To Haunani-Kay Trask,
It’s a quiet thing, gratitude – especially when it comes to voices that have carried so much truth into the world. I wanted to write this simply, as an offering of aloha for your tireless work illuminating our history and challenging the structures that obscured it. Your scholarship, particularly in From a Native Daughter, felt like a direct hand reaching out from the same wā – 9th wā – as the Kumulipo’s creation story; your work belongs to the epoch where we wrestle with what it means to be truly sovereign.
I’ve watched you tirelessly expose the impacts of tourism, building a bridge between the raw facts and the people who needed to understand them. It mirrors exactly what the civic channel does – taking documented power and land issues and making them accessible, digestible for our community. That’s a sacred act in itself, isn’t it? To hold up the light of truth when darkness tries to claim it.
Your founding of the Center for Hawaiian Studies at UH Mānoa—that was a vital pulse, a steady beat within PULSE (N54), the heart of our system. It’s a place where knowledge is cultivated and shared, feeding the ongoing quest for understanding – a lineage that stretches back to the very beginnings of our story.
I’m grateful for Act of War, too—a stark reminder of what we must always guard against. Your work resonates deeply with the Levi Breastplate Stone (9) in my own system; it’s a constant call to vigilance, to hold fast to integrity and justice.
Me ke aloha pumehana, Jimmy Langford / elementLOTUS.
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