 It's Wednesday, and I find myself standing in the shadow of a mauna, a mountain that loves me like islands emerging from the sea, like a sky scattering herself in stars, like a lahu'i kanaka growing. I'm standing in the mulu of a movement that's captured the hearts of this generation, and I find myself here in my body, a kipuka expanding into peles, pahoi, hoi grip, holding, holding, holding my quiet, and in my silence I hear her wailing. It's Wednesday, and I find myself without searching, arms linked in a line of women I barely know but am destined to love. A line of women stretching back for thousands of generations, turned light, turned pukoa, turned slime, turned gods in a time of mere men, who more fierce than these bodies of islands, these bodies of women, these moku turned aina, spilling out our sea of islands, these hands stretched out, feeding a generation accustomed to starvation. It's Wednesday, and I am holding her hands like I am holding this story, strong but tender enough to let both breathe deep. I am praying to be a wahine worthy of this moment, worthy of these hands holding me right back, and then Auntie tells me, we are the generation they always dreamed of. So now it is Wednesday, and I am weeping. And every elder who ever fought, ever cried, ever died so that we would know for sure how to stand is singing right through me. And somehow I am still standing. Arms linked in a line of women holding me. And all I have to offer them is this story that is incomplete. Aloha mai kakou. Aloha. Aloha. Yeah, my name is Jamaica Heo Limali Kalani Osorio, and I have the unique pleasure of getting to share a mo'olalo with you folks. I'm a professor of native Hawaiian and indigenous politics at the University of Fulva Yemanoa. I was born and raised on O'ahu, but my family actually comes from the island of Hawai'i. Some people call it Big Island, from Hilo'i, Keokaha. If you go back far enough, my family comes from Hama'akua, from Kukuihaile, from up in Kohala and Havi. So we are people who have existed in Hawai'i since darkness. That's what we believe. That's the mo'olalo, the story we come from. We come from the night. And I get the unique pleasure of sharing some of these stories with you folks. The first thing I want to kind of get out in the open is that mo'olalo is a really specific word in Hawai'i. It's the word we use to describe history. It's the word we use to describe story. It's that first word up there. The word we use to describe literature. And in a Hawaiian way of thinking, in a Hawaiian epistemology, in a Hawaiian worldview, a way of living, we don't separate fiction and non-fiction stories in the way that the discipline of history or English would. We don't think of history as a line that has one master narrative. In fact, we believe that different versions of a story actually empower that story. One of the ways we know this is because the word mana, anyone ever hear the word mana before? Most people, the definition we carry with the word mana is power, authority, spirituality, connection, usually to aina, to land, to that which feeds, or to those who rule and lead us. But mana is also the word to describe a version of a story. So in a Hawaiian way of thinking, the more mana, the more versions a story has, the more mana, the more power a story has. So I want you to hold that with you today that I'm just going to tell you one mana of a mo'olalo, one mana of this mo'olalo, to add to the stories, to the mo'olalo that you carry with you, and that will, in our way of thinking, that will bring more power. There's a few things I need to begin with to tell this story. The first, of course, and most of us, all of us hopefully know this, right, that the United States of America, the vision, the fiction, the creation of the United States of America, is like the original crime scene, right, is only made possible by the theft of native land and the theft of black bodies and labor to create and make productive that native land, right. There's no way around that story, that mo'olalo, that truth. So today I'm going to use a word, I'll probably use this word a lot today, settler colonialism or settler state. And that really just describes this particular world we live in in the United States that's only made possible, that's only maintained by the continued theft of native land and the continued disenfranchisement of brown people in particular and the continued, what's the word, exploitation of black labor, right, and the capital that was created by that black labor. So that's the first crime we have to like understand at the bottom of this story. In Hawaii we have a particular mo'oku oho, that's what that word says, mo'oku oho, it means genealogy. To give us a little bit of a sense that we're all on the same page, Hawaii was an internationally recognized nation state as of 1843, recognized by the League of Nations, which means Europeans, Great Britain, France and eventually the United States said, Hawaii you're a real country. Okay, what does this mean? This means that when Hawaii was illegally overthrown in 1893 and is said to have been annexed in 1898 but we were never annexed because there was no treaty. If you study American law and international law the only way you can annex a country is with a treaty. There was no treaty of annexation in 1898. Because of this Hawaii remains to this day an illegally occupied nation state. The fiction, the mo'olelo, the story it told around the world is that Hawaii is the 50th state of America, but the 50th state actually doesn't exist legally. And as we continue to uphold that fiction we continue the violence of upholding that fiction. But Hawaiians have a deep and intimate history of resistance. From even before foreigners arrived in Hawai'i in 1778 Hawaiians believed in challenging inappropriate uses of power. So as early as Manonon Kikua Kalani in 1819 when they fought what they believed to be the unjust fall of the Aikapu and we'll talk about what the Aikapu is in a little bit but that was like the governing laws of that