Sharks in the Time of Saviors

by Kawai Strong Washburn

(righteousness, morality, prosperity, excellence, assets, carefulness, resources, fortune, necessity, hope, and on and on)—is outlawed? When our language, ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i, was outlawed, so our gods went, so prayers went, so ideas went, so the island went. Take you, my son. You are not a god, but there is something that moves through you that may be one. Does it revive what came before, or build something new? I can’t say. But when you returned from Portland with a broken hope I did my best to help. It’s hard to guide what you can’t feel, and there are so many days in this modern Hawai‘i in which I don’t feel anything. But when you are near, there is something, just under the surface, that I can feel. It is bright and warm and ready, but I can feel it, like a gentle swell of the ocean that contains a million pounds of power underneath.