{"id":2377,"date":"2022-05-23T11:28:01","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T11:28:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/kumu-hina-and-walter-ritte-a-very-hawaiian-place\/"},"modified":"2024-12-02T18:28:21","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T18:28:21","slug":"kumu-hina-and-walter-ritte-a-very-hawaiian-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/kumu-hina-and-walter-ritte-a-very-hawaiian-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumu Hina and Walter Ritte: \u2018A very Hawaiian place\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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Kumu Hina and Walter Ritte: \u2018A very Hawaiian place\u2019<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n By<\/span>Richard Flory<\/a> and Nick Street<\/a><\/strong>\n \n May 23, 2022<\/span>\n <\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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This article was originally published by\u00a0Indian Country Today<\/a>,\u00a0with the support of CRCC\u2019s global project on\u00a0engaged spirituality<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

HONOLULU, Hawai\u2019i \u2014 It\u2019s a weekday evening rush-hour in Honolulu, and Hina Wong-Kalu is driving us to a practice session of a Tongan choir she belongs to \u2014 her way of unwinding after a long day of meetings.<\/p>\n

Kumu (\u201ccultural teacher\u201d) Hina<\/a>, as she is most widely known, is an activist, filmmaker and cultural liaison between Hawai’i\u2019s Indigenous community \u2014 which numbers about 150,000 \u2014 and non-Native entities such as the state\u2019s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, where we met her. As\u00a0m\u0101h\u016b<\/em><\/a>, or a third-gender person, she is also called upon to administer spiritual rituals and serve as a touchstone for the revival of Hawaiian language and Native Hawaiians\u2019 relationship with the land.<\/p>\n

Looking out at suburban sprawl encroaching on tropical hillsides and eight lanes of congested freeway traffic, she says, \u201cHawaiians are the most colonized of everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong-Kalu, who is Native Hawaiian, explains that Native people from Tonga \u2014 a Polynesian monarchy that retained its sovereignty during the era of European and American colonization \u2014 never lost their Indigenous languages and folkways, largely because they have been able to preserve their relationship to the landscapes where those cultural traditions arose. Experiencing that unbroken spiritual through-line to Indigenous ancestors is what appeals to Wong-Kalu about singing with the Tongan choir. Among Indigenous Hawaiians, only a handful of families living on the protected island of Niihau \u2014 the smallest and westernmost of Hawai’i\u2019s inhabited islands \u2014 have managed to preserve a similar relationship to ancestral lineages.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven’t been dispossessed of their identity,\u201d Wong-Kalu says of Niihau Hawaiians. \u201cWhereas most other Hawaiians are dispossessed in their identity through the land and culture, language.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1893,\u00a0American businessmen staged a coup<\/a>\u00a0against the Hawaiian monarchy and installed a provisional government with the backing of the U.S. military. A few years later, the teaching of the Hawaiian language was banned in public schools. By the time the ban was lifted in the 1980s,\u00a0only a few dozen young adults<\/a>\u00a0were fluent in Hawaiian.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that we were colonized,\u201d Wong-Kalu said. \u201cWe know that they took over our schools. We know they took away our language. We know all of this, so we’re just trying to bring all those things back.\u201d<\/p>\n

She describes the uptick in activism among a younger generation of Native Hawaiians, particularly around resistance to the construction of\u00a0<\/a>another large observatory\u00a0<\/a>on Mauna Kea, as a process of de-occupation.<\/p>\n

\u201cUs going to the legislature, becoming elected officials \u2014 we could use those terms, de-occupy,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when I go there, I don’t want to just de-occupy the building. I want to de-occupy the whole state.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a Quixotic ambition. Yet the very steepness of the odds against them also seems to galvanize Hawai’i\u2019s Indigenous activists across generations \u2014 from young firebrands like\u00a0Lanakila Mangauil<\/a>\u00a0to mid-lifers like Wong-Kalu and elders such as\u00a0Walter Ritte<\/a>, who made headlines in the 1970s for evading arrest on an uninhabited island that the U.S. military was using for target practice. For all of them, a deep spiritual connection to the land \u2014 confronted with a colonizer-culture that is both implacable and oblivious to any sense of place \u2014 has become the driver for a movement that envisions a much more Hawaiian Hawai’i.<\/p>\n