time. To the first mo'olelo also known as commoner petitions in 1845 when Hawaiians were petitioning their government saying we should not let Hawai'i foreigners vote. We should not let them own land. We should not let them start businesses because they will overthrow us because our people were really smart. So they wrote petitions. Or the petitions in 1897 against the annexation. Our people were always fighting against what they believed to be unjust uses of power. Then there was this great period of mourning after the illegal annexation of Hawai'i, after the forced assimilation of Hawaiians into American life. And it wasn't until the 1970s when a group of Hawaiians began to protest evictions in Kalama Valley, farmers, mostly pig farmers and others that this new contemporary movement of Hawaiian activism began. And what makes this a really interesting story to tell today in the midst of a celebration of Martin Luther King and his legacy is that the folks who protested in 1971 a small group of them, their leadership, had traveled to the United States. They had studied under the Black Panthers. They had learned intimately about nonviolent direct action from other folks in the United States. They had learned about civil disobedience. They had learned all these different things about what it meant to challenge power, American power in particular. They brought those lessons back home and they said huli, which is what that word says up there, huli, h-u-l-i. And it means to overturn. It means revolution. But it also huli describes the part of the kalo plant, which is like our main staple on Hawaii and our ancestor. It describes the part of the plant that's replanted. So huli also means that this is an intergenerational effort. We learned that from civil rights activism in the United States. We learned that from American, what they call the American Indian, the American Indian movement aim and the red movement in the United States and we brought it back home. Eventually culminating in the fight to protect Koholave, an island that had been bombed since World War II, since before World War II in 1976. So that's a bit of our genealogy of resistance. Today I want to talk about how that resistance and the current movement to protect Mauna Awakea is not just about fighting any one particular issue, but really about a new way, a new and old way to think about living in this world. Rooted in indigenous thought, indigenous knowledge and indigenous practices for future. Because often times when we talk about native people in the United States, we talk about them in the past. We talk about them like they're not still here because they don't look the way we expect them to look. All the natives are dead. That's our concept. When we grow up we learn about Thanksgiving. We're celebrating Thanksgiving because the pilgrims came to the United States and they met the natives and they were so nice and it's so sad that they're all gone now. That is a lie. It's a lie the United States tells us so that we can continue to settle on this land as if there's no other rightful inheritors of this place. So we have to talk about natives as if we're still here because we are still here. And so I'm going to tell you a story. I'm going to tell you a story about a mountain. This is Mauna Awakea, the mountain of Waakea. Awakea is the name of our God of the heavens, the God of the skies. Mauna Awakea is sacred. I'm not going to argue that it's sacred. I'm going to just tell you it's sacred. And Mauna Awakea is sacred for a lot of reasons. One, Mauna Awakea is Aina. It is land. It is that which feeds us. All Aina is sacred. It doesn't matter if there's already a building on it. It doesn't matter if it's a peak or a valley or the ocean. It's all sacred. Mauna Awakea is especially sacred because it's the highest point in the Pacific. And the entire Pacific is the highest point in the Pacific. It's the largest mountain in the world when measured from the sea floor. That's what some people don't know. I think Everest is taller from ground level. But if you measure the Mauna from the sea floor where it actually begins, it's the largest mountain in the world. And so our peaks are incredibly sacred. And so it's a place that we have long fought to protect. Raise your hand if you've heard anything about this contemporary movement to protect this mountain. You've seen pictures online, you too. Okay, so not too many people. That's cool. Today there is an ongoing effort and movement to obstruct the construction of a 30 meter telescope on the summit of this mountain. And when people hear that, if they don't know the history of this, they're like, what's wrong with the telescope? Why wouldn't they be into telescopes? Are Hawaiians anti-science? Do natives hate the future? This is what people say in the news. Okay, this telescope comes into a particular context. And this context is kind of outlined here. I'm not going to go into great detail about it, the words are here. But basically in the 1960s, the Board of Land of Natural Resources offers the University of Hawaii at Mauna Awakea where I work a master lease for 13,000 acres at the summit of Mauna Awakea. These 13,000 acres are considered what we call seeded lands, lands that were illegally seized by the United States at the time of the overthrow. These are lands that are believed and known to belong to native Hawaiians, that we should have the right to determine what happens on those lands. Essentially they start building telescopes. There's already 13 telescopes on that mountain. Many of them were built without permits, got permits after the fact, broke law after law after law to develop this sacred site. In 2000, this is an important detail. In 1998, the Hawaii State Auditor releases a critical report documenting 30 years of mismanagement by the University of Hawaii and the State of Hawaii of that mountain. They basically say, yeah, they're messing everything up. They're messing up the ecological life up there. They're messing up the rights for Hawaiians to practice traditionary and customary rights in Hawaii, which is in Hawaii a constitutional right to practice. So there's all kinds of problems with the fake state of Hawaii and this Mauna. In 2008, the 30-meter telescope corporation files for what we call a conservation district land use permit because the summit is also a conservation district, which we would imagine means it's a place you probably couldn't build things. So they apply for a special permit to build something, and Hawaiians are like, no way. There's already 13 telescopes. We don't need another telescope. There's all kinds of mistrust in this process. We're not having it. So in 2014, a group of Hawaiians, they disrupt the groundbreaking ceremony. In 2015, hundreds of Hawaiians ascend the mountain in these gorgeous... Oh, it cut off a little bit. Oh, okay. So anyway, at the bottom of this picture, women basically linked arms with la-i, and they have lines traveling up the mountain. Basically, every time the cops arrive to clear the road, they have to arrest people and clear the road. It takes time and eventually the construction vehicles because the mountain is so steep and not properly paved and no one is willing to pay for the insurance to have someone drive up there at night. If you block them until two in the afternoon, they have to go home and you win, right? So these are like stall tactics that we've learned to use. After 31 protesters are arrested in 2015, we go into another contested case hearing about this permit. The state, of course, the judges, they're all there to help maintain a certain kind of life in the state of Hawai'i, right? We're business revolutionaries. I mean, a certain kind of life in the state of Hawai'i, right? Where business will rule and people will lay down to the rights and interests of business and money in Hawai'i. So of course, we don't win the contested case hearing. In 2018 in October, 2018, I'm not good with dates. 2018 in October, the state Supreme Court rules that the TMT can proceed. One judge descends, which means one of the judges doesn't agree with the ruling. He says this ruling will completely undermine every bit of legal protections we have for land in Hawai'i, every single bit of them. This is devastating to environmental protections in Hawai'i. So even if you don't care about Hawai'ians, oh yeah, go ahead. Will they still build it? Yes. Yeah, so one of the judges say that the environmental protections are being severely hampered by this law, by this decision. And the reason he's saying this is because the justification that the judges use to say that they could proceed is that, yes, Mauna Kea is sacred. Yes, Mauna Kea is an important environmental site. Yes, it's the home for almost more than half of the water on that island. The water starts on that mountain. So if you ruin the water there, basically you're killing half of the island of its water source. They say, yeah, that's all really important. But those 13 telescopes are already there and they're already adversely impacting that environment. So who cares? That's actually the justification they use. It's already been adversely affected. What's one more? That's a really harmful way for us to think about how we're going to deal with people in land. We can see all the ways that that turns... That's not a slippery slope. That's just a nosedive into concrete of bad decisions. But it doesn't matter that he descents because he doesn't win the ruling. The dissent offers us an opportunity to see the problems with the decision. And in 2019, this past July, we got noticed that construction vehicles were going to try to go again and build a telescope on Mauna Kea. So what did we do? On July 12th in 2019, 300 people gathered in Kona, on the island of Hawaii, on the hot, warm side of the island of Hawaii. And we gathered to hear basically the plan under secrecy. We had learned a lot at this point from older movements in the United States, but we also learned a lot from security culture that was developed around standing rock and movements to block pipelines. We learned a lot about security culture. And so we all got these secret text messages that say, show up at this time, more details to be delivered then. But they didn't really tell us anything. So 300 of us gathered in Kona. And when we were there, he basically tells us, okay, we're going to go to this place called Puhulu Hulu. We're going to start an encampment. We're going to hold space there. It's right across the street from the one access road up to the summit. And so when the construction vehicles come, we'll be able to take the road and block the vehicles. He asked everyone, you know, we're sitting in a room. No, we're not in a room. We're in like a pavilion, a beach park. What you need to understand about Mauna Awakea is that it's the most unforgiving climate you can find in Hawaii. And it's a lot of parts of the world. We go from freezing temperatures, snow. It's snowing there right now. People don't think there's snow in Hawaii, but it's snowing there right now. But it's also so high that you've got to deal with... You've got to deal with all the problems of being at that elevation, elevation sickness. And you're so close to the sun that within 20 minutes you can go from a fear of hypothermia to heat stroke. So it's not a... We don't hang out there. It's not a place where Hawaiians hang out. There's no... There's reason why there weren't any temples on that mountain. There's reasons why we never built houses there. Not just because it's sacred, but because nobody wants to live there. It's uncomfortable. It's really uncomfortable. So he asked everyone who's ready to go right now 20 people raised their hands. And in that moment, I'm sitting in the pavilion. I keep wanting to call it a room. It's not a room. We're at the beach. And my heart sunk. Like, this is it. We only got 20 people. We can't block construction vehicles with 20 people. But we went anyway. We got five people. We got 10 people. We got 100 people. It doesn't matter. We're going. So in the dark of night on July 12, 