Hula

by Jasmin Iolani Hakes

she stood on her porch and stared out across the ocean the way a mother does when your heart exits your body and enters the world without you.

there is only one way to protect a place. You sit your `ōkole down and stay there. You stand guard. You learn from the kūpuna the old chants, the hulas from their memories, before those kūpuna are no more.

Learning hula was studying a new language and a new way of moving, but it was also learning about the `āina, about the environment and the relationship of the elements, about how to treat the planet and how to appreciate the forces at work.

The pond that sustains the people will survive, therefore the people will survive. It is the greedy foreigner among us who will be killed by what he steals.

One percent African American might make a guy Black, but if they used the same ruler to measure American Indian, they’d be writing checks until their fingers bled.

One percent Black, you Black. One percent Hawaiian, nah, you nothing. When the U.S. government is making the rules, there is only one guaranteed winner.

Haole. Meaning without breath. Land of aloha. Alo, to share. Ha, breath. Aloha, to share breath. How to share breath with those without breath?