Haunani-Kay Trask: From a Native Daughter, Fear of Haoles

Haunani-Kay Trask: From a Native Daughter, Fear of haoles

"I understood the world as a place and a feeling divided in two: one haole (white), and the other Kanaka (native) (Trask 394). This sentance alone sums up the arguements i will be discussing through Trask's wrtings. Her fear of the whites, not through readings, but from expeiences that allowed her to conform too self protection and self defense. She talks about issues such as self identity, local knowledge, tradition, and sovereignty amongst Native Hawaiian people. Overall it ties in the spirits of the hawaiians and their land, tradition and family, local knowledge and the language they use.

As growing up Trask was told twice of the story of her people, once by her parents, then by her teachers and books (trask 394). These stories conflicted with each other as from her ancestors, family, and people was told a much more memory based story. They spoke of their land being shared with everyone, no one owned it. They spoke of their chiefs being good to their people, but not in the Westernized culture that was far from what they wrote about.

Trask argues that the Westerner historians never learned the language, that they deculturized her people (trask 395). One group colonized the mind, while the other the spirit. They took a rich historical past and distorted, disfigured, and destroyed it into reshaping their image, making them small and ignorant ( Trask 395). Which from these false accusations they have wrote made not only Trask, but her people and culture suffer from the real truth and real language of the Hawaiians.

The real truth and language was that No one owned the land, an their chiefs were stewards of the land; they couldnt buy or sell it(trask 395). Istead they wrote that they were fuedal landlords and the people serfs. But in fact it was the Westeners who invented fuedalism to the Hawaiian culture, giving divine right ownership