2019, 25 to 30... We convinced some other people to join us. 25 to 30 people. It's an empty parking lot. If you look at videos, see pictures, I'll show you some of the Pu'u Honua now. It's unrecognizable. But we go there and Kolkai says, we're not going to set up any structures, no tents, sleep in your cars, sleep outside. I slept on a cot outside in a parking lot. I thought I was going to die. I was wearing these boots. I wore my boots to sleep because I was pretty sure I was going to freeze to death. I was like, this is it. My death comes from me. But we gathered there. Two days later, on July 14th, we consecrated what we call a Pu'u Honua. So now it's known as the Pu'u Honua or Pu'u Hulu Hulu. A Pu'u Honua is a place of refuge. And what I'm offering you here, guys, in telling this story, is all these different institutions and ways of organizing power in a Hawaiian way of thinking that don't really work in states, an alternative. Pu'u Honua is a place of refuge. It's a place where historically, if you were being prosecuted by a chief who in historic times, if they prosecuted you, they could just kill you. If you made your way to Pu'u Honua, your case could be heard and you would be spared. So it's a place we find safety. When the protectors of Mauna Kea established the Pu'u Honua at Pu'u Hulu Hulu, we did a few things. We walked the boundaries of this Pu'u Honua and we marked it and basically we were saying, this is our jurisdiction now, we're taking control of this land. But we also elevated our behavior because a Pu'u Honua is a sacred place. And when you're in a sacred place, you have sacred conduct. So what we said to each other is that we're ready to behave in a way that is worthy of a sacred site and anyone who is willing to conduct themselves in that way they agree with us or not. If you're ready to elevate yourself to sacred conduct, you're welcome in this Pu'u Honua and we will feed you, we will keep you warm, we will educate you, we will keep you safe. On July 15th, 2019, one day after the Pu'u Honua was established, we were told construction vehicles were going to come that morning. So eight of us, me and seven other we chained ourselves to a cattle yard at 3 a.m. in the morning in freezing temperatures to block the construction vehicles. That top picture is a picture of us. We were there for 12 hours. So we went from the freezing temperatures to the heat stroke, heat to all that stuff. We were taken care of like chiefs, don't worry, they fed us, they rubbed our backs, they put blankets on us. We were placed under arrest in the morning but they couldn't figure out how to get us out because they aren't as smart as us, the police officers, they're not nearly as smart as us. And this is really important. The state of Hawaii deployed at least five different enforcement agencies including the National Guard to deal with this Hawaiian problem blocking construction vehicles. So we have the Hilo Police, Kona Police, we have Hawaii Island we have Honolulu Police officers from Oahu flown over, Maui Police officers flown over. They fly over the Maui and the Honolulu guys because they have riot training and they have riot gear, a lot of riot gear. They fly them over, they say, we're not going to do any of these more like hugging, singing and chanting things with the police officers and making the police cry. We're going to bring force. We want to show force the way they do all kinds of crazy stuff. This is what the state wants, not necessarily what the police officers, individual police officers want. By three in the afternoon every vehicle they've sent to come carry us away breaks down on the road right in front of us, breaks down close enough that they can see it, but not close enough that they can use them. This is what we call a divine Kupuna ancestral intervention. What do the kiai do, what do the protectors do? They help the cops push the vehicles out of the way and into safety. So at about three or four in the afternoon, they say, okay, well we can't take construction vehicles up now. You're not, you're unarrested. I didn't know you could be unarrested, but we were unarrested. They're like, please unchain yourselves, use the bathroom, we're afraid for your safety. I told the guys like, if you're afraid for our safety, you would stop trying to build construction vehicles. He's like, yeah, I hear you, but will you just go use the bathroom? I was like, yeah, okay. So we won that day. They told us you can come down, we will not build anything else today. Nothing will be built today. And so we came down the mountain. They lied. They immediately started to build a gate. And not a lot of people know this, but that's what actually started the Kupuna tent in the middle of the road. They immediately started to build a gate. They took the road back. We said, you better take down that gate and we have some demands. And when they did take down the gate, but when they refused to meet any of our other demands, that's when our Kupuna, our elders said, we're not leaving this road. No one goes in, no one comes out. Two days later, the Kupuna are still holding the road and 38 of them were arrested. I have a video. It doesn't matter if the sound plays. Oops. Will it play? I don't think it's going to play. That's okay. This is a turning point in the movement. Before the cattle guard, there were maybe 100 people, maybe 200 people at the Putuhonua. After the cattle guard, there was over 1,000 people who had come to show support and block construction vehicles. Oh, yeah, it's playing. After 38 of our Kupuna were arrested, oh, here we go. Our Kupuna were arrested. There were over 4,000 people the next day at the site of this mountain, flying from all over Hawaii, all over the world. Hawaiians from California, the West Coast, Washington, Oregon, some as far as the East Coast flew to Hawaii. They said, there is no way I'm going to allow someone to arrest our Kupuna, our ancestors, our elders. I'm going to put my body between this mountain and anything that comes its way. This is just video