you, because of you, beloved ancestors. Thank you. Ma Long. And we have our two, we also have two warriors from Guahan who, again, I just also want to thank for their great work to make this program possible. Haffadeh Todesansu, Guahusi Caroline Aplaglia-Royal, Agahusi Elena. My name is Caroline Aplaglia-Royal, and this is my daughter, Elena. Dankulunasi Tsuusmaasi Ma'aleval Anumal Albert Nguyen. Dankulunasi Tsuusmaasi to my Tsetlu and sister Dr. Fuyi Fuyi Lupe Nio Matolu for the invitation to be part of this special event. We would also like to express our deepest gratitude to Karina Gold and the Eloni relatives here this evening as we are guests on your land. It is with great humility that we are able to share a short story about our next poet. Years ago, one of my mentors suggested that I explore the work of our next poet. She shared that we were both Chamorro and both graduated from UC Berkeley. I was excited to read his work, but I didn't I didn't know that it would change my life. At the time, I didn't know any Chamorro poets and found his work so influential that I started to write poetry myself. After reading one of his essays that he wrote about his grandmother, it helped me to write my grandmother's story. His work speaks to all audiences, but especially to Chamorro's in the diaspora. His storytelling and the beautiful ways in which his words dance on the page are sometimes painful, sometimes playful, but always speak the truth. Our next poet has been an inspiration for both me and my mom. As a young Chamorro student, trying to navigate university life, his poetry and mentorship helped students like myself. And at the first Indigenous Peoples of Oceania commencement ceremony for Native Pacific Islanders at the University of San Francisco, we used his poem as a foundation and theme of our ceremony to honor our ancestors and celebrate our journeys. Dr. Craig Sanchez-Paris is our next poet. He is a Chamorro scholar from Mung Munguahan and the author of five books of poetry and co-editor of five anthologies. He holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of San Francisco and a PhD in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. He is a professor in the English department in affiliate faculty in the Center for Pacific Island Studies and the Indigenous Politics program at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. It is my honor to introduce Dr. Craig Sanchez-Paris. Auf Wieder. Thank you, Elena and Carolyn, for that very generous introduction. You both have inspired me so much with the work that you've done over the years. Thank you so much, Fui, my cousin and my sister, for organizing this event today and for everyone else involved. I'm so honored to be here with this amazing intergenerational collection of writers and artists. Thank you so much to Karina and Kim for welcoming us here. I used to live in the Bay Area, but I now live in Hawaii, so I also want to acknowledge Native Hawaiian people as well as Native peoples of Turtle Island. Thank you, Al, for joining us today and for sharing your poems. It's been many, many years since Brandi and I were visiting you and Raina and we miss you both and Brandi sends her aloha and it was it was so wonderful to hear your poems that I'm very thankful to have this opportunity to honor you with my poems. You are the reason why I became a writer and an editor, so thank you so much for that. I'm going to read two poems. The first was actually inspired by Al's book, Sons for the Return Home, a major theme in which is migration and that's a theme that and an experience that many of us can relate to as well. It's titled Off Island Chamorros. My family migrated to California when I was 15 years old. During the first day at my new high school, the homeroom teacher asked, where are you from? The Mariana Islands, I answered. He replied, I've never heard of that place. Prove it exists. Yet when I stepped in front of the world map on the wall, it transformed into a mirror. The Pacific Ocean, like my body, was split into and flayed to the margins. I found Australia, then the Philippines, then Japan. I pointed to an empty space between them and said, I'm from this invisible archipelago. My classmates laughed. And even though I descend from oceanic navigators, I felt lost, shipwrecked on the coast of a strange continent. Are you a citizen? He probed. Yes, my island Guam is a U.S. territory. We attend American schools, eat American food, listen to American music, watch American movies, play American sports, learn American history, dream American dreams, and die in American wars. You speak English well, he proclaimed, with almost no accent. And isn't that what it means to be a diasporic tomorrow, to feel foreign, to feel foreign in a domestic sense? Over the last 50 years, Chamorros have migrated to escape the violent merits of war, to seek jobs, schools, hospitals, adventure, and love. But most of all, we've migrated for military service, deployed and stationed to bases around the world. According to the census, 44,000 Chamorros live in California, 15,000 in Washington, 10,000 in Texas, 7,000 in Hawaii, and 70,000 more in every other state, even Puerto Rico. We are the most geographically dispersed Pacific Islander population within the U.S. And off-island Chamorros, now outnumber, are on island with generations having been born away from our ancestral homelands, including my daughters. Some of us will be able to return home for holidays, weddings, and funerals. Others won't be able to afford the expensive plane ticket back to the western Pacific. Years and even decades might pass between trips, and each visit will feel too short. We'll lose contact with family and friends and the islands will continue to change until they become unfamiliar to us. And isn't that too what it means to be a diasporic Chamorro? To feel foreign in your own homeland. Even after 25 years away, there are still times I feel adrift, without itinerary or destination. When I wonder, what if my family stayed? What if we return? When the undertow of these questions begins pulling you out to sea, remember, migration flows through our blood like the aerial roots of a banyan tree. Remember, our ancestors taught us how to carry our culture in the canoes of our bodies. Remember, our people scattered like stars form new constellations when we gather on zoom. Remember, home is not simply a house, village, or island. Home is an island of belonging. Thank you. Okay, my final poem is inspired by Al's essay, Tatau'ing the Postcolonial Body, which is one of my favorite pieces of his writing. This poem is called The Pacific Written Tradition. I read aloud from my new poetry book to an English class at one of Guam's public high schools. After the reading, I noticed a student crying. What's wrong? I asked. She says, I've never seen our culture in a book before. I just thought we weren't worthy of literature. I wonder how many young islanders have dived into the depths of a book only to find bleach coral and emptiness. We were taught that missionaries were the first readers in the Pacific because they could decipher the strange signs of the Bible. We were taught that missionaries were the first authors in the Pacific because they possessed the authority of written words. Today, studies show that islander students read and write below grade level. Is natural, experts claim. Your ancestors were an illiterate oral people. Do not believe their claims. Our ancestors deciphered signs in nature, interpreted star formations and sun positions, cloud and wind patterns, wave currents, and ocean efflorescence. That's why master navigator Papa Mao said, quote, if you can read the ocean, you will never be lost. Now let me tell you about Pacific written traditions about how our ancestors tattooed their skin with defiant scripts of intricately inked genealogies or how they carved epics into hardwood with a sharpened point, their hands, and the pressure and responsibility of memory, or how they stenciled petroglyphic lyrics on cave walls with clay, fire, and smoke. So the next time someone tells you our people were illiterate, teach them about our visual literacies, our ability to read the intertextual sacredness of all things. And always remember, if we can write the ocean, we will never be silenced. Mahalo, Sino Ma'asi, thank you for listening. Thank you, Al, for being here. I look forward to hearing all the other poets and just enjoying this evening and this gathering. Mahalo, thank you. Craig, thank you so much. Thank you so much, Craig. Thank you for your great work in creating a legacy, a legacy of Pacific Island studies for our next seven generations. Thank you so much. Also, for those important words, that Pacific Islander literature, that poetry, these are all parts of our Pacific Islander cultural traditions, our cultural practices, and also our cultural values. So thank you so much. And then we have one of our Samoan, our Pacific Islander young leaders who's also up to introduce our warrior, our warrior. Yes, thank you, Fui. Talofa Lava, my name is Tonvai. I am Samoan in Tokilauan. My parents come from the villages of Ofu and Fichuta of the Manula Islands in Samoa. I currently reside on Ramata Shaloni land in the San Francisco Bay Area Peninsula of California. And today I am rocking a