Even if de-occupying the entire state of Hawaii is a nearly impossible dream, inklings of what a more Hawaiian Hawai’i might look like help to keep the dream alive. Wong-Kalu smiles when we tell her we are going to Molokai to interview Ritte, whom she calls Uncle Walter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you go to Molokai,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s a very Hawaiian place.\u201d<\/p>\n

A visit with Uncle Walter<\/h3>\n

Ritte \u2014 a lean, bearded, gray-haired man in his mid-70s \u2014 met us at Molokai\u2019s modest airport in a well-used pickup truck. Molokai is about half the size of Oahu, but has less than one percent of Oahu\u2019s population. Though it boasts forested coves and spectacular sea-cliffs, there\u2019s little tourism infrastructure \u2014 a consequence of local resistance to the kind of development that has altered the landscape of other populated Hawaiian islands.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe see Honolulu as something we don’t want to aspire to,\u201d Ritte told us when we remarked on the absence of resorts, name-brand hotels and golf courses as he drove us to a local diner for lunch. He explained that the tropical coves that resort developers covet were used as fisheries by Molokai\u2019s traditional inhabitants.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Walter Ritte, a Native Hawaiian activist, first made headlines in the 1970s for evading arrest on an uninhabited island that the U.S. military was using for target practice. He is continuing his fight today for social justice and sustainability through Native Hawaiian sovereignty over the land. (Photo courtesy of Nick Street)<\/em><\/p>\n

The relatively flat land on the west end of the island, once used for cattle ranching and pineapple plantations, is slowly returning to its pre-colonial ecology. Ritte,\u00a0who is also Native Hawaiian,\u00a0grimaces as we pass vast gated fields across the road from the local high school. The land is controlled by the seed development division of a global chemical conglomerate \u2014 the island\u2019s sparse population and year-round growing season make it an ideal location for developing new strains of corn and other non-Indigenous crops.<\/p>\n

Though the agribusiness outpost is the island\u2019s single largest employer, Ritte still sees it as a blight on sacred land. \u201cI know what all my ancestors did on the land,\u201d he said. \u201cThat also gives me the obligation for future generations \u2014 those are important to our ancestors. This is kind of like what we’re trying to protect. It’s really, really difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritte\u2019s struggle against colonizing outsiders began when he was a young man hunting deer on Molokai. His initial encounters with newly erected fences and \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d signs didn\u2019t faze him.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe deer weren\u2019t paying any attention to those signs,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I ignored them, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

That casual rebelliousness changed in 1976, when the U.S. Navy refused to stop using Kaho\u2019olawe, an uninhabited island near Maui, as a training ground for military exercises. After a lawsuit to stop the bombing of Kaho\u2019olawe failed in federal court, Ritte and several dozen other Indigenous rights activists attempted to occupy the island in a flotilla of small watercraft. Two activists were lost at sea when their boat capsized in rough weather. Ritte and eight others made it to Kaho\u2019olawe, evading capture for a few days, until hunger and thirst compelled them to surrender to military police.<\/p>\n

Ritte recounted his time on Kaho\u2019olawe and eventual evacuation from the island on a military helicopter as we sat at a shaded table outside the diner where we stopped for lunch.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we went to Kaho\u2019olawe, that changed my life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt had nothing to do with politics. Nothing to do with anything except the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