footage of them being arrested. Many of the Kupuna were carried. Police were prepared for a dozen arrests because that's how many we thought we had who were willing to get arrested. But every time a Kupuna was pulled out of their seat, another one sat down and took their place. And then another one. And then another one. And then another one. It took hours and hundreds of thousands of people around the world watched this happen as it occurred. And that's what brought so many people the next day, over 4,000 and then 5,000 and then 6,000. I think one day we had like 7,000-8,000 people there. As the last Kupuna was getting arrested, it was clear that there was still time for vehicles to go up. So we needed another plan. So what did we do? Our women took the road. Kupuna was taken. A group of Manoahine about 100, maybe 200 of us took the road, linked arms. Our Kanae, our men, stood at our backs in protection of us. We held them for 4 hours. Yes. Sorry, one more time? Yes. I agree with you. Why did they still come? We're going to talk about this. Hold that thought. We welcome discussion. We're going to get a microphone so we can get it to them. I can just repeat this question for now. What's your name? Stephen asked if we took jurisdiction of the road and it was clear that no telescope was going to be built, why did they keep coming? Really good question. This issue has become about much more than just the telescope. It's about who's going to be in charge in Hawaii. How are we going to live in Hawaii? The state has doubled down spending millions of dollars to try to remove us. Our women took the road. We held the road for 4 hours. This is really, really important. You notice that the police officers, the way that they were lined up, they're using the same... What is it called? They have the same physical strategies as police officers. Riot control strategies as police officers in the United States, but their behavior is very different. It's really, really important to understand that police violence in Hawaii and there's a state-sanctioned violence issue happening in Hawaii, it's almost unrecognizable to what we see in the United States. This is explicitly because in the United States folks who study police violence and police the institution in the United States understand that when we get police we have them policing in areas that are not their own communities. That's intentional. You don't want pilina relationship intimacy between police because then it's harder to just follow orders and just do whatever someone tells you because you're interfacing with people that don't really matter to you. In Hawaii that's not the case. We're being policed by literally our brothers and our sisters and our aunties and our cousins and our uncles. In the video I showed you some of those kupuna were being arrested by their nephews and they asked for their nephews. They said, uh-uh, you're not going to arrest me. He's going to arrest me. In the last few hours there were police officers weeping in front of us. They had their sunglasses on, they were shaking. And so it's a different... Hawaii has a different opportunity here to talk about nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience because I only heard the last bit of the lecture before me about... and he was talking a bit about nonviolence and how oftentimes nonviolence is a violence upon you. Nonviolent direct action and you have to kind of just take it. What you're saying is I'm going to behave in this particular way as a strategy and I know violence will come for me in this strategy. It's a different situation in Hawaii because while they can use force against us it's a lot harder for them to convince their police officers to use extreme force against us. These are some of the intimate differences around the world which is why this is not what it looked like at Standing Rock which is why it was really dangerous when the state of Hawaii shipped in National Guardsmen from the United States to come deal with us because that was not our family. Right? That was going to be the second time in Hawaii's history that the National Guard was deployed and we didn't want to see the other end of that. When we take the road we win the day again. You can see in the back we're celebrating because this is when the cops turned around and walked away essentially. But then the governor of Hawaii declares a state of emergency. State of emergency is a really particular thing to deploy anywhere in the United States and I'm not an expert on this but I can tell you what I know about a state of emergency. It's a disaster. So Hurricane Katrina or when there are big bushfires in California you can declare a state of emergency because on the one hand it allows you to use funds in ways that you can't ordinarily use funds as a state so you can draw from other pools of money without the same kind of questioning, without the same kind of needing the same kind of authority to do so but you can also circumvent your own laws you can create curfew you can do all kinds of things when you declare a state of emergency. So when the governor did this he was really like exercising his power to say nah I'm in charge here I don't care what you guys do I'm gonna use as much money as I want. At this point they had spent five or six million dollars trying to remove us. To date they've spent probably 12 or 13 million dollars on native wines from their own land and all of this was justified by the picture of protectors that they painted basically saying we were lawless we were dangerous. Sound familiar? Right? Those lawless, dangerous, violent criminals. That's the story that they were trying to paint. Unfortunately we had a really brilliant media team we still have a really brilliant media team that's why we have all these gorgeous photos and the public wasn't really buying it but the state had to double down because if the state just said okay you guys win what kind of opportunities would that have afforded Hawaiians and others in Hawaii to say now there's a lot of other things