Polynesian Panther shirt in honor of our next poet. And you know when I'm out in the world and I'm rocking this shirt because I do wear this shirt a lot. I'm always so excited to tell people that the Black Panther Party inspired a movement that traveled the ocean and led to the formation of the Polynesian Panther Party. And at that time it was a group of young ocean radicals that dared to imagine more, to demand more. And one of those comrades was a 17-year-old poet named Tingilau Ness. How amazing is that? It makes me feel so proud, so connected. And it's so important for our young people, our young ocean people, to know the history of our resistance movements to inspire and encourage us to keep going. So we thank you, brother Tingilau, for your leadership in our ocean community, for putting your body on the front line, for protecting Indigenous land, for showing us what solidarity with our Black relatives looks like, for making music, cultivating your creativity, and continuing to serve the people. Y'all please show your love for our next poet, Tingilau Ness. That's me, right? Yes, welcome, Tingilau Ness. Thank you to all who put this Zoom worldwide international connection together. Thank you, Fui Fui Lupe. Thank you, Tony, for that introduction, brother. This will be the first time we've sighted each other. Really honoured to be part of this Talanoa talk fest, poetry, sharing, and also Talofa Lava, Moa Leivao, honourable Albert Wendt. That is an honour and a privilege to be part of this whole gathering. Yes, I joined the Polynesian Panthers when I was 17 years old. The Polynesian Panthers' 50th anniversary is next year, so our job isn't, our work, isn't finished yet. But in the words of Hewie P. Newton, things have to be done in a new way. So this gathering, this talk fest, this sharing of ideas and spirituality is a new thing, is a new way of communicating. Thank you, Renee Price, for the blessing at the start here. Kia ora to some of my old comrades that I see on this. Kia ora, sis. We've done a lot of campaigning and there's still a lot more to go, but I feel heartened that I see young ones coming through strong, committed, and creative, because knowledge is power and rest assured that if that power is not used to create, it will destroy. So we're about creating. Right now I'd like to share some words that I put together as a lyrics to a song. I was inspired by, honorable Albert Wendt many years ago at a Pacific conference in Auckland here that was held at the Town Hall. And Albert Wendt had got up and said, how come Pacific Island and Māori are at the bottom of the heap in most aspects of this society in Aotearoa, New Zealand? How come we make up the most of the population in the prisons, the most dropouts out of schools, the most ill health in our communities? How come all these things? So I looked at that and I heard and I realised that he's a revolutionary, this man. He's saying things that nobody else would dare to say, even amongst our own Pacific Island people here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. So as a follow-up to Sons For The Return Home, I participated in a documentary about a trip back to my homeland for the first time. I was about 56 years old when I finally reached the island of Nui, where my parents are from. I'm born and bred in Auckland, Aotearoa, New Zealand. And to go back to New Ireland was like meeting everybody here today. We are family and our international connection proves that we all feel the same feelings. We are human and we share experiences through poetry and words. Thank you Tony for that introduction brother and talking on email and making this connection. These are the new ways that we're going to meet. This whole world is affected now by the COVID plague. It's nothing new. These things have been around before but these ways that we're connecting today, like here right now, is one of the new ways. So if we can link up like this way in a positive way, then I'm sure the problems that this whole world faces we got the solutions to because I don't think we're that stupid or dumb to head down the way of mass destruction. We're not like that. So I'll just cut to the chase and I wrote the lyrics to this song and to me it's poetry and music and I dedicated, I actually sang it at that conference that you were at. I think it would have been the mid 90s. Anyway, it's called Thank You. And it goes like this. God defend New Zealand and all humanity for helping my people in the South Pacific. They bombed the rainbow warrior. They bombed Murarua. I thank you New Zealand for helping to stop the nuclear tests, for helping Somalia and in Ethiopia, up in Bosnia, down in South Africa, Nelson Mandela, for helping Rarotonga and in Samoa, up in Papua, down in Antarctica, and in East Timor. Thank you, thank you. Bless you, thank you. Thank you, bless you, New Zealand. Thank you, thank you. Bless you, thank you. Thank you, bless you, Aotearoa. So that was my thank you and I thank you and everybody that's just, you know, thank you. I also, during the Springbok All Black Tour of New Zealand in 1981, I participated in that as a marshal for one of the protest groups representing the Polynesian Panthers and for that particular protest, I ended up in prison. And being a writer, you know, from an early age in the Polynesian Panthers, I thought one day when I'm free, when I get out, I'm going to tell about these people, you know, that has mistreated us and, you know, want to reinforce apartheid in this country. Well, us Pacific Island people, we, you know, we are incensed by any acts that will separate us from our family, from our children, from our loved ones, you know, which is normal, which is human. And on the way to prison, I started writing a song about the people that persecuted us. The arm of the government, the New Zealand government at the time was the police. And in particular, a group called the Red Squad. The Red Squad were the police that were the most violent against protesters. So I decided while I was in prison, I'd write some lyrics. And when I got out, I'll tell everybody about it, which I did, recorded and released. And it's called Red Squad Story. So it was written in a cell in Mount Eden Prison in 1982. It goes like this. Hear the tale of the Red Squad story, yeah. Hear the tale of their pain and glory, yeah. Because I hear the sound of the beaten down touched so low they kiss the ground. That's what I know of the Red Squad story, yeah. Hear the tale of Stephen Biko. Hear the crying of my people. That's what I know of the Red Squad story, yeah. Hear the tale of the Red Squad story, yeah. Hear the tale of their pain and glory, yeah. Because I heard the sound of the beaten down touched so low that they kissed the ground. A brother said, turn. Face the Red Squad story, yeah. So the buck stopped here for the Red Squad story, yeah. So short as it is, I recorded that and I'm not going to sing it to you because but that was called Red Squad Story. And so I just want to finish off here with one of my latest lyrics, poetry. It was released on before COVID this year and it's out on Spotify, etc, etc. and it's called Grow Little Children. And I was inspired by a journey I made to South Africa where I attended the 13th World Congress on Infant Mental Health. And it's known that adults have always been catered for as far as mental health but nobody had considered that children, even babies, have mental health issues. So especially babies. This one is called Grow Little Children and it goes like this. Grow Little Children, no no sorrow for we here to keep safe you. Grow Little Children, for tomorrow you will keep safe children too. Grow Little Children, love your mothers. They're the ones who carried you. Love them like you love no other. You will carry children too. Grow Little Children, love your fathers. They're the ones who cared for you. Love them like you love no other. You will father children too. So Grow Little Children, you're the future. This whole world depends on you. What you love and what you value lives for future children too. Grow Little Children, grow. Thank you very much. All right, well, yeah, well, honorable, honorable dinghy loneliness. Thank you so much. We are here, we are here because of you. Thank you so much. And then back to our our warriors from Guahan who are here to introduce our our next poet. To do some assi to our ancestors for bringing us together to celebrate, remember, and honor one another in our future. Guahusi Elena Apaglia Rorio and Ahusi Caroline Apaglia Rorio. Our next poet is very special. She introduced both of us to climate justice issues in Oceania, where she used poetry to expose the vulnerability of the Marshall Islands due to rising sea levels. Her artistry empowers and educates our Pacific Island communities to fight for our lands, ocean and future generations. Her poetry spans oceans and has strengthened our relationships to all of our brothers and sisters across the globe who fight for climate justice and indigenous rights. During the United Nations General Climate Summit in 2014, our next poet performed Dear Mata Fela Penam, a letter that she wrote to her daughter where she spoke to the United Nations about climate change. This inspirational letter would become the foundation for the work that my daughter and I