That drive to protect and reclaim ancestral lands galvanized Ritte\u2019s generation of Native Hawaiian activists in the 1970s. Recalling the animating spirit of that era, Ritte said, \u201cWe were trying to figure out how to explain it to people, what we’re doing. So we came up with this term called\u00a0Aloha \u02bb\u0101ina<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 love of the land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aloha \u02bb\u0101ina<\/em>\u00a0is the antithesis of the colonizing impulse, which obscures the life-giving function of the land by commodifying it and conjuring rules of ownership that privilege those who wield power and control wealth. It also connects Ritte and other Native Hawaiians to their ancestors, whose language, religion and folkways were intimately tied to the landscapes where those cultural traditions developed.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo today, it’s not bombs that are killing the land,\u201d Ritte said. \u201cIt’s the greed, and the uncontrolled commercialism, the need to make money by extracting from the environment to the point where you’re killing the environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritte nodded as we remarked that push-back against the rapacious commercialization of land seems to thread through Indigenous activism in the continental United States, Brazil, the Philippines and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are now seeing this is a problem for the whole world,\u201d he said. \u201cThere’s still this cancerous growth, that’s how I see it. I have to stop that.\u201d<\/p>\n

After lunch, we climbed back into Ritte\u2019s truck and got a brief tour of the homestead plots \u2014 land set aside for Native Hawaiians by the federal government in the 1920s \u2014 that Ritte and his extended family have cleared and developed over the past quarter-century. Ritte relished the fact that the hilliness of the area set aside for Native homesteads on the island\u2019s flatter, more arable west side made the homestead plots undesirable for growing pineapple during the plantation era.<\/p>\n

We then headed east toward the lusher, mountainous side of the island, where Ritte wanted to show us one of the roughly 70 tidal fishponds that his ancestors had built in coves around Molokai before the American takeover of Hawai’i in the late 1800s.<\/p>\n

Restoring the island\u2019s fishponds is a focal point of Ritte\u2019s current activism through\u00a0\u2018Aina Momona<\/a>\u00a0(\u201cfertile land\u201d), a non-governmental organization he founded to promote social justice and sustainability through Native Hawaiian sovereignty over the land.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re needing some kind of way of living that’s not dependent on extraction,\u201d he said, as he led us along a muddy path cut through reeds and mangroves to the edge of a lagoon. \u201cA lot of people don’t believe we can do it, but I believe we can. Because our ancestors did it for thousands of years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritte noted that the availability of homestead plots, coupled with local activism that has curtailed the development of tourism and other industries that would despoil the land, has kept Molokai\u2019s population stable at about 7,000 inhabitants even as other islands have seen explosive growth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey managed to feed the same amount of people that we have today,\u201d he said, as he surveyed the low stone barrier at the mouth of the cove that allows the high tide to bring fish into the cove, then traps them in an artificial lagoon as the tide recedes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn’t have barges or airplanes or oil,\u201d he said. \u201cSo we need to go back to our ancestors to get some of those answers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritte said many Indigenous people who want to reclaim ancestral folkways must undertake a process of inward-looking, spiritual liberation, if their political activism is to have any chance of success. For a colonized people struggling to reclaim their identity, an individual\u2019s learning to venerate their precolonial history \u2014 particularly their ancestors\u2019 language and ritualized relationship to the land \u2014 can be a radical and deeply spiritual act of personal decolonization.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were brought up seeing that our ancestors, the Hawaiians, were lazy,\u201d Ritte said as we walked away from the fishpond to inspect a small field of taro \u2014 a starchy root vegetable that is a staple in the Native Hawaiian diet. \u201cWe were taught not to be proud of our past or anything like that. Total opposite of what I believe to be right. I’m pretty much convinced that the past is going to tell us how we survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritte said that the long-term survival of Native Hawaiians hinges on their relationship to the land, not just as a way of reclaiming their language and spiritual identity, but in preparation for the collapse of the unsustainable colonial systems that currently control most of the planet and its resources.<\/p>\n

Future generations, he believes, will have no choice but to reclaim the farming and fishing practices of their forebears.<\/p>\n