we want to change about Hawaii we want to do a whole revolution in the way we talk about business the way we talk about capitalism the way we talk about governance in Hawaii and so they doubled down I'm gonna brush through this there's a lot of reasons why the state of Hawaii doesn't have jurisdiction to make these kinds of decisions on the one hand we can talk about the illegal overthrow and annexation that means we're illegally occupied and so Hawaiian government still exists and we should be able to make these decisions for ourselves on the other hand we can look at the fact that the road that travels up Mauna Kea belongs to the department of Hawaiian homelands which is an agency that was set up to basically give land back to native Hawaiians and they were arresting beneficiaries of that agency on that road and so that's probably illegal um sounds really illegal to me um but on all of these all of the challenges we've had to their jurisdiction the state basically just says you guys are lawless you guys are obstructing the road you're obstructing daily business and we need to pay attention to ways that settlers like the state cite laws at their benefit to continue to remove native people really interestingly though jurisdiction has a really specific meaning if you go back to its roots its latin roots jurisdiction literally means to speak the law and every day to the state this is still happening we are still at pu'uhonua o pu'uhulu every day three times a day in the morning ko kalai kalolo and the sun is above our heads and then at night we do protocol on the road and in that protocol we sing and we chant and we dance the laws of that place and so in a Hawaiian way of thinking we're the only ones speaking the law there we're the only ones with the jurisdiction to make decisions there and we're the only ones with the pilina the intimacy and the relationship to know what's best for that place so when we talk about jurisdiction when we talk about wanting to live in a different society right we don't just want to deconstruct these systems and structures and we do we want to get rid of them we want to overthrow these structures that don't serve us we can talk about capitalism we can talk about patriarchy we can talk about overdevelopment of our land we can talk about all these things that don't work for us in Hawaii but people often ask us well what do you want to do instead like we can't live in a world without capitalism people really walk around the world saying that thinking capitalism is natural and that we're born to be capitalistic that's not true in fact we can see all around the world the way that capitalism was brought through colonialism to to exercise power over people and land capitalism didn't always exist right so what are our alternatives right if we're saying these laws aren't just and in America we can see in Turtle Island we can see all the ways that laws and justice don't mean the same thing so when people say oh they're doing that they're following the law we know that that's like a really limited argument because we know all the things that were legal continue to be legal in this country that are like horrible things yes so what else would we do if not follow their laws well in Hawaii we have a different way of thinking about collective agreements historically there's one word that comes to mind the definition is up there in Kapu today we most often think of it as keep out the word appears on fences it says you're going to be prosecuted if you keep moving strangely enough this word has been appropriated to be used to keep Hawaiians out of their own land but Kapu doesn't mean keep out Kapu means Kapu marks the sacred places are sacred what places require you to understand your relationship to the sacred your proximity to the sacred the most common understanding of Kapu comes from this thing called the Aikapu in Hawaii which was like the overarching system of rule and governance in Hawaii in which men and women ate separately so a man would make two ovens he'd dig two ovens in the ground and the men and women would eat separately the Aikapu mediated the relationship between men and women in 1819 the Aikapu was strategically disfigured by the rule and class a lot of people were like why would they do that the missionaries came a year later and were like oh they did that for us God cleared the way for our new religion the Aikapu was a part of our religion but no in 1819 hundreds of thousands of Hawaiians died from tuberculosis and from venereal diseases brought by Captain Cooke and his men. And it seems to me that the leaders of that time saw that their system of ruling was not effectual at that point. Our people are dying, we need something new, so they abolished the Aikapu and they tried something different. This demonstrates to me one of the ways that our people are not as married to one way of doing something, one system or structure of doing something if it doesn't work. If they look around and they see this is ineffectual, we're going to change the system and structure. In contemporary Hawaii, the settler state has reduced this idea of what is sacred and protecting to protecting individual commodities and property. Okay, so if we return to Kapu from a Hawaiian way of being, we understand that Kapu requires us to really understand our land. It requires those who make decisions about land are close to the land, are intimate with the land, are fed by the land, feed the land back. It's an interdependent relationship. Another place we can turn for an alternative way of thinking about rulemaking, about governance in Hawaii is this word kanaway, the definition is up there. Today the word kanaway has been similarly appropriated by the state to describe the same laws and statutes that enable the removal of Hawaiians from our land. And unfortunately this marriage of terms is reflected in almost all the dictionary definitions. If we had a longer time, we could talk about the politics of translation. So oftentimes when I say kanaway and ask people, what does kanaway