later took part in when we marched alongside each other and our Pacific Island relatives in the 2018 climate summit. Our next poet is Kathy Jettno-Kidner, a poet of Marshallese ancestry, born in the Marshall Islands and raised in Hawaii. She received international acclaim through her poetry performance at the opening of the United Nations Climate Summit in 2014. She has created art installations and performances with the Smithsonian and the Queensland Art Gallery, amongst others. In 2019, she was selected as an Obama Asia Pacific Leader Fellow and MIT Director's Media Lab Fellow. She received her Master's in Pacific Island Studies from the University of Hawaii and is currently a PhD student at Australia National University. Kathy serves as Climate Envoy for the Republic of the Marshall Islands government and as Director for the Marshall Islands-based Youth Environmental Non-Prophet Joe Jicum. It is my honor to introduce Kathy Jettno-Kidner. Yeah, we all live. Yeah, we're from the Marshall Islands. It's good to see everybody. It's so great to be here and that was such a great introduction. I'm really honored. Thank you for reading my entire bio. It's long and unnecessary. But I'm calling in from our Youth Center actually where it's actually closed just starting today. And it's really great to be able to hear all of these amazing, amazing writers and our amazing elders in the room who are also inspiring. Albert Wentz's collection, Nua Nua, that he edited was actually the first piece of Pacific writing I'd ever seen. It was in my my English teacher's bookshelf and I remember seeing it and I was like, Pacific Islanders can write? So I was shocked at the time because up until that point I'd only read Asian-American writers and white writers and that was it. So Nua Nua became my vehicle and introduction into Pacific writing and that started an entire love affair and poetry and writing and art has always been at the center. Yeah, I guess so, Nua Nua. So good to see a lot of friends in here that I haven't seen in months. I'm used to actually going passing through Hawaii on a regular basis to come to the Marshalls and seeing all of my good friends out there and then also being able to traverse through the US to, you know, during my performances. So I definitely miss a lot of you. So, you know, this is definitely kind of like a homecoming more so than just a regular performance. So I guess I'm going to be reading two pieces. I'm going to keep it kind of short just so that because I know that we have so many friends and so many people to hear from. So the first piece is a poem that I actually just wrote and it's coming out. Oh, and I should also apologize if my Mi-Fi is a little slow. So it's, yeah, it's going to go in and out so just hopefully you guys can hear okay throughout the whole thing. So this is a piece that I wrote and it's actually, it was written kind of because as climate envoy for the past year, I've been working with our government to develop our national adaptation plan and it's all about trying to make sure that our islands are ready for what's coming, what we know is going to happen. Some other countries have already written their national adaptation plans and I think for those who are unaware of those terminologies of adaptation versus mitigation, the fact that we're focusing on adaptation really, it's a marker for how much more serious we're taking climate change and how much more serious of an issue it is. And as we see what's happening in Fiji right now and all the destruction that's happening out there and I think it's happening in Samoa too, I mean it's just a stark reminder again that we're really dealing with, we're actually, you know, we're having to deal with the impacts first. So this is us preparing ourselves for the worst but in a way that's inclusive and in a way that's people-centered and community-centered and you know that's that's focused on self-determination and so that's you know a lot of the work that we've been doing is that. So I have been thinking of you know going on these panels and talking about climate change here and there and what I always want to tell people is that you know we're doing the work like there is actual work on the ground here. I mean there's theoretical work talking about how we are connected to land and how we, well I guess theoretical might not be the right word but there's ways in which we discuss who we are as a people and our survival and our resilience and then there's these really you know daily kinds of work that we have to do that's well quite quite like you know for lack of a better word that's less sexy you know you got to you got to show up to the meeting, you got to put up consultation reports, you got to develop terms of references, you got to you know wrangle people and and so I wrote this piece kind to reference that to reference all the work that you know us Pacific Islanders my team not here is doing and so and so this is kind of that piece it's also referencing an ongoing climate campaign they had this climate campaign that our country is a part of called a midnight survival campaign and it's all about kind of a reporting mechanism that needs to be turned in and anyways so the midnight campaign was all about how you know we need to turn in this this report our NDCs by December 31st by midnight into survival deadline so then I ended up playing with this concept of midnight which was very fun so yeah this is the piece oh shoot oh there's one other thing my goodness this we're not supposed to talk this long before introducing a poem oh okay so one other piece is that Tony de Broom is our former climate ambassador and foreign minister who passed away and he was actually known to have grandfathered the climate Paris treaty which is the international treaty on climate change and he passed away a few years ago and throughout this year that I've been working with our national team of course he comes up just all the time you know and I think that so many of us who are entering these realms of spaces and work will see our elders coming up you know on a regular basis and you know the same way Albert Wink comes up and I think so this this poem started out as a as a poem as a reflection of the work we're doing and then it became also a remembrance of him and the legacy he leaves behind he's left behind for us so this is also for Tony so it's called midnight for Tony we'll say for Tony corals are resilient I've been told and so are we we've survived worse just ask your elders they'll lift their shirts show you bunker scars typhoon tent towns atomic nightmares of lost irradiated islands so this is just another incoming tide to shore up against hence seawalls hence foreign aid hence consultants terms of references a framework for asking each other which island will we move to which island will be hit first which island is worth salvaging the wreck a slow moving accident the ultimate disaster etolic oblivion as if we haven't experienced this before as if we haven't been told that evacuation is safer you'll come home someday 2030 2040 long term versus short term we debate this around the table we do the work submit reports but we are short on time before the clock strikes midnight before the pumpkin rocks before our glass island shatters are we so easily broken maybe we need flags to tell us how afraid we should be we have flags for coven threat levels yellow for safe yellow for prepare yellow for complacency yellow worth celebrating covid free the us is celebrating part of it anyway they are dancing in the streets and kissing babies because celebrations are worthy because the us will be back in the Paris tree because it feels like multiple breaths taken at once like bubbles bursting through reefs we reassemble ourselves we gather the calcium carbonate to grow our coral skeletons into sunlight look up ahead a lush marine garden awaits for tony we'll say for tony so that's one piece um okay and then i'm going to look for the other piece because i obviously am not well prepared so this is the other piece it's called it's actually an older one so well i guess if by older it's within this year um this was a piece that i wrote um for an exhibition that i put together with joy and what's all i don't know she's in this group actually but um we wanted to kind of i wanted it to be a reflection on the the cop negotiation so the cop is a is the biggest climate conference that happens every year so you know um i had just come from cop in spain this past december and then we put together the installation and so this is oh yeah yeah her sister is here hi great to see you um that's right i saw you earlier she's amazing you guys are both amazing um so so she so basically we put together this installation where we wanted to connect monica climate change militarization and the ways in which um it's all kind of connected and she wanted to talk about specifically like how wales can get impacted by the sonar and so she she made this amazing whale that was made out of reports and he was huge whale um as it was made up entirely out of reports and impacts from the from the military and um i figured okay i now i got to write a poem but the thing was i was like how do i write a poem about wales wales are really i mean i know a lot of people have connections to wales i don't necessarily have that connection right away so i had to be like what do i think about wales so i had to sit and think and figure it out and so this was a connection where i was trying to just grapple with you know coming out of the cop which is an incredibly dehumanizing difficult experience as a pacific islander being where you're negotiating for your survival with like hundreds of other people thousands of other people um you know and also figuring out you know what is our place in that world so uh this is the piece it's called beached and if the documents are true then even the whalers avoided us they slid past these islands whittled without rivers from gods living in shallow trunks of mean whales were hunted for the simplest pleasure a light in meat greenlandic hands offer me whale the same way i'm offered turtle in tradition in ceremony how conquerors stripped the sacred left a soured carcass of commodity simple pleasures plundered and masticated destruction takes many forms persistent floods besieges from all sides even here in this meeting we cross and crisscross an ocean of documents meant to charter an unfiltered future destruction takes the form of folded words decides urges requests three abysmal sounding lines for compassion in august whales die in maui without Hawaiian hands to soothe them into soft darkness if it was a marshalese shoreline the beached whales would signal a chiefly death harbingers of loss and damage cost analysis of disemboweled paperwork how do we decide the proper response to a room full of sharks and suits that can smell the brown in our blood the native in our speech they offer tickets of false solutions strategies without navigational aids i spent the meeting searching for the simplest pleasures you a light to guide the meat of my paper cart i could interpret your movements less than our enemies on all sides over and over i asked you to decide your position i urged you to reassess your motivations i stood naked as a shoreline requesting the simplest pleasures thank you that's the second poem i actually yeah you know what i think i'm gonna end there so that was the two pieces thank you everyone for having me again i'm very proud to be here and i'm looking forward to hearing from you all about it thank you so much kathy thank you so much it's great to have you again um where we met before many years ago when you uh did your when you were studying here at meals college we really want to honor this great land um you know just to let folks know that actually one of the connecting threads uh with with actually almost every one of our speakers here is that we met here on a lonely land right it was on a sacred land of indigenous people that brought us including our warrior uh honorable tingy launess uh also you're going to see later our our auntie and also our professor na huya actually every single person here and so uh again we want to honor and thank person for most our ancestors from our mononui as well as we honor the ancestors of this land that we're on uh currently the lishanoloni so thank you so much kathy thank you for your great love for our people so you know brothers and sisters i know that our specific people as indigenous people we don't our concept of time is very different from the western people i get it i get it if anyone here knows everybody knows that we i love to talk story and i know that every single one of us love to talk story so brothers and sisters and beloved relatives i want to just draw our attention to our time right now so on the western time clock here it says 757 and this program goes until eight o'clock on california time which means three minutes okay so so please uh beloved relatives i know we love to talk story i wish i had all the cover in the world uh octopus and fish and tyrol to feed every single one of you and i know you know relatives i know how do we meet for two hours on the western time clock to honor a great warrior like mao mao a la eval honorable albert wen but beloved relatives i ask you for just maybe for the one time in our lives that we care about western time perhaps this might be the night and this is why our relatives is because of our relatives from the san francisco public library here and they they just have families so that's okay for the next couple speakers if we can if we can let's just if we could just you know just if we can do that enough yeah like like uh anti-renews says there there we go yeah we'll go with this time frame all right so thank you so much we got our uh samoy community leader tohn who's back up to do the next introduction about the tai lava tohn thank you for it um so i first met our next poet uh terry says i'm a tonal many years ago at a queer art gallery show she performed a poem about coming out to her father and with that whole experience was like and it was um it was really intense and i just remember thinking wow you know what a brazen voice firm unapologetic but also incredibly tender and vulnerable her mano is strong and inspiring many years later i will cross paths with teresa at the release of her book remember we have choir practice which you can cop on her website teresa singlandtonu.com somebody drop that in the chat and again you know her energy the same but like at a higher frequency and you know it's just like damn you know i got so much love for teresa because she has fully committed herself to doing this collective healing work to organizing and educating and holding our ocean community accountable about everything from climate change to the movement for black lives to the protection of sacred indigenous land to abolition abolition and we need those voices we need those voices so we thank you sister teresa we love you we appreciate you and we see you y'all please show your love for our next poet teresa singlandtonu thank you so much tohn thank you fan for having me tonight wow um i i'm overcome with emotions that we could talk about later because i also want to respect the time i've been monitoring it as well and i want to respect um all the others like all the other poets and speakers after me so thank you for naming that um uncle albert thank you so much for gathering us tonight what already okay word i got two poems otherwise uh we could connect offline i'm always on twitter i'm always on instagram i'm always here with our family but this first poem i wrote inspired by um inspired by this this call you put forth uncle about um towards a new oceania you're the one who taught me that writing is world building i wrote my first poem 14 years ago when i was the first year at uc santa cruz and i was one of the only pacific islanders at that time just trying to explore what i made for what my voice is for and you taught me that writing is world building that i'm naming things i've never seen in my lifetime and i'm scrapping with language and i'm going toe to toe with myself contemplating the lengths i'm willing to go to get as free as possible and i've never felt more free than when i'm writing you've taught me that it's okay to be a socialist to be a leftist to critique empire to critique the establishment unapologetically and so i do that and you also taught me that in many ways the right that writing is only a small part of arriving at the book the manuscript the poem the other part of it is reading the other part of it is dreaming and having a life that allows you to exercise your imagination and so i have two dreamy poems that i'm offering tonight towards the direction of our liberation and this first one begins with a passage from uncle albert's article towards a new oceania in which he says quote i will not pretend to know her in all her manifestations no one not even our gods ever did no one does no one ever will because whenever we think we have captured her she has already assumed new guises the love affair is endless even her vital statistics as it were will change endlessly and the final instance our countries cultures nations and planet are what we imagine them to be one human being's reality is another's fiction perhaps we ourselves exist only in one another's dreams in honor of that this piece is called not even our gods not even our gods knew what to make of me what were they to do with the queer samoan girl in diaspora unsure of what her voice was made for outside of fails alcohol of all american assimilation choir practice what were they to do with all of my journals every one of them pregnant with adolescent questions my parents refuse to answer and the church had no answer for girls like me becoming a god out of necessity becoming a poet out of survival last year when i was performing in an art exhibit with kathy in australia one of the exhibits featured 100 poets worldwide who were either imprisoned or killed for writing about the cruelty of this world 100 microphones dangling from the ceiling each poet's voice echoing off of each other's audacity to tell the truth writers killed every day because the cia can't stage a coup on our poetry our government envious of how artists can mobilize people better than a president can faster than laws have ever changed waking up the masses to remember that greater empires have fallen and how this one will fall to because i said so because i wrote it but i will not pretend like i know all of my manifestations or like