That sense of urgency is motivating Ritte and other Native Hawaiian activists to run for political office \u2014 a Trojan Horse strategy to dismantle systems of oppression that they have previously struggled against as outsiders. Ritte recently ran to represent Hawai’i’s District 13 in the state house, and lost by\u00a0just a slim margin<\/a>, despite making no effort to soften the rough edges of his reputation as an activist.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the first questions I got asked by the news media was, \u2018Do you believe that the state of Hawai’i is legal?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Of course not. Any fool knows that without a treaty you cannot just go take some country.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That ability to enter the fray of the colonizers\u2019 politics without compromising his devotion to his forebears is rooted in Ritte\u2019s experiential relationship with his ancestors \u2014 something he hopes to transmit to younger activists who seek his counsel.<\/p>\n

\u201cHawaiians think that when you’re born, there’s a soft spot on your head,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’s called the\u00a0piko<\/em>, and then the umbilical cord is the other\u00a0piko<\/em>. When the elders want to talk to you, they’ll talk to your gut. That’s what I tell all the young ones: Listen to your gut. That’s your Hawaiian elders talking to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritte sees Native activists\u2019 two-pronged strategy \u2014 thwarting projects like the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea while they attempt to win local political contests \u2014 as a sign that, after more than a century of dispossession, Hawaiians are finding ways to reclaim their power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat tells me that there’s an awakening of people that understand that they can do something against a seemingly huge foe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Kumu Hina listens to her gut<\/h3>\n

Back in Honolulu, after the practice session with the Tongan choir, we head back toward downtown. The rush-hour traffic has abated, and Wong-Kalu is more relaxed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I’m around Tongans,\u201d she said, \u201call the understandings of our culture \u2014 everything that I know from being around my Niihau Island family, who are still Hawaiian language as first-language speakers \u2014 it’s all the same kind of aesthetic, it’s the same kind of heart, it’s the same kind of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a young person growing up in Honolulu, Wong-Kalu attended the original Kamehameha School, which was established in 1887 and funded through the estate of Bernice Pauahi Bishop \u2014 a great-granddaughter of King Kamehameha \u2014 to educate native Hawaiian children about their history, language and culture. Since the 1990s, the school has expanded to three K-12 campuses and 30 preschool sites statewide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Hina Wong-Kalu, also known as Kumu Hina, or \u201ccultural teacher,\u201d is a Native Hawaiian activist, filmmaker and cultural liaison between Hawai\u2019i\u2019s Indigenous community and the state government and other non-Native entities. (Photo courtesy of Nick Green)<\/em><\/p>\n

In addition to the Kamehameha Schools, where the language of instruction is English, Indigenous children can learn Native Hawaiian language and culture at a\u00a0Punana Leo<\/em>\u00a0(\u201clanguage nest\u201d) \u2014 family-run, nonprofit language-immersion preschools that initially operated illegally when they were started in 1984.<\/p>\n

Wong-Kalu\u2019s early attraction to her Native Hawaiian heritage also brought her face-to-face with a challenge that Ritte and other Indigenous activists have had to confront: an antipathy toward their own culture that often pervades later generations of colonized peoples.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a time much earlier in my life where some of my own family questioned why I was taking all the Hawaiian classes,\u201d Wong-Kalu recalled. \u201cThey said, \u2018What are you going to do with that? It’s not going to give you anything. It’s not going to help you. It’s not going to get you ahead.\u2019 I knew I could not agree with that. It’s not something that you can tell me is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong-Kalu said that the omission of Native Hawaiian instruction in the public education system was partly to blame for this cultural ignorance and self-loathing. The bigger problem is the fundamentally anti-Indigenous values of the religious and economic systems that have been imposed on Native people by Hawai’i\u2019s colonizers.<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce you get sprung,\u201d she said, \u201conce you have gone through the decolonization process and your sense of awareness continues to grow, it becomes very challenging to look at capitalism and Christianity in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong-Kalu felt the need to \u201cget sprung\u201d from an anti-Indigenous ethos as part of her coming out process as\u00a0m\u0101h\u016b<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 a third-gender person. The word is sometimes used as an epithet for LGBTQ people among Christianized Native Hawaiians, though Wong-Kalu described the presence of\u00a0m\u0101h\u016b<\/em>\u00a0people as \u201cextraordinarily ordinary\u201d in traditional Hawaiian culture, where they were often seen as healers and spiritual leaders.<\/p>\n

