Born, Raised, and Scathed

Kaelah Kimura ’23

Aloha and welcome to Hawaiʻi the brochures huefully cheer as our home is handed to you on a silver platter calling on you to indulge in the crystal oceans and expansive mountains. A birthright of any American.

But know this: This land is not your land. This is not your city upon a shining sea. This is not your “manifest destiny.”

As the leather-wrapped shoes of the Binghams and Doles left a print on our white sands, Hawai’i was drained of her life and her people their voices. Folded and molded until she was no longer a burden the white man carried.

Yet, now you set off on jets and dream of the Lovely Hula Hands of bronze-tinted women, scents of plumeria lei, and greetings of “aloha” and “mahalo.”

For while the culture of this place couldn’t have a place with its people, its financial advantage was inescapable.

So, naturally, the business of hospitality became leaders’ mentality to a present point when keeping children of these islands in these islands comes second to making an island experience worthy of your week-long loyalty.

The experience I speak of is a ploy of close-up magic: Lūʻau, hula dancers, and surf lessons waved in your face to distract from the tricks that illude a visitor’s paradise: A cost of living more costly than most livings can afford, A population growing faster than infrastructure constructed, And an American fist that grips in a tug-o-war against a Hawaiian resistance and most often wins.

But, no. You aren’t to worry because once your skin is sunkissed and bags packed with trinkets 2000 miles of ocean distance you from this.

So we, the very people smothered and silenced by the concrete, tiki torch, plastic lei, pineapple-flavored experience, Are left to clean this mess for it is our reciprocal responsibility to restore life to the place that is life itself.

And yes we may be scathed and battered and bruised but our love for Hawaiʻi, like blood beneath the skin, heals all wounds so that we may protect her another day.