Hawaiian History in From a Native Daughter,

Hawaiian History

In From a Native Daughter, Haunani-Kay Trask's purpose could not be clearer in that she has written a highly political and ideological work from a left-wing nationalist perspective that denounces the colonization of Hawai'i by the United States. Even more, every word she wrote is absolutely true, even though many whites either do not know this history or do not want to know it. In fact, they might even wish that Trask had written more about the 'positive' or 'beneficial' side of Hawaiian interaction with the U.S. except of course she finds that there has been none. Her entire history is an expression of moral outrage and indignation and what whites have done to the Native people of these islands, to the air, land and water, and to the history and culture of the Hawaiian people. Most tragically, she describes Hawai'i today as a "dying land," crushed by millions of tourists, high costs of living, overdevelopment and the destruction of the environment (Trask 19). She also writes as an activist and advocate demanding more self-determination for the Native Hawaiians, writing that "Hawaiian self-government has always been preferable to American foreign government" (Trask 2).

From a Native Hawaiian perspective, this story is identical to that of the indigenous people of the Americas since 1492 in that they were also enslaved, exterminated, wiped out by epidemics and marginalized in ghettos and reservations. In 1778 there were over one million Natives, but because of European diseases their numbers fell to 100,000 in the 1840s and just 40,000 by 1890, when they were outnumbered by white and Asian immigrants. Their Native forms of landholding and government were systematically destroyed and replaced by an oligarchy of white plantation owners, who brought in 'coolie' labor from Asia to perform menial agricultural tasks. These planters took control of the government in 1887, denied the vote to Hawaiians and ceded Pearl Harbor to the U.S. "in exchange for duty-free sugar" (Trask 11). No Hawaiians ever had a chance to approve the annexation of the islands by the United States and none had the right to vote for the new territorial government that replaced the monarchy, no more than blacks on Southern plantations or indigenous people on reservations could vote. They simply became a colony of the United States, a subject people, and so they have remained ever since. Like blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, Hawaiians today suffer from "high unemployment, catastrophic health problems, low educational attainment, large numbers institutionalized in the military and prisons" (Trask 17).

Trask describes this history of oppression, racism and imperialism in great detail in ways that would certainly shock or provoke many white readers who are not already familiar with this sad story. Those who already know the history will not find it particularly shocking or unusual at all, and would easily be able to draw parallels with the treatment of other colonies and subject peoples over the centuries. Like many Native writers, she glorifies and idealizes indigenous cultures over those of the West in ways that always infuriate white conservatives, and asserts that pre-conquest Hawai'i was "antithetical to the European developments of Christianity, capitalism, and predatory individualism as any society could have been" (Trask 4). She is correct about that as well, no matter that many white Americans persist in believing that all three are a positive good and must be 'shared' with the rest of the world whether they want them or not. Her history is actually a non-Christian version of Paradise Lost or the fall from Grace and expulsion from the Garden of Eden, only this time due to the greed of American capitalists backed up by imperialism and gunboat diplomacy. Although tourist brochures today still describe Hawai'i as an island paradise, for Trask the reality is poverty and exploitation of the Natives, racism, high prices, water depletion and "a soaring crime rate, as impoverished locals prey on flauntingly rich tourists" (Trask 3). Moreover, the Hawaiian Islands are still a base for American imperialism and one-fifth of the residents are connected with the military.