owever far in geographical distance, east or west, or in chronological time, past or present; however thoroughly we elect to examine the nearly endless variables of social, cultural and political regimes which have arisen down through history, we invariably find echoing similitude’s regarding the inevitable results of men attempting to govern each other. Except in rare and isolated cases where small enclaves or communities have, for relatively short periods of time managed to avoid the designs of ruthless and ambitious leaders, there is little historic evidence that our world has ever promised or even suggested the "reality" of a viable continuum for liberty, equality and kinship. Such abstractions seem beyond the scope of humans to grant each other. Ideals such as these are doomed to remain relegated to the mind - our hopes and aspirations - never to be manifested, never to be attained in reality. They are like the proverbial carrot dangled before the persistent donkey, plodding ever hopefully in pursuit of his ever-elusive prize. We are approaching a time in the human experience when it would behoove mankind to ask who it was that dangled the carrot in the first place, and what was their intent?

Let us travel, briefly, back in time through a people's history, which is known to begin at least a millennia before the first signs appeared that mark the beginnings of our own civilization, and to a place which is the most isolated, in terms of geographical location, in this entire world. To quote the learned author of the following text (See Addendum 1): "This epic of historical fiction is founded on documented chronologies, the ongoing whispers from underground native archivists (Kahunas, Oral Traditionists, - *Author’s note), imagination and scholastic dissertations. It addresses attitudes etched very deeply in the Hawaiian psyche. The popular story line is indicative of royal attitudes. The ethic is a testament to the commoner Hawaiian who has survived a millennium of human disregard, pompous separation and exploitation by his own people." (See Addendum 2)

THE FIRST PEOPLE OF HAWAI'I

Our ancestors were the last settlers to travel across southeast Asia into the Pacific. The first voyages in 4000 B.C. inhabited Taiwan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Three thousand years later their voyages extended to Polynesia. Human hybrids of Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid descent were finally led into Pacific Polynesia by the Tongans and the Samoans just before the end of the millennium before Christ. By

A.D. 200 they had settled in the Marquesas, having sailed more than 2,400 miles across the vast Pacific amphitheatre in search of a new homeland. They were willing to face death for that end. When they finally sighted these lands after the long, severe journey, the only sign of life was the Iolani, the hawk of the heavens, who had soared out to meet them.

Then, as if to allow the voyagers time to contemplate, the winds that had delivered them were stilled.

It was the hour before dusk, the time when the earth spirits return to the heavens to meditate in the sleep of night. The hush conquered the moment. Even the lone Iolani uttered not a sound as it traced a halo of welcome above their canoes. The small group of weary travelers - men, women and animals - sat atop the decks of the becalmed double canoes, relieved and grateful. Tears of thanksgiving overflowed, and at once, in unison, without benefit of drum or conch, (a large, trumpet-like shell used as a signalling instrument among the early Hawaiians - *Author’s note) they softly chanted their benediction of aloha.

Then the keeper of the conch shell rose to announce their arrival. He stood tall, and from deep within his innards, he breathed their call of introduction into his triton of the sea. The only response was the echo of his conch. He swam ashore. The sand was covered with deposits of the ocean's debris and flotsam. This accumulation was a sure indication that there was no human life. He stood at water's edge and sounded his presence again to the four corners of the island with his conch. He waited. The response this time was the scattering of birds from their woodland roosts to check out the intrusion.

Quietly, the seafarers slipped from the canoe deck into the sea. They did so, not with the hilarity and anticipation of a drunken celebration at journey's end; instead, they bathed, and scrubbed their bodies with salt waters of the sea to cleanse themselves of the defilements of the past. Now they were ready to start a new life. It was a special time of day; the setting sun cast a soft pomegranate blush of pink hues upon the land and the skies. They waded ashore, a congregation of humble travelers entering their new sanctuary to ask for the blessings of its grace.

They declared this their homeland, Hawai'i.

The settlers were chiefs unto themselves and were clothed only in bark cloth. For the next 700 years they thrived on the land. Their high chief was also their religious leader. He presided over rituals but remained one of the people of the land after the ceremonies were done. In this traditional type of group rule, everyone had access to the land, folklore, and religion, and each maintained his genealogy. The numbers of this small group multiplied. They all belonged to and partook of the land and sea. They labored to build an agricultural and fishing community that was without class subjugation or threats of tribal wars. They fished, tilled the land, built walls of stone and created water-distribution systems. They caught from the sea only what they could eat; there was no need to catch more when there was no refrigeration and any surplus catch would spoil. The ocean was their freezer.

About the year A.D. 1100, this communal culture they created was violated, not by the white men, the Japanese, the missionaries, the whalers or other immigrants, but by our own kind; invading Tahitian Polynesian priest-chieftains who arrived with fleets of warriors and their entourages. They came with symbols to bolster their claims of their divinity: new laws, a separate religion, an ideology of political class divisions, feathered capes and feathered helmets to adorn themselves, and the practice of sacrifices for harsh commoner control. This was the beginning of the next 800 years characterized by human abuse.

