Kau Inoa t-shirts
Advertiser
columnist Lee Cataluna reflects
on the Kau Inoa t-shirts
lawsuit.If Bill Burgess and his hui want Kau Inoa shirts so bad, they can have mine.
I have three or four in a drawer somewhere... I don't think I even kau'd my inoa on the registry.
[...]
You could wear a Kau Inoa shirt, get your name on the list and your life would not change at all. If anyone thinks being Native Hawaiian means suddenly your life is easy or charmed, he couldn't be more mistaken. You still have to register your car, pay taxes, wait in line at the post office and separate your glass from your plastic at the recycling center. You have to do all those things PLUS watch them sell beaches that your father once knew to build their hotels, to paraphrase that old song of lament. You have to do all those things plus navigate all the assumptions, good and bad, people carry about you because you're Hawaiian. You have to do all those things and try to decide if and when to get mad, how mad to get, what to do about it and when to not even bother. It's no pa'ina.
When being Hawaiian has an appreciable advantage in day-to-day life, maybe Burgess and his lot will have a point. But the way things are, being Hawaiian doesn't carry many advantages that those types could appreciate.
BTW,
according to the traffic logs, "kau inoa" is by far the most common search
string used to reach this site, and my post from about a year and a
half ago about the Kau Inoa t-shirts ("They stole my kingdom and all I got was
this lousy t-shirt!"), continues to be one of the top entry pages for this
site.
Posted: Thu - August 16, 2007 at 09:56 AM