i know where this writing is taking me i will not pretend like i'm not scared like i know the difference between who wants me quiet who wants me silent and who wants me dead but at some point you stop and ask yourself how dare i be afraid of my dreams of freedom how dare i listen to the non-believers tell me i can't reach it how dare i respect the military more than our children how i had gods before the church gave me theirs how i became one and i'm still becoming what i'm trying to say is that not even our gods know what lengths i plan to go with these poems i don't know either what i know is that i found your words uncle albert in this lifetime how they grappled with the torn edges of our country pushed the military grade weapon barrel out of our face and walked into the ocean until the salt crashed over our fears that what we are saying what we are writing refuses to be skewed as anything other than devotion to our people our culture our future oh oh our future where our writers live with their wrinkled hands gripping pens still full of wild dreams our writers and how not even our gods knew they existed outside of what dreams become the moment they swim back to shore fan what hold on um before i get into this next poem i just want to say that when i found poetry 14 years ago when i was young just trying to figure everything out poetry was a vehicle by which i used to answer so many questions because i realized that the cost of staying silent the cost of being quiet the cost of playing small when i'm not small was too high of a price to pay and so i started refusing to pay for it there is no currency in this world that i could even use to try to pay for it so i don't do it anymore and so i named that for everyone here who may not you know believe themselves to be a writer or a poet or a oral you know or orator um but just really naming that we still need you and your voice and your story and you're the only one that can tell it and we need it we need it so badly bui was right when she said that poets are the ones that come to the front line and change things they change hearts they change minds they change behaviors i got you maxine thank you um and so with that said i go into this next poem i've been trying to language um this impossible year that has been 2020 and i keep coming close to it and then i keep messing up but i came close when i wrote this poem this past summer for an event um it for an event that was hosted in defense of black lives and um in standing in solidarity and in struggle with um our black ainga it has no title um but this is my last poem family there are years where i believe in heaven even all nine that tangaloa created for my people to return to and then there are years where i'm convinced that there are no gods as far as i'm concerned 2020 is a godless year until further notice there's a shortage on both faith and ppe no bailouts for the brokenhearted and the purely broken just all the ways to run out of ways to call this administration by the evil they are and even that no longer satisfies we don't even have energy to spend in that direction because all we have is whoever we can scoop up in our grief and whoever we have left on the ventilators and whoever is willing to die for everything that has always been due to us i am always between dying for my land back or ready to die in the new country we leave for together the nation beyond this one the one that were too tired from capitalism to dream about let alone usher into existence the one beyond my own that was severed into two nations neither of which i may ever get back in this lifetime fine i'm at peace with knowing that maybe i'm at peace with what may have to be the consequences of outliving whatever dreams my ancestors had when they were here because they're not here anymore and i have to dream bigger now because the war is different now and the goalpost keeps moving and the disease is global in a way that comes for our lungs first and we already weren't able to breathe to begin with they say kill the cop in your head Teresa and i don't apologize for killing more than him i even re-kill my colonizers who have been dead for centuries or have they been how else can we explain the u.s military their commander in chief my father once a soldier who didn't mean to be a soldier if it wasn't for his broken english how else can we explain the native genocide an african enslavement that created this country the police force that protects it the prison system that produces it what other name is there for this terror and what if i'm tired of saying its name what if the lesser of two evils is an option i no longer am willing to die for if the new country can hold the weight of no evil at all so fuck it let's leave for the new country in the morning you know what fuck it let's leave for it right now bring all of our people with us starting with our dead give them the proper burials that our cultural protocols have been aching for when we get there let's just let the children run through the tall grass with full bellies and no cages beneath the sun that cups the land and its palm without overheating it in the new country black women no rest black women brought us here the way they bring us forward everywhere here there is no altar to sacrifice ourselves on anymore no reason to do it anymore either there is just the audacity of abundance and we have everything we need to survive survival is a tool that does not serve us here and praise one of our gods for that praise all of our gods if we have to i'm second guessing what i said about heaven here i feel okay with changing my mind if the conditions change too but then again there is impossible amounts of grief we had to bring it with us and i don't know what the grief will make of us here but it is still the price we pay for all that we love because we've been loving longer than every war against us generations following another and look what we've survived in the miracle of our shared breath passed down from good lungs to good lungs through air that let us breathe so it's maybe safe to assume that here heaven does exist maybe the diaspora wanted me to dream beyond the nation to remind me of who i'm actually indigenous to how maybe the first place i belonged was in the dream of a better idea than borderlands either this is the country we deserve or we belong to a nation not yet here one that is waiting in labor ready for us to push thank you so much family love you love you uncle albert thank you for gathering us tonight thank you so much thank you so much niece thank you so much thank you for your great love for our people and thank you for um thank you for all your important contributions to pacific island studies um and also to uh reimagining it and contributing a lot of important work to pacific island literature thank you so much thank you for your love for our people um i our next our next um is it okay excellent we have our wonderful young warriors from bilau okay ali and greetings to my siblings across oceania my name is tolu here on chuteño aloney lands with roots that trace back to bilau to introduce our next poet no u revilla no u revilla is a queer native havaian poet educator and aloha aina her latest chat book permission to make digging sounds was published as part of fg3 in 2019 she is an assistant professor of creative writing at the university of hava'i ma noa and she has performed spoken words throughout hava'i as well as in canada papua new guinea and the united nations no u's poem has empowered me as a young woman as the bold words of her poetry speak truth about taboo issues that are very real in our pacific communities it is with great honor that i introduce my kanaka maoli sister no u revilla this gathering to celebrate the honorable albert went uh this is just kupuna vibes up in here and i'm really really appreciating that and teresa you your kupuna and my kupuna were talking story last night because i'm giving love to to towards the new oceania to um i'm gonna try something with y'all so that we can do can everybody see this palo palo on the screen my face hi yes hi like many people i owe a great debt to the honorable albert went and his essay towards the new oceania we all can say these lines so vast so fabulously varied a scatter of islands nations cultures mythologies and myths so dazzling a creature oceania deserves more than an attempt at mundane fact throughout my undergraduate and graduate years me and my peers sang this passage to each other we sang it in classrooms and hallways and bars in each other's homes we sing it still tonight i wanted to offer a poetry experience that visualizes the foundational presence this essay maintains in my life so i first share with you this line like a tree a culture is forever growing new branches foliage and roots pacific literature is also forever growing and we are constantly expanding what it means to write oceania to write in oceania and as oceania conversations like these the honorable albert went expanded them not only by making more and more people part of the answer but also by mentoring more and more of us to ask better questions of the many ways the honorable albert went has nourished oceania i will always be in awe of his vision and generosity as an editor as a teacher and a gatherer of pacifica voices