To the Forum: We Ni’ihau families remaining at Ke Kula Ni’ihau O Kekaha pray that the fighting among the trustees of OHA will stop. We also pray that attacks on other races will stop. Often times when powerful people fight,
To the Forum:
We Ni’ihau families remaining at Ke Kula Ni’ihau O Kekaha
pray that the fighting among the trustees of OHA will stop.
We also pray
that attacks on other races will stop. Often times when powerful people fight,
it is the meek and powerless who are hurt.
Our Kula Ni’ihau O Kekaha has
been hurt by OHA trustees fights and using Ni’ihau people as their puppets and
by attacks on non-Hawaiians.
Our families and teachers all worked well
together until the OHA trustees came to our island and fought over providing
money to renovate our school provided by the ‘Ahu Punana Leo.
The OHA
group that was originally opposed to supporting our school, then turned and
said they wanted our families to break away from the ‘Aha Punana Leo to get the
money on their own. Without first educating them on how to do it.
Some of
our families and teachers listened and left the school saying that it was
“haumia-defiled”. Some of our ‘ohana who left said it was all right
to leave because they had been told haole members of the ‘Aha Punana Leo were
mistreating us Hawaiians.
They also said that the Hawaiian members of the
board, including our Ni’ihau member, only followed the haoles.
These
stories about money being stolen from us and haoles mistreating us did not
start from among our own Ni’ihau families. We have not found any of it to be
true, but they have been said with ugly words.
Now the children taken from
the school are away from us, their families. We want them back. The door of our
school has always been open for the return of our families and children.
They somehow were told to wait for OHA to give them the okay.
OHA should
be bringing our people together, not dividing us. OHA should be helping us work
with other nationalities, and not be attacking those of other ancestries,
especially those who have been with us before we were born and who are married
into our families.
The more we work as one people the better for all.
That’s how we will progress in the future.
As Hawaiian protocol will have
it: (stop the media shenanigans it does no one any good) (Mihi-repent) to your
own families first, those here and not here.
OHA? Laki ma?
(Huikala-forgive) yourself and those around you physically and spiritually and
come home to your piko-families, and (ho’opau) let the healing begin.
Me
ke aloha o ka makualani,
Aunty Ane Kanahele
Makaweli
