 And I remember being at this global gathering of the United Nations on climate change and meeting so many people around the world who just did not even know where the Pacific Islands were. And so from that came this poem. It's called Atlas. If you open up any atlas and take a look at a map of the world, almost every single one of them slices the Pacific Ocean in half. To the human eye, most maps sensor all land masses on Earth, creating the illusion that water can handle the butchering and be pushed to the edges of the world. As if the Pacific Ocean isn't the largest body living today, beating the loudest heart, the reason why land has a pulse in the first place. The audacity one must have to create a visual so violent as to assume that nobody comes from water. So nobody will care what you do with it. And yet people came from land, are still coming from land and look what was done to them. When people ask me where I'm from, they don't believe me when I say water. So instead I tell them that home is a machete and I belong to places that don't belong to themselves anymore. Broken and butchered places that have made me a hyphen of a woman, a Samoan American that carries the weight of both colonizer and colonized, both blade and the blood, California stolen, Samoa sliced in half stolen, California nestled on the western coast of the most powerful country on the planet, Samoa. An island so microscopic on a map, it's no wonder people doubt its existence. California, a state of emergency a way of having the drought rid it of all its water, Samoa. A state of emergency a way of becoming a saltwater cemetery if the sea levels don't stop rising. So when people ask me where I'm from, what they want is to hear me speak of just land. What they want is to know where I go once I leave here. The privilege of assuming that home is just a destination and not the panic, not the constant migration that the panic gives birth to. What is it like to know that home is something that is waiting for you to return to it? What does it mean to belong to something that isn't sinking? What does it mean to belong to the very thing that is causing the flood? So many of us come from water, but when you come from water, nobody believes you. Colonization keeps laughing. Global warming is grinning all at your grief. How you mourn the loss of a home that isn't even gone yet, that no one believes you're from, how everyone is beginning to hear more about your islands, but only in the context of vacations and honeymoon, football and military life, exotic women, exotic beaches, exotic fruit, but never asks about the rest of its body, water, the islands in them, the reasons why they're sinking. No one visualizes the Pacific Islands as actually being there. You explain and explain and clarify and fix their incorrect pronunciation and explain so they realize just how vast your ocean is, how microscopic your islands look in them, how easy it is to miss when looking on a map of the world, excuses people make for why they did not see it before. I stand here not naive to what I do represent and who I am to my community, to my Pacific Islander people that I am a poet, I'm a leader, I'm an organizer, I'm an educator, but if I'm being honest tonight, I just kind of am a girl with a broken heart who hurts very badly for the incessant attack on indigenous lands worldwide, and not just in the Pacific. And I feel it here in West Berkeley on the shell mound. I feel it on this occupied territory of the Bay Area. I feel it when indigenous people are trying so desperately to wake the world up and yet are experiencing the most desecration to our resources, to our land, to all that we are, to our cultures. And it hurts and it's hard. And nothing has taught me more about how to manage and focus my pain, quite like the trip I just took to Mauna Kea last month. What was supposed to be just a trip to Oahu to spend time with both family and friends turned into an immediate trip to the Mauna when I realized that the best friend that I was visiting, Jamaica Osorio, was one of the Kia'i who was on the Mauna, her body laid out, chained to the cattle guard, protecting her Mauna since day one. And the moment I realized that was the moment I realized that this trip had to look different and that I had to go to the Mauna because I was called to go. That it wasn't just a desire that there was something beyond me that was telling me I had to be there. I had the honor of not just being there but being asked to be a Kumu for what is actually a school that Kia'i has created on Mauna Kea called Pu'u Hulu Hulu University. So just like Kumu had mentioned, there's an abundance of food, there's a medics tent, there's free childcare, there's the kupuna are treated like the royalty that they are to us in their own section of the site. And then there's also free education through Pu'u Hulu Hulu University. And it's pretty remarkable. And I had the honor of teaching a workshop, a writing workshop. And I focused my writing workshop on something that Kanaka Maoli have been teaching me about, which is kuleana. For those who don't know