One of our kanaka brothers Timothy Oga wrote a letter to TGI (5-8-2013) about the Hawaiian monk seals. His writing was a true representation of the way we feel about these animals. In essence we are against their protected status
One of our kanaka brothers Timothy Oga wrote a letter to TGI (5-8-2013) about the Hawaiian monk seals.
His writing was a true representation of the way we feel about these animals. In essence we are against their protected status and we want to discourage them from stealing the fish and lobster that we caught and from damaging our nets.
Nobody is talking about eradication or an organized hunt, we simply suggest killing the ones that cause damage if caught “red-handed.” And if we kill some why waste them?
Eating the killed animal is the proper way of disposal, just like in our ancestors’ time. As another option for those who wanted to protect these species Tim suggested transporting them to Necker Island or the Northwestern Hawaiian Island where no humans live and let nature take care of them. Give us the boxes, we’ll put them there and you can ship them away.
In response we got some good stories based on theories and some good advice too, but we got offensive remarks as well. The letter writer in “The truth isn’t always what you can see” (TGI, May 9, 2013) accuses Timothy Oga with ignorance and makes allegations that the Hawaiians used the monk seals as easy food source and wiped them out shortly after arriving here 1200 years ago.
Food source would be OK, because whatever the Hawaiians killed they ate it if it was edible. But how does he know that the Hawaiians wiped them out? It is so easy to cast blames and accuse the Hawaiians with ignorance.
The seals and whales were hunted by the foreign commercial vessels. The same writer is asking if we trust our chants. Yes, we do and we trust them 100 times more than the white men’s words because our chants never promised us anything. They tell our history and give good advices, but the white men came here bringing diseases, distrust and greediness.
So why should we trust their words? Their government created the blood quantum for us and their government is the one telling us whom we should consider Hawaiian based on the quantity of Hawaiian blood in our veins.
Why not leave it to us Hawaiians? Why do they think that they know better? As Trisha Kehaulani Watson wrote in the TGI (5-15-2013) “Also standard among Hawaiians was a superior ability to manage resources and resolve conflict. Traditional Hawaiians were among the most brilliant resource managers in the world.”
Yes, indeed. We never practiced overfishing, overhunting, because we were always thinking ahead not only about our but also about our children’s future. Why do you want to infringe on this superior ability of ours?
And finally the theories about the word ‘ilio (dog) found in different sources identifying it as the monk seal. Again, these are theories only, ignoring the fact that dogs were brought here by the ancient Hawaiians from Polynesia and were eaten as a delicacy.
Of course the ‘ilio name was preserved in chants and place names. Even one of our demigods, Pa’e could transform into a dog and some of the chants might be about her.
So, please let us continue preserving our resources the way we learnt it through many generations from our kupuna so that our lahui can benefit from it and we will do it best without American and other outside interference.
This is Hawaii and Hawaii is not America, and it never will be!
• Elvis Kanahele from Makaweli, along with 35 Hawaiians from joined in to write this commentary.
