Posted on: Friday, April 19, 2002

ISLAND VOICES
Hold on, here's the real story

By Haunani-Kay Trask

Poor Bob Rees. His April Fool's Day Counterpoint column was an embarrassing cry-baby lament filled with complaints about me and my politics. Let's take the lies:

• I did not treat former UH President Al Simone badly, as Rees alleges. It was the other way around. Simone waged unrelenting war against me when I wrote a simple letter to the student newspaper, Ka Leo, chiding a haole student who complained about the word "haole."

Al had three committees investigate me for writing a letter. Hello? The union, Faculty Senate and a group of all-female faculty, God forbid, supported me.

Even The Advertiser supported my freedom of speech, although it didn't like what I wrote.

And the current Hawaiian Studies director, Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, marched, held signs and protested on my behalf. So?

So, the real issue for poor Bob is that he hates the word haole. It means "foreigner," as in, "Rees, the haole guy."

• When Ken Mortimer was president, he and I had very cordial relations, despite Bob's allegations. Ken and I worked together on fund-raising and on UH legislative agendas for Hawaiian Studies. Ken and I co-hosted a reception for Ngugi wa Thiong'o, one of Africa's most distinguished authors, when he graced us with a week-long visit.

All this was known to Bob.

• Rees alleges my directorship was "more devoted to a political agenda" than to scholarship. Really? I published 15 articles and two books while director, including the best-selling "From a Native Daughter."

I co-produced "Act of War," a film on the 1893 overthrow; was nominated to be a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University; was invited to apply for a chair of women's studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara; received a Rockefeller Residency Fellowship at the University of Colorado-Boulder; and a National Endowment for the Arts Writer-in-Residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts.

These are only some of my accomplishments.

Others include the fact that Hawaiian Studies majors increased from around 20 to over 120 during my directorship. Some of our graduates went on to take advanced degrees not only here in Hawai'i but at Harvard, the University of California and at our own Richardson School of Law.

But my finest achievement remains the multimillion-dollar Hawaiian Studies building complex on five acres of university land. No one, not even Rees, can deny the building was constructed during my directorship — indeed, because of it.

The Hawaiian people know all this. Even the press called it the "Trask building."

The real question remains, what has Rees contributed to our native people. Anything? Something? Just one thing? The answer, of course, is nothing.

Maybe, in a twisted way, Rees envies Hawaiians their ancient presence in Hawai'i since he "just got off the boat."

• Rees says I practiced "mau'mauing" (a racist haole term) as director. Say what? Poor Bob, still nursing a damaged ego because of his eviction, by three of my male students, from a private reception for Angela Davis to which he was not invited. Rees asked the UH administration to censure me for denial of his free speech, but in truth, he was only denied free pupus.

Finally, my accomplishments in the fields of education and sovereignty explain why The Advertiser 2000 poll of Hawaiians found I was the highest-ranked female leader. The same poll found most Hawaiians did not recognize Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa at all. Why would they? She is a historian, not a political leader.

My people know who I am and what I have accomplished on their behalf. That is why they honor me as a Hawaiian leader.

As a foreigner in my country, Rees should do the same. Either that or have the good sense to shut up.

Haunani-Kay Trask is a political organizer, poet and professor of Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa.