Lovely Hula Hands
Trask, Haunani-Kay, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai‘i, revised edition (Honolulu: UH Press, 1999)
Trask’s object of study is the historical and contemporary American popular conception of Hawaii, Native Hawaiians, and Native Hawaiian issues, such as rights, sovereignty, tourism, and institutional racism. Trask primarily interrogates the issues of colonialism, neocolonialism, and sovereignty in Hawai‘i and how these debates are framed in disparate contexts/around different foci; Hawaiian nationalist, cultural, international human rights, Oceania, tourist, and academic (ie. Historian, anthropologist, American studies). Trask’s key research questions are answered with powerful, persuasive, and cogent expertise made both accessible sans intellectual jargon and intimate by her personal herstory of colonialism and sovereignty struggles in Hawai‘i. To her credit, Trask pulls no punches in telling of struggles for hegemony and the legacies of violence preserved in everything from images of bombed aina, to institutional racism and sexism in our own American Studies department(!), to the “lovely hula hands” of dusky, dancing Hawaiian maidens that are drooled over in international imaginations. Doing so, Trask participates in many important practical and theoretical debates, and writes purposefully and passionately against the continued violence against her land and people beyond mere consciousness-raising and, reasonably, on the offense. What is interesting about Trask’s writing is her clarity. She tells tourists not to visit, Hawaiians not to practice their indigenous culture peripherally, historians to be more self-reflexive, and haole’s to unpack their knapsacks of white privilege and colonial histories. It is also clear what is at stake in her interrogations and resolutions; the survival of Native Hawaiian people, rights, culture, and lands. Trask’s text, in presentation, appears more like a
Trask’s object of study is the historical and contemporary American popular conception of Hawaii, Native Hawaiians, and Native Hawaiian issues, such as rights, sovereignty, tourism, and institutional racism. Trask primarily interrogates the issues of colonialism, neocolonialism, and sovereignty in Hawai‘i and how these debates are framed in disparate contexts/around different foci; Hawaiian nationalist, cultural, international human rights, Oceania, tourist, and academic (ie. Historian, anthropologist, American studies). Trask’s key research questions are answered with powerful, persuasive, and cogent expertise made both accessible sans intellectual jargon and intimate by her personal herstory of colonialism and sovereignty struggles in Hawai‘i. To her credit, Trask pulls no punches in telling of struggles for hegemony and the legacies of violence preserved in everything from images of bombed aina, to institutional racism and sexism in our own American Studies department(!), to the “lovely hula hands” of dusky, dancing Hawaiian maidens that are drooled over in international imaginations. Doing so, Trask participates in many important practical and theoretical debates, and writes purposefully and passionately against the continued violence against her land and people beyond mere consciousness-raising and, reasonably, on the offense. What is interesting about Trask’s writing is her clarity. She tells tourists not to visit, Hawaiians not to practice their indigenous culture peripherally, historians to be more self-reflexive, and haole’s to unpack their knapsacks of white privilege and colonial histories. It is also clear what is at stake in her interrogations and resolutions; the survival of Native Hawaiian people, rights, culture, and lands. Trask’s text, in presentation, appears more like a