mean? They say it means laws. Our concept of kanaway today is that it means laws. But kanaway and laws aren't the same thing. In the same way that if I had a picture of an apple up here on the projector and I said that's an apple, you would say no, that's an apple, that's a picture of an apple. They're not actually the same thing. Yeah? Cool? Or like if you have, this works even with slang terms. If you have a term, all I can think of are stuff back home. Here's a good one, koa. The word koa, we often translate today as warrior, as soldier. Because that was the word given by the chiefs to the people who fought in battles. But the word koa doesn't actually mean warrior or soldier. It means it's a certain kind of tree. It's a really hardwood tree with really deep roots. Then you can plant a koa seed and 20 years later a tree will sprout out, right? So what I'm saying is that like Hawaiians who fought in battles were like trees. Not like the U.S. military and what we think of as soldiers, right? So like these translations matter and the way we think about these terms matter. So kanaway is the word we use to describe laws today, but it's not the same thing as laws. In fact, kanaway came from stories. They came from ullalo. And one of the most famous stories we have is the kanaway maumalahoi, the law of the splintered paddle. And it's depicted in this picture right here. Basically what happens is one of our great chiefs, Kamehapa'i'ea, the man who conquered all the islands. He was chasing after these two fishermen and nobody really knows why. Maybe just because he could, because he had lots of power. But his foot got caught in the lava rock and so the two fishermen, they turned back with their paddles and they smashed it over his head and it shattered. Kanaway maumalahoi means the law of the splintered paddle or the shattered paddle. And if you know anything about Hawaiian history, even the libelist bit, you know that Kamehapa'i'a could have turned around and just killed them both. And nobody would have batted an eye. He's a chief. Not only do you not stand, like not only do you not hit a chief, you don't even stand over a chief. The fact that they were standing over him was worthy of them being put to death. But instead of putting them to death, he uttered the famous kanaway maumalahoi. It says, in a kanaka, to the people, emalama oko ikeakua, take care of the gods, emalama ho'i in a kanakanui amena kanakaiki, take care of those great and small, ehelika elemakule amekaluhine amekekama, emo'i ikeala, allow the elderly men, women and children to lay in the streets without fear of harm. A'ohe me'a nana'i ho'i ikeakua, no one shall disturb them, hewa no'o ma'ke, disobey this order and you shall be put to death. This kanaway maumalahoi is depicted by many as like the first human rights law in Hawai'i. Let the men, women and children, elderly, big and small, powerful and disempowered, let them lie in the streets without fear of harm. The state of Hawai'i has appropriated this story and created the image of the splintered paddle and our police department wears it in the center of their badge, right? So a lot of this story is about appropriation, right? How can we take Hawaiian things and make them American things so that we can say that these American things are acting in ways that are just? One of the big things the state of Hawai'i police department does, the Honolulu police department does, is remove native Hawaiian home that represents, let the men, women and children lay. On July 15, 2019, and tried to remove eight native Hawai'i young people and actually six of us were young too, were kind of old, layin' in the streets, chained into the guard and tried to remove us. But the kanaway says we have the kuleana, the right, responsibility and the privilege to lay there. So we can see how these ideals, these Hawaiian ideals, these indigenous ideas about governance, about leadership, about land are in direct conflict with this western idea that's trying to continue to maintain itself so that it can maintain law and order in the state of Hawai'i. I only have a couple more minutes because I want to leave time for questions. If I had more time, I would just tell you more stories. I would tell you the story of Hi'iakui Kupulio Pele, the youngest sister of the God Pele, who's the God of volcanoes. I would tell you about how this story is like a battle of power between her and her sister. And at one point, her sister's power to rule is taken away by her younger sisters because she acts out in ways that are unjust and she disrupts the intimacy between her and her family. I would tell you that whole story so that you could learn a little bit about how leadership in a Hawaiian context is not a position, but it's a relationship. And that our people believe that if you don't maintain your relationship to the people you lead and the land you lead upon, you're not a leader and we will cut you at your ankles. All you got to do is read stories about chiefs in Ka'u on the island of Hawai'i. Most of them were killed by their people to understand that Hawaiians don't look up to a great office, a presidency, and see any kind of reason to just respect the office. We don't respect the office. We don't respect the law. We respect the way our laws demonstrate how we're going to relate to each other. We respect the intimacy between each other. We respect the intimacy between us and our land. And if you challenge that, we will cut you. You'll be gone. But these aren't just stories of our past. These are stories we're creating today. We have an opportunity in Hawai'i. We have an opportunity on Turtle Island in the United States to pay more attention to indigenous historical practices of governance and use those to create better, more just revolutionary futures in facing all the greatest challenges of our time. Climate change, overpopulation, overdevelopment, growing state violence, state sanctioned violence. We have a lot of these solutions in our own stories and we're ready to share them and use them. But the