For Wong-Kalu, reorienting Indigenous communities toward a more expansive view of gender identity and expression goes hand-in-hand with helping Native people find their voices and assert their authority in the public sphere \u2014 a sense of empowerment that was transmitted by Wong-Kalu\u2019s mother and her Niihau Island lineage.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpeak in Hawaiian!\u201d Wong-Kalu recalled her mother telling her when she began to appear before state officials as a young community activist. \u201cThis is our land.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe people in political and economic power in our islands feel that we are an inconvenient nuisance,\u201d Wong-Kalu said. \u201cWhy is it that you feel that we have to speak English to you in our home? Because we can all speak English, you think we should just speak English? That’s not right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong-Kalu said that many \u201cforeigners\u201d \u2014 meaning any non-Native people in Hawai’i, including non-Native citizens of the United States \u2014 failed to appreciate the importance of their land and language to Native people, even as they traded on the allure of the Aloha spirit.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the foreigners in this state are really just despicable,\u201d Wong-Kalu said. \u201cYou think that Hawai’i should be promoted to the rest of the world \u2014 all the elements of Aloha and making Hawai’i so \u2018perfect vacation\u2019-looking. You pimp us out, you prostitute our culture. Yet, when we actually stand up for who we are and the things that are a part of us, how do you justify treating us in the way that you do?\u201d<\/p>\n

The fight over who gets to determine whether the Thirty Meter Telescope will be built atop Mauna Kea has become a catalyst for activism around language as well as land rights. Following the lead of Wong-Kalu and others, many young activists have insisted on speaking in Hawaiian when they appear before judges, legislators and other officials. Like Ritte, Wong-Kalu believes that the assertiveness of a new generation of Native Hawaiian activists will beget broader discussions around governance and the political status of the state\u2019s Indigenous people.<\/p>\n

As we returned to the parking lot at the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Wong-Kalu wrapped up our conversation on a note of cautious hopefulness.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will probably never return to its rightful place as a very Hawaiian Hawai’i,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we can restore a greater level of respect and dignity. We can decide whose voice can start to prevail more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to read the story on Indian Country Today.<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Even if de-occupying the entire state of Hawaii is a nearly impossible dream, inklings of what a more Hawaiian Hawai’i might look like help to keep the dream alive. Wong-Kalu smiles when we tell her we are going to Molokai to interview Ritte, whom she calls Uncle Walter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you go to Molokai,\u201d she says, \u201cit\u2019s a very Hawaiian place.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":2380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[113,80,71,36,72,35,22,28,55,81],"class_list":["post-2377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-civic-engagement","tag-engaged-spirituality","tag-environmental-justice","tag-gender-and-sexuality","tag-indigenous-spiritualities","tag-nick-street","tag-politics","tag-racial-justice","tag-richard-flory","tag-spiritual-exemplars"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nKumu Hina and Walter Ritte: \u2018A very Hawaiian place\u2019<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dornsife.usc.edu\/crcc\/kumu-hina-and-walter-ritte-a-very-hawaiian-place\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Kumu Hina and Walter Ritte: \u2018A very Hawaiian place\u2019 - Center for Religion and Civic Culture\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Even if de-occupying the entire state of Hawaii is a nearly impossible dream, inklings of what a more Hawaiian Hawai'i might look like help to keep the dream alive. 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