so to engage in this forever growing i want to share a work that grows from his essay essay and which also draws from the poetics of writers like craig sanso Perez who also honored us this evening in the first section as you can see um you will see that i have retyped the first paragraph of Towards a New Oceania and replicated it as four islands of text experimenting with typography and erasure techniques like craig sanso Perez i crafted a poem inside albert went's original paragraph in the spirit of dialogue and continuity i end with a golden shovel the golden shovel is a poetic form developed by the amazing poet tarencete who wrote the first golden shovel after a gwendolin brooks poem in a golden shovel poem the last words of each line are in order words from a line taken from a poem you admire in this case the final section in my poem continues to draw from albert went's essay Towards a New Oceania specifically two sentences about the presence of our ancestors in our bodies and that those two sentences read our dead are woven into our souls like the hypnotic music of bone flute we can never escape them if we let them they can help illuminate us to ourselves and to one another i belong to oceania oceania i am rooted to oceania or at least to some of her plumage and pain captivated plagued islands vast to define me feed me nation feed me myth oceania deserves oceania i will leave analysis confine myself to god so fabulously scatter her free is my fertile we belong to oceania we who carve our stories in tongue and tapa who resurrect our dead with names that come from dreams who are we if not the curled smoke of ancestors woven into the sky maybe we've been bought into oblivion maybe we are nothing more than our history of conquest dying reefed where our souls should be or maybe we survived like kupu kupu ferns rattling inside the hard lack and hypnotic prologue of pa hoy hoy and the music of fire and boiling ocean of land gathering itself bone by bone maybe this group of places of death and we learned to listen again and we stopped punishing bodies that can moan without moonlight never again to condemn each other and to escape the tyrannies of paradise we wrote them deep into the dirt so deep even if you shoveled for days for weeks we would still see you return empty handed let the dirt and roots work let them reckon with the chill they heard storm our seas for centuries they can heal what we can't put into words roots help old land illuminate new land and dirt helps us stay honest and when we decide to embrace what is vast and scattered in ourselves to train our bodies to the sparkling and free shape of our ocean we commit to the stories of the past and the future to stories of one and the multitude we commit to one another mahala nui lo wow wow thank you so much wow what a great what a great honor it is to to hear your work and to witness i've heard so much about your work um and this is going to be my new goal to read your work what a great blessing it is um no you don't know i missed you you came here to rumble to shland i think you're the only person that i haven't met yet on rub on aloni land so what a great blessing it is again for me here on aloni land and you in hawaii um to reconnect want to thank your ancestors so much and so uh relatives uh we're coming to an end we're coming to an end uh hang in there uh and not just a pacific end we're really coming to a real end um we we we are the pacific we have our we have our own definitions for time uh stick in there our next uh uh leader uh also uh is is uh zooming in from one and we right um auntie we have our own definitions auntie huya there we go you know auntie huya we met last year we uh actually it was the the respected dinae photographer huya uh who's a professor in native american studies at uc davis who invited us uh karina gold was also one of uh one of the folks who got invited who invited us to come and have a ceremony to meet uh uh dr professor ngahuya te ave kutuku when when she came here uh to aloni land and so this photograph here was taken actually it was my photograph i took right in front of the ocean and so auntie it's great to have you what a great blessing that our ancestors reconnected us uh over zoom so uh kia ora kia ora for free and start my video start my video can you see me now we see you oh excellent so shall i just say at the beginning we are kia koutou um especially for a la eval um brother elbert what an incredible privilege is to share this time in space remembering and celebrating your work and how your work continues i'll just get straight into it but i'll also say um greetings to karina and all on their land where we met and um i'll just do one piece because i'm conscious of the time um i have been a writer all my life but a very timid poet and to agree to do this has taken me a lot of um thinking because usually for me poetry is a private and intimate process and i'm not very good at sharing it which is why i don't have very much stuff published but i've got boxes of it all over the house anyway i'll get into it um i'll just read from what i call the museum sequence for many many decades now i've been working in the museum world and i've met people there and they touch me they move me and so i'll share two pieces with you today for six seven four two a jade hay tiki at the british museum so many hands before mine so many lovers so many tears and probing fingertips which oiled your jade curbs and creases tender pressed against their own soothing skin manawa i call you that cook your theater talk manawa fanged fierce you laugh at me pukana eyes blank yet bulging bold and so many hands before mine after mine through mine manawa my heart and so we meet again so that's the first one uh the second is um about a little carving that i came across in um a provincial museum here in old tearoa um a small female figure that was snatched from a house during the land wars in the 1860s such a face yours a molded perfection of tilting eyes nostrils spine and chiseled lips i wonder i wonder what did your cyclist gaze witness that morning that day that night that time when you were torn down because your beauty your magic was recognized and claimed as a prize of war while close to the river she moved on and that i don't fear burn steaming with new blood amid the guts and shocks of obscene triumph and destroy them they took you bundled you into a scrim bag ripped you away from your home to this here a bleak gray place where lonely tissueed by the layers of pulp and plastic your beauty your beauty our pain our pain shined through um i think that's enough from me cure everyone and um thanks for the honor of participating in today's event all the very best for the future kia ora tato kia ora kia ora you know auntie i you know i i know i'm going back of my word can we can we bring up uh auntie's um um bio again just really quickly i just really want to acknowledge you know uh we have our we have our kupuna here you know it's so important for us i just really want to bring it out you know i just want to also her work you know the importance of her work as well for lgbt rights um in in our terror i just really want to point that out i want to point that out how she made you know throughout this program uh relatives we have consistently said that we are here we are here at this present moment because of our ancestors from the past the present and the future you know uh i really just want to say uh auntie thank you so much you know for us it's time if we would say malo i book a book for noir thank you so much for holding up our for noir i'm on anui thank you for your great work and thank you for your great love for us auntie what a great honor just to have you here with us in this sacred space to honor the honorable uh uh albert went so malo malo thank you and and and then our our next uh wonderful um scholar and also a warrior is one of our community leaders uh from uh from guahan here in the bay area so she's up to introduce our next poet um i am pleased um and it's truly a blessing to be here to honor um i'm also pleased to introduce my sister my comrade um li kava um who i've been lucky to work alongside with at sf stay and also with our support p.i studies in california campaign um dr liora kava as she is also known is um hapokasi poet of tongue and descent who recently received her phd in creative writing from the university of hoa i at manoa she's the founder of pacific burst project a community-based workshop series based in nuku alofa tongue that works with participants to create perform publish original poetry and music um she is currently now joins the community students faculty and staff at the college or with the college of ethnic studies at san francisco state university as an assistant professor in critical pacific islander and oceania studies so without further ado my sis my comrade uh dr li thank you so much sis kary um thank you everyone for being here um to fully for gathering us together it really is um truly an honor to be in the presence of my elders um to see um you know um it's just kind of overwhelming um because i teach your work and to know who you uh to know uncle abbert went um i've taught your work to my students and it's just so overwhelming to kindly be able to um share space with you so i have three