what kuleana is, kuleana is the Hawaiian translation for responsibility. But more than that, kuleana is this reciprocal relationship you have to what you're responsible for and what that thing plays or person is responsible to you for. That it's about the reciprocal relationship that you have to it. And what Kanaka Maoli have taught me that I led in that workshop around kuleana is that unlike how we treat responsibilities here in the United States or in our daily lives where responsibilities are sometimes seen as an obligation or a burden or stressful, kuleana is not that. Kuleana is an honor and a privilege to have is what I was taught while I was on monachea is that it is actually an honor to be responsible to Kanaka Maoli people as they protect their sacred land. Because what I see in them protecting their sacred land is a reflection of myself. That it is not just me being in solidarity with Kanaka Maoli people. It is that Kanaka Maoli people are my people. And that monachea is my land. And so it is an honor to be with native Hawaiian people because native Hawaiian people are of me. And so what that taught me a lot of was around gratitude was that it's such an honor and privilege to be here in monachea and steward this opportunity to learn as a Samoan American, as someone in diaspora, as someone who also comes from a U.S. territory that has never been given back or never been asked for our permission to be two separate islands by the United States military. And so the next poem I wanna read from my phone was actually one I wrote on my flight home from Hawaii. And I had recently shared it via Instagram. And it's not actually very often that I share my work as publicly as I have been since coming back from monachea. That that is actually also the work of the Mauna, that I'm being called to share my work freely, publicly, willingly, because again, poetry as the gift that it is to my life, it's not a gift I'm supposed to keep. It's actually my kuleana to share it. And so this poem is one that I wrote when I was sitting on the flight home, dreading leaving the Mauna, but ready to come back here to do the work, yeah. This is the first time I've come to the nation of Hawaii without ever touching the ocean. I have never stepped foot on these royal grounds without bringing the ache for sanctuary and the salt of any tide that touches me first. Without my skin begging the Pacific to swallow me home until now. This time, the land needs me more than I ever needed the water. Coming to Mauna Kea wasn't a choice. It was simply my kuleana. I, daughter of a severed Samoa, feel diaspora hold and mirror up to my indigenous skin, never letting me forget that all of Oceania is my kuleana to protect. The Mauna calls me closer and I am not built to ignore any of our ancestors, especially when they're wailing from the mountain top, from the volcano's throat, from the sprawling lava rocks, from the wrinkles of our kupuna, keeled over at the feet of police officers who've come to arrest them for having the audacity of reminding the governor to ask himself which gods he serves, the one that can see the stars through a telescope or the ones that created them. A week, a few weeks ago, I saw a video of my best friend's brown Kanaka Maoli body stomach down, chained for 13 hours at the feet of her ancestor of a mountain, singing a mele aloha from her na'au into her aina as I watched her undying love for her country go viral on Twitter. My Oakland apartment flooding with my own tide of tears, high but a forgiving undertow. Anci Teresia already warned us before the cancer came for her, that we sweat and cry saltwater so that we know that the ocean is really in our blood. Do I ever really need the ocean if I keep forgetting that I am one? If I never step into the malu of the shore ever again, is the warmth in my own salt enough to cover my own people? If my best friend is prepared to protect the mauna for however long it takes, can I be ocean enough to sustain the both of us as I refuse to leave her side? If we are prepared to die, Hawaiian, Samoan, indigenous, forever dying American, will our children know that the trade-off was always our blood for our land back forever? For them. It's really hard, and I'm not gonna spend too much time on it, it's really hard to put into words what that trip to Mauna Kea was like. There actually aren't that words that I think exist in this lifetime to explain it other than you really have to witness it for yourself. What I will say is that there is something really special and powerful about what Kanaka Maui are teaching the world about a life post-colonization, that they're just existing in that life right now, in real time on the mauna. That we have the privilege and honor to see glimpse of it on Instagram, on live streams. Such an honor for us to even have that access, but there's nothing quite like it. I have told every person who has asked me, what was that trip like? How are you doing? How was Mauna Kea that? I just am not the same woman I was before I went to the mauna as I am now. And I thank Kanaka Maui folks for aligning myself with