first thing we have to do is we have to stop thinking about natives as being in the past. We have to think about natives as being in the future. One of the ways we do this in Hawai'i is, at least right now, is we have established a kapu aloha at Mauna Awa Kea. And kapu aloha, some people think of it as like passivity, as nonviolent direct action. But kapu aloha is not passivity. We're definitely still fiercely invested in protecting that aina, that land. So kapu aloha is a firm commitment to pono, to righteousness, to justice. And it's a commitment that we gather together when we enact our jurisdiction on a land. So is there anything else I really need to share with you before we open this up for questions? Okay. So I want us to remember the difference between what states, what the United States, what individual states are fighting for in these instances, what corporations are fighting for in these instances, and what these indigenous uprisings are fighting for. Well, the sanctity of the law requires protectors clear the road for lawful progress. Like, I want us to be suspicious when the news uses words like lawful, when they use words like progress, when they use words like future, like what's the future they envision versus what's the future that's going to allow us to live. Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out what has to be said and what can be left for question and answer. Okay. So just as the great dying of our people may have symbolized to our ruling class in the 19th century, the Pacific system of couple was not working. We have proven that the laws that are governing Hawaii in particular are not working to keep us sustainable. We're literally sinking underwater. And corporations continue to come in to build up the shoreline as if that shoreline is not going to be gone in 20 years. We're not talking about 100 years when we talk about climate change. When you're in the middle of the Pacific, we're talking about 10, 15, 20 years and people's homes are gone. So we need something else. So when eight of us chained ourselves to the cattle guard in the monarchy access road in 15th, 2019, to block the access of construction vehicles, the threat of our arrest and removal was not only offensive in the face of the state's complete lack of jurisdiction over that land, but it also offended a Kana Hawaii as tangible as the crest worn by those police officers. When we chained ourselves to the guard, we held the words of Kamehameha within our bones. We knew that as Kanaka, we had the Kuleana, the right responsibility and privilege to lie in the streets without fear of harm. So when we asserted ourselves based upon that Kuleana, carrying our stories within us, we challenged not only the 30 meter telescopes movement of construction vehicles, we challenged the occupying settler state of Hawaii's marriage to its idea of rule of law. And for every evening since, some of our most powerful and fragile members of our community literally sleep in that street. I'm talking about people in their 80s sleeping in 20 degree temperatures in cots under a canopy tent because they love that mountain so much. But also it's not just about the telescope in the mountain because they love their people so much and they can see how these laws are continuing to erase us from our own land. The irony here, of course, is that by our Kanawe, by our way of thinking and government, the protection of our land and our elderly is the responsibility of our leadership, who instead spend their time and money planning our removal and the safe passage of construction equipment. This demonstrates to us Kanaka once again that the state's God is capitalism, the first thing it must protect. But we Kanaka today are remembering our Akua, our gods, our land and each other. And we will continue to care for what the state will not. This has continued across our islands. More uprisings are happening in different parts of our islands to protect their land. One in particular, Kukia ikehuku. Over 200 people were arrested in the last few months trying to obstruct the movement of construction vehicles of wind turbines. And wind turbines, they sound like a great idea. We need green energy. Hawaiians are all for green energy. These wind turbines are mad. I should have included a picture. They're massive. They're huge. They look like something out of Star Wars. They put them right next to elementary schools. Like I'm standing here in the turbine. This is me in my playground at my elementary school. And the turbine is where that clock is. And these turbines create all kinds of disruptive sounds like can literally make people puke from the sounds. They can make them sick. But nobody cares because kukus were all the brown people in Hawai'i live. So let's just put all the turbines there, right? So they were fighting against this unjust use of power and development. And it's happening all across our islands. This is just at the state capitol a few days ago in the opening of the ledge. Thousands of people gathered to assert our rights as native Hawaiians. Ultimately, we call ourselves protectors because we say we're protecting our land and we are. But I also want to remind us that our land in a Hawaiian way of thinking, our land is going to outlive us. So in many ways, we are not just protecting her, but our land gives us an opportunity to get our humanity back and live as Hawaiians and understand what it means to live in relationship to these places. So much of colonialism has tried to disrupt our relationship to place, right? Kill the natives. Move them from their ancestral homelands so that they don't have a connection to the place that they're on. Rip people away from their homes in parts, different parts of Africa and the Caribbean, bring them to the United States for free labor and enslave them so that they don't have a connection to the places that they are standing on, right? This is about disruption of relationships. So one of the best things we can do is reestablish that relationship to place together. Thank you all.