short poems um and this first one also just in the um and the same um roots as my sister nou just did um growing a poem out of the words of albert went um i will be quoting um parts of to tell in the post-colonial body because that is a piece that really kind of asks us a specific islanders to um to ask questions of our art forms to squeeze them to tap them to make sure that they can carry all of our stories to ask questions of our literature and what responsibilities it has for our next generations so um this short piece grows out of um tattooing the post-colonial body which i'll quote first so from tattooing the post-colonial body in a deep psychological mythological symbolic way tattooing is the act of printing or scripting a genealogical spiritual philosophical text on the blood of testing it to see if it can bear the pain of being in the human body of storing it giving it human design shape form and identity and so this poem is called text on the blood all the text messages between my sisters and my brothers and my cousins and the aunties and the uncles and my dad and my mom and my grandparents all of them press or squeeze in order to extract juice or oil glass screen for the needle thumb tap as hammer a click to send draws first drops of blood this is a family tapped on skin stretched by distance which bears the pain of being in a human body of storing it giving it human design shape form and identity this is our art for keeping touch our responsibility to keep each other well written um this next short piece is actually something that i wrote also for Kathy and my sister Kathy when her um when her book yet she'll talk poems from a marshall's daughter came out but it also was also in response to some of the things that i'll went albert wendt's work gets us to think about um which is where do we store memory in our bodies do we store it in the tattoos where do we store it um um you know in our bones and so this is actually a piece about where i store a lot of my memory which is between my teeth so this is called between teeth when she first taught me to brush my teeth my mother would gaze into my open jaw inspecting the texture of my breath she would search for the sharp mint tap water and pink fluoride chewable scent assurance there were no gaps in her teaching no gap in her practice for preventing things falling out of my head so every night i tend the spaces between my own tongue and my grandparents tongue bristling between guilt and risk absence and mistakes the nights i go to sleep forgetting to care for a mouth made of archives so i bite floss bleed and repeat the spaces between my teeth they are the memory of a mother past the practice of a mother tongue still yet to come they are the dentures my grandparents leave at the edge of the bathroom sink every night the sharks circling an ocean wide mouth and this last piece is actually something that um i put together because i work a lot with the dictionary sometimes it's the safest space between me and all the fears of not being tongue enough so i get to actually sit in the dictionary and kind of be calm and not fear my mispronunciation my mispronunciation of words or how long it's gone since i was able to actually practice my tongue in um so to my sister fully thank you for trusting me enough to understand thank you timekeeper i'm almost done so this piece is called matala it's based off of one of the first vocabulary words i had to look up for my tongue and language class for the word faka matala which means to explain and the root of this word is matala which also means to bloom so in tongue in um our understanding of understanding itself is through the language of blooming flowers and so this is um thank you so much um this is my last piece matala one a syllable the spot where you first insert the spade when digging as in the spot where you lift the soil of your language and turn it over two speaking the feel of dirt when one's skin is rubbed every vow a newly made top cloth over bright flamboyant each consonants the curved curl of half coconut flesh dried in the shell left out in the sun understanding the oil contained in coconut cream as in lola matala alpito oil which will eventually come away freely three consider the possibility of each new phrase one sentence could be the night before the new moon becomes visible habitually glancing always on the alert another sentence could be one far from handsome but which you've chosen to speak nevertheless so say to each new word as in you are still fresh in my memory each sentence a bloom for on difficult days you will understand your people as if your eyes are only half open on good days you will consider the shape of flowers difficult to understand easy to understand and five matala our language is shaped in the movement of growing things as in when you understand what someone says to you in Tongan you will reply i bloom you malo thank you so much elders for being here malo malo uh for petai for petai uh little sister li what a great blessing it is for us here in the bay area um to have you to join us uh in building of our of our funua what a great blessing and thank you so much thank you we thank you so much for your love for our people thank you for your great love for our people and so uh but relatives were coming to an end and and i don't mean that in a time way i mean i really mean that okay i really mean it at this time okay so we just have one more poet and we got the beautiful beautiful our kanaka mali uh sisters are gonna offer our closing song please stay with us so we have our native american uh young warrior samara thank you auntie i'll be introducing i can't start my video i'm sorry you guys disabled me however she told me not to take too much time but this one she's she's prolific uh she's my big sis she probably won't tell you but she's honestly walking us into the future and i'm so grateful she's doing it because her mana her mana warhine is extremely profound um we're able to know her so by moana hello falaba mawa live out honorable albert went thank you to all the poets thank you everyone for being here i love you so much some say the waves do not choose the beach but every drop was carefully picked in thonga every tone of each sunset was strategically planned each rainfall goes through intense training on how to land on puddles grass and dirt in thonga each wind and breeze learn at a young age how to delicately move each petal of a gardenia just like how thonga girls learn how to move their hands their fingers their eyes and at that olonga paradise was not easily created thonga was not made in six days and god did not rest on the seventh day god has never kicked back in creating thonga thonga is constantly being created and god is constantly working you see god and thonga working hard every day never nine to five but 24 seven working it working the land working the people setting just right the arches of people's brows the top lip of each mouth laughter of all school children god is here and god is alive god has never left and god will never stop that said i want to say that god is in all of us as creators and the honorable albert went you are a creator who has given us so much life and so much love this poem is for all of you future creators future poets i can't wait to read your words to see your paintings this is called it's a new day before i say that i want to say that i too have when i was a teenager i wanted to commit suicide but it was because of art it was because of our culture our people the love of the land that has kept me alive so please know that there's always a new day that we could create for all of us we magic and flesh and bone real alive and direct we wisdom when we think we dumb we butterlight sunshine forces ready for flight we are told we are too young we are told we are too old we are told we are too much too less not possible not worthy nobody everybody you are life we give birth to infinite possibilities we give birth to the new day we think we ain't worth a million we worth infinity can't count that you can't count dollar you can count dollar bills the top 10 hits degrees which is not always counted let's count sand joy love knowledge memory which always counts remembering who we are our worth our value our head beats to our headphones attuned to our heart beats to our heart phones calling our heart then let's answer we bring our heart alive communicating new life don't they know don't you know don't we know we are the ones who give birth to our universe from each breath from each long we are the ones who give birth to the sun we doubt and ask will we rise again we are the ones to give birth to a new day life has just begun little sister want to malo malo thank you so much uh thank you for those important words uh to honor our ancestors from wananui and also to honor the honorable albert when you know our relatives we actually have one more poet we see my one of our best poets for last our poets from our brothers and sisters uh excuse me uh recognizing and honoring our brothers and sisters from melanisha uh our brother herman herman herman from from west papua malo malo herman malo lisiate a settler on the unceded and occupied land of the ramai two shalom peoples on turtle island i have roots in the pacific ocean with ancestral ties to the