In part IV of “From a Native Daughter”, Haunani-Kay Trask
shares a few of her personal struggles as a native woman in a white dominated University
to demonstrate how the University of Hawaii serves as a guardian of white
dominance, which functions to maintain white American control over Hawaiian
culture. For instance, the School of
Travel Industry, the Hawaii Real Estate Center and the East West Center all
function to maintain the status quo in Hawaii under American control. At the time of publication (1993) 75 percent
of the school’s students were of color, while 75 percent of the faculty was
white and overwhelmingly male.
During Trasks time at UH she witnessed first-hand the
attempts to silence her critical views and also witnessed persistent racism by
faculty members towards Hawaiians for not speaking “standard English” or for
lacking knowledge about American cultural institutions. Trask’s five year fight for tenure started in
1981 when she applied for a position within the American Studies Department. During certain meetings with faculty members
her political views were openly discussed and deemed “radical”. Nevertheless, Trask made it to the second
ballot, but the decision regarding who to hire was split and the position was
subsequently “frozen”. Eventually, Trask
inquired about the reasoning behind this decision and was informed that she was
deemed unqualified with no reasons explaining why.
Trask decided to organize a group of student/community
supporters, as well as attorneys, researchers, and photographers to strategize
the claim that the chair’s refusal to hire Trask was fuelled by racism and not
her ostensible lack of collegiality.
Things got out of control and the faculty eventually hired Trask. The threat of public exposure through an
extensive support committee persuaded the faculty to hire her. Even after being hired her critical stance
toward the U.S. made the faculty uncomfortable and they even tried to censure
some of her comments. The faculty did
not allow her to teach graduate courses, which were required for tenure. Finally, due to the public nature of this
controversy, an agreement was found and Trask was transferred to the Hawaiian
Studies Department. The most “important truth” that Trask realized during this
struggle was that institutionalized racism and sexism must be fought with help
from a coalition of supporters, which will create the public exposure
needed. Ultimately, unions are needed
for people functioning within a racist institution.
Similarly, white-controlled institutions like the media
and the faculty senate condemned Trask as a racist when she responded to a
public letter written by a white student claiming, among other things, that the
usage of the word haole is
racist. Trask argues that due to the
history of colonialism, Hawaiians have the right to feel hostile toward their oppressors. Subsequently, for some the myth of racial
harmony in Hawaii was undermined by Trask’s comments which caused waves of condemnation
and investigations against her. Viewing
racism as simply a matter of color versus one of history and power facilitated
the misinterpretation of her statements by some. The ultimate message from this experience is
the irony that in Hawaii, when a native Hawaiian decides to exercise “the right
to argue a position that is contrary to, and critical of, white ideology, they
will be investigated.” (238)
An issue that I would like to open up for discussion is firstly
how the University of Hawaii has changed since the time of Trasks
struggles. Are there departments within
the University that maintain the white hegemony described by Trask? (It’s telling that a photo of Haunani Trask is
among the first things you notice on the homepage of the American Studies
Department at UH) Secondly, American
society has had a long tradition of cultural-paradoxes regarding which claims
are deemed acceptable and which ones ought to be automatically condemned
without reason. Trask’s fight for
academic freedom to make certain claims deemed “controversial” parallels the
current academic stance towards the Palestinian-Israeli issue where within
academia criticism of Israel is limited to
certain realms of acceptability while no such norms exist for the
Palestinians. Various professors have
faced denials of tenures, threats, and near universal criticism for crossing
this realm of acceptability, as Trask supposedly did. Perhaps in modern academia there need not be
a distinction between the roles of “citizen” and “professor”, as long as they adhere
to the normative rules?
-Hawaiians and Human Rights
ReplyDeleteTrask’s discussion of indigenous sovereignty issues in Hawaii focuses conceptualizations of human rights and Hawaiian (indigenous) rights. As she describes colonialist ontologies regarding universal human rights centered on individual rights including individual property ownership disrupt indigenous view of rights as communal and land based in nature. Yet, as she points out, colonial systems and structures have excluded indigenous peoples from the supposed “universal rights.”
Trask continues the chapter with a breakdown of rights violated by the United States including loss of nationality, land loss, denial of self-determination including access to natural resources, ability to conduct cultural practices, speak their own language, and genocide among other disruptions and losses. Beyond these disruptions Trasks illustrates how efforts by developed colonial systems justify these disruptions by employing a domineering onotology. Trask then uses the chapter to develop on an “indigenous” human rights definition and articulates rights critical to indigenous peoples including self-determination, nationality, security, identity, liberty, traditions, customs, labor, media and land rights. In particular her description of the importance of land rights to indigenous peoples provides a unique interpretation radically different from Western Enlightenment founded rights systems. The importance of “familial attachment to both land and sea,” according to Trask has vast and defining value. Beyond providing a territory for independence, land acts as the bedrock for Hawaiian and other indigenous cultures in that it provides a source of subsistence survival, a critical role in cultural practices, and the foundation of meaning for indigenous people. As she states, “The land cannot live without the people of the land who, in turn, care for their heritage, their mother” (60). The continued destruction of land through exploitative means and Trask spends some substantial time on the threats posed by nuclear materials, exemplifies the continued disruption of indigenous rights by “post-colonial” systems.
In her description, Trask touches upon similar themes and experiences described by Vine Deloria in Custer Died for Your Sins. While her themes are Hawaii focused, Trask does equate the experiences of Hawaiians to indigenous peoples not only on the American Mainland but also around the world. Yet Hawaii does offer an example of unique disruption, I think, due to the more comparatively limited land space available as well as the view of Hawaii as a strategic area for the Pacific. How has globalization changed the impact of Western colonialist ontologies on indigenous and Hawaiian views of land rights? Are political organizations like the UN effective means of codifying rights of indigenous peoples in regard to countering Western based rights systems when the UN is founded upon a Western ontology? How have objectives of Indigenous Rights organizations shifted since this book was published in regards to changing threats i.e. Akaka Bill?