the values I have always had, because they've always been ancestral values that have always been given to me, that above all, the land has to be returned back. That decolonization is not a metaphor for the ways we want to reform and change life as it is. There's a return back to indigenous people. That it is indigenous people that I believe will be saving us in the devastation that we are currently existing through. And if I'm being even more particular, it is Mauna Wahine, it is women on all of our front lines that is really taking on that charge. And who knows colonization better than a colonized woman? And I can see it and I've seen it and I am living it that it is, that when women are in the front lines holding it, they're holding it for every single person, every child, every family member, and it's really powerful. This morning I spent time at the Gordon and Bettymore estate with our Kanaka Maui folks as we posted up in front of their estate because if folks did not know, it is the Gordon and Bettymore Foundation that has given $200 million to both Caltech and the University of California to build the TMT telescope, $200 million to build not just one telescope, but what is said to be the biggest telescope in the world on what they deem to be the best place to have it, which is Mauna Kea because of the climate. You can Google and research all the reasons why TMT chose Mauna Kea of all sites in the world. They say that Mauna Kea is the best one to have the telescope on and I actually agree that that probably is the best site to see the universe, how sacred and what a testament to Mauna Kea that is, that it is the only site in the world that they could point out on a map of why they need to be there. It doesn't mean that they have to be there, I don't think they should. It just means of course that spot. That just shows the royalty and the sacredness of that land and that also shows the power of Kanaka Maui holding the line saying Aole, no should have been enough, says Sister Havane, no should have been enough and it wasn't and so here we are. And so I stand here and I name that, it's a beautiful time for indigenous island movements and resistance and I wanna end with one last poem that I also wrote on this same flight home that I sit deeply with. I sit deeply with the nuances that we exist through that how do I organize for my people as I also am a settler on occupied land? How do we reconcile with all that we're dealing with? But I know that I have never been more focused and more energetic and more determined to continue this work towards our collective liberation. And I know I have Mauna Kea and I have Kanaka Maui and I have the Kingdom of Hawaii to thank for that for changing my whole trajectory of what I thought I was doing with poetry but what I now know I'm supposed to be doing with poetry, yeah. So thank you so much family for having me. This is gonna be my last poem before I introduce our next speaker. The world doesn't love Hawaii like they say they do. They love themselves and call it a well-deserved vacation. Call it a flash sale if you book your flight early. Call it hashtag honeymoon Aloha. Call it a tourist trap with a view. Call it 11 military bases on Oahu alone and enough homeless Kanaka Maui to build a new nation. But there is no new nation in sight. There's only Kea'i who did not die first who survived to reclaim this one. The university I graduated from is footing the bill for the telescope and hell waits for the unclean bones of the one with the biggest wallet. Those of Asian descent have yet to descend upon the Mauna with their gratitude and AAPI allyship at a size fitting for Hawaii's generosity and none of us from Oceania are shocked nor will we wait for you, teach you how to show up for us anymore. I know this rage I speak with is not Kapu Aloha. Forgive me Kea'i for simmering in my decolonial dreams on a tired spirit. All I heard from is spoken with our colonizers tongue in my mouth. All I have is this Kuliana who thought my words worthy of this lifetime with you. Forgive me Kupuna for wanting our colonizers beating hearts squeezed in my hands sometimes more than I want for you to die with the memory of what happened to our islands in the name of stolen statehood, Spanish-American war treaties, desecrated kingdoms, white missionaries, ethnic cleansing, nuclear testing, US territory, science. Forgive my rage Aina for how it fails to feel like love but is indeed the only love I breathe, the only love I pay for with my own inherited salt, the kind of love that can take the ocean away from me forever. If it means the Mauna and this nation is yours and only yours again. How I love that which I am ready to die for alongside you. How I love our liberation enough to be buried in it by our children with our sovereignty, my clean bones ready to return to the indigenous heaven they come from. How if you say this is our last stand from Mauna Kea to Ijumatau to Guahan, if this is how we malama our ancestors, then what an honor it is to protect all that we belong to with you. Until the last, Aloha Aina. Fafthail Teblava. Thank you.