kingdom of tonga i have the honor of introducing a great leader of the people of west papua born in jai apura west papua from the island of ya pen when i developed his nonviolent approach to independence after questioning how the graceful virtues of justice peace and love could influence his work as an activist educator organizer and politician herman why and i is a Nobel prize nominee a representative of the west papua people at the united nations dedicating more than 30 years of his life to free his people from the colonial grips of indonesia he comes from a long and distinguished tradition of disciplined orators craftsmen and musicians and believes people's dignity and their culture as well as god's law and international secular laws are fundamental to the project of west papua and self-determination i think the answer is just for crossing our paths that we as an ocean may stand in solidarity with our civility in west papua it's an honor a dream and a privilege to be introducing my oceanic sibling my comrade my kainga my kai herman wangai my kai thank you brother guna and also sister dr fuie for inviting me joining you all as your brothers and sisters in the pacific region being away from our community it's our we disconnected with our culture but i truly believe this steiner meeting sharing ideas through the poem is reminding us back home to our culture my short poem today is a one of the testimony about what happened to my people back home but also testimony that's i've been going through with my yeah sacrifice for my people back home in west papua so it's called indonesian iron trellis i was jailed the room was dark the smell of human blood come over me called dirty flow without toilet toilet with stuffy earth breaking my noise and collision the torture my body with a cunning conspiracy they intimidated me and planned matter for me then i could not see the sun moon and stars only a dark room and a small candle accompany me i didn't know i would die here i answered no i must take your life prayers and faith that strengthen my struggle for survival i went through it all with my father december 14 20 years ago we were arrested jail and torture i keep screaming for freedom yes west papua must be independent despite life that's that i keep fighting all i bear for my people to wear my nation flag until the time comes they will see the beauty of this long struggle tears sorrow and relentless sacrifice will be curved beautifully on the milanesian generation in the land of new gunia graceful birth of paradise full of child malo god bless your brother herman brother herman we we thank our our ancestors from wananui for connecting our journeys with you and with our west papuan brothers here on a lonely land we also thank our west papuan brothers and sisters and our brothers and sisters from melanesia you know here in the us and when we as pacific people say that black lives matters it does and black lives matters to us as people from oceania and people from wananui because it's in our fornuo because our brothers and sisters our melanesian brothers and sisters their lives matter to us you know brother herman your your people from west papua have become a symbol of hope and of self-determination for all of us in the pacific we stand behind you we honor your leadership and we thank you we thank you beloved relatives thank you so much for honoring our great legacy from wananui our great legacy of resistance our great legacy of courage we pray for you and we thank you again we honor you great humility our brother herman thank you so much for being on the program for being part of this telenova being part of this uh ceremonial circle tonight what a great blessing for all of us and especially for our young people because this program also is going to be recorded and it's going to be seen in pacific island studies classrooms here in california and throughout the rest of the world herman we want people to know unequivocally that we stand with west papua that when we say that we stand with west papua brothers and sisters we're also acknowledging the role of the us empire in creating the genocide in west papua but the same genocide that the same mining corporations that are creating genocide for our brothers and sisters in the pacific are the same ones here in california and california indian tribes and reservations the same ones that are creating havoc for our brothers and sisters in the denay reservations in arizona the same ones brothers and sisters are interconnections with our brothers and sisters our indigenous brothers and sisters is what brings us it is the vah that brings us here today. It is a vah of resistance. We will remember and honor a great warrior, a great warrior, an ancestor who's still alive, honorable Albert Wynn. And we end again, we end our program tonight, our relatives. We've again, returning back to the sacred, every single speaker here talked about our vah that centered our sacred relationalities, to our mana, the ocean, to our finua, our land, our great Mother Earth, as well as to each other. And we bring on our kiai, can we, can we protect team? Yes. If we can bring it on, there we go. Two important leaders here in the Bay Area, here in Ohlone Land, Kumu Renee Price and Kumu Shana Aupani. These two, these two kiai protectors, these two warriors, these two Kumu, Kumugua, are a backbone for us here in the Bay Area. Their work of protecting the sacred. In fact, Kumu Renee Price was one of the 35, Kupuna, who were the frontline of Mauna Kea, who got arrested. And Kumu Shana Aupani, always, always at every, every event, every program to protect the sacred. Her body's right there. She's a frontline. She's a frontline warrior. So relatives, we're so honored to have our two sisters, our two, our two warriors offer our closing song. Mahalo, aloha kakua pao. I'm so honored to be here tonight. Mahalo Fui, and Mahalo to all relatives here this evening. I wonder if we can also unmute Ana Halia, because she is going to Kani Kapu for us as I start. Aloha, Kumu. Aloha. Aloha, Tita. We got you. We send our breath, our gratitude, and our prayers out to the universe. What is the pillar? A monkey. What is the pillar? An altar. What is the pillar? A rock. What is the pillar? A person. As a tongue-in, we would say, we're sorry we don't have more. We're sorry that the humble gifts that we have is not enough to honor somebody of your caliber. We want to thank you so much. Mo, a lai, vau. Honorable Albert Nguyen, thank you for bringing us all here tonight. And Honorable Albert Nguyen, as we've said throughout our program, we are here because of you. We're here because of you. Thank you so much. Thank you for your great love. Thank you for your great love for our people. Thank you for your great love for our ancestors of the past, those of us of the present, and our ancestors, the kids, our Mokopuna, the next seven generations. We honor you. We honor you. Thank you very, very much. First of all, I'd like to thank all the participants in this teleno today. We, from what I saw and heard, we have no worries about our future because the young people show a huge strength, not only in their writing, but in themselves. And that the fight that we started many generations ago against colonialism, racism, and so on will continue. Greatest example this afternoon is Herman of West Papua. I have traveled all over the Pacific. And as I said, I'm 81 now. I have watched the decolonizing of the Pacific since the 1950s, late 50s, right up to now. And I have great hope. We also have a fantastically talented group of poets, artists, musicians, whatever category you want to know. And they're now all over America, the Pacific and around the world. I am so pleased that that has happened. And it will continue to strengthen as time goes on. Thank you for valuing my work. As I said at the beginning, you write because you can't stop writing. And you hope somebody reads it. And I'm so pleased that over the years, I have found out that many, many people have read my work and have been influenced by it. And as you know, I have taught all my life from elementary school right up to graduate level, postgraduate level. And my students have been very wonderful people. And I hope I have benefited them. And they have gone out and helped to continue the struggle that we have been fighting. So Fui Fui Lupe and your team. Thank you very much. Thank you to all the poets who read tonight. I have read some of your work before. But most of it is very new to me. I have no fear for the future of our poetry. Your work is very strong, very profound, penetrating, insightful, funny, sad, and covers all the emotions that poetry covers. So Rain and I thank you again and wish you all a marvelous Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and a great, great, wonderful future with your families. Thank you very much. I love you. May the gods of America and Polynesia bless you. Wow. Well, honorable Albert Wendt. Wow, that was real, huh? Oh, I'm so sorry, everybody. So sorry. Thank you, everybody. Thank you to our San Francisco Public Library. Our warriors from Mauna Kea. We stand with you, Kea'i. Thank you for the great work. And good night, everybody. This is not goodbye. Just good night. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I love you. Thank you.