To prove the divinity of their royal blood, these priests wrote genealogies that included 10 ascendant generations. The highest royal bloodline was always a product of family incest from a child born of a sister-and-brother union. The invaders would not allow the commoners to maintain personal genealogies because their blood was considered tainted and inferior. This was also an African practice. By outlawing the conquered the right to record a genealogy, the people became kinless, leaving no question that they were completely under the control of their royal masters. The exclusive ruling realm of the chiefs - the warring, preening, gluttonous, fornicating gods -was always surrounded by a retinue of priests, chiefs and the obsequious commoners.

In the pit of the bottom realm were the commoner slaves, the maka'ainana and the lowest of the commoners, the devil incarnate slave, the kauwa, like the untouchable of India. They were considered mere objects whose purpose was to supply the elite with goods and services. The enslaved were refused free access to the land, the sea, fresh water or any other resource. All such privileges were limited and awarded by the king or his designees who demanded services for the privileges. At the cost of their survival and that of their families, more than 90 percent of the people were to produce for the ongoing pleasure and consumption of the king and his party. When the overtaxed could not feed or care for their families, the unproductive members became the unwanted. These were the aged, the handicapped, the infants and the women who were drowned, buried alive or poisoned. Death came early to the commoner, between 30 and 40 years of age.

To educate or allow a commoner to maintain a genealogy was unnecessary because they were doomed by birth to be disposable, on call for sacrifices and warrior service. Death was always imminent for them. The ongoing cyclical tribal wars were means to accumulate wealth through land and worker slaves in the conquered region. These slaves gave and gave in their ho’okupu, or gifts, and they received nothing in return. Occasionally they would seek safe haven in the very remote cities of refuge, if they could get there before they were slaughtered.

What the first settler's ancestors had run away from generations earlier followed them here to exploit again their humanity. The constant threat of violent death forced the newly conquered to serve the every need of the rulers. To survive they had no recourse but to grovel, pander and kiss the feet of the rulers. The chiefs used the commoners as beasts of burden, as asses who were forced to carry the overweight rulers on their backs. A Tahitian king boasted that he was a greater man than King George, because George rode on the back of a horse, while he, the Tahitian ruler, rode on the back of a man.

This was a golden age for the royals. The befeathered chiefs never created a paradise for the people. These were not the lush islands of plenty where the natives, other than the royals, ate until full, basked in the sun, surfed, drank the local intoxicant awa and made love to beautiful maidens always at their beckoning. The romantic past of privilege was for the very small royal group. No matter how far back we explore in the 800 years from 1100 to 1900, we will never find any traces of Eden for the commoners. Living accommodations were less than pleasant. Animals shared the windowless grass huts with their commoner keepers who slept amid the stench of wastes and itched constantly from the creeping vermin. The pets, poi dogs or pigs, were treated as children. They were suckled at the women's breasts and were carried in their arms more than their own children were carried or pampered.

Polynesian beauty was determined by a native standard: The women were obese, more than 200 pounds with hair cropped in Afro style. It was considered chic to bleach their hairline with lime or urine. Royals of both sexes tattooed their bodies, faces and tongues. The lower caste of slaves was identified with brands on their faces. They had no moral code, but, as a people, they had a code of ritual to honor the rulers. The constant replay of royal ceremonies widened the social and economic distance between the master and the slave. Even in the pageants of today, someone must hold the king's spittoon, decorated with shark's teeth.

In any age, tomorrows are never a guarantee, but for the commoner there was always the possibility that one could be sacrificed or killed for any reason. In this uncertainty, it was stupid to plan for a life of more than one day at a time. Before arrival of the British in 1778, a prophet named Kapihe addressed a nervous gathering. "The islands," he said, "would soon be united, the taboos of the land would be overthrown, and those of the feathered capes would be brought low, while those of the earth, the descendants of the people of old, the commoners, would be raised." He also reminded the people of the ancient proverb that in the end, the well being of the land, the pono, would be in the hands of the commoner.

This prophecy brought little comfort to those who grieved over the increasing slaughter of commoners. They ached more and more for the slaves who were laid alive in the burial pits with their dead masters. For the slightest provocation, their eyes were ordered scooped out, and they were left to suffer in excruciating pain for a few days before the final kill. If they were not slaughtered, they were fated to suffer a life of darkness. Others who broke the taboos, the rigid martial laws of the land, had their heads smashed. The violent decapitations and bloody mauling could be suffered on the whim of a chief. Sometimes commoners were tortured by the deliberate breaking of their bones, by strangulation, by being roasted alive or by offering their bloody, mutilated bodies on sacrificial altars.

This was life for the natives from 1100 to 1825. Conquered chiefs and their entourages also could suffer this abuse. These were royal prerogatives to impose on their subjects. The history of the common people of Hawai'i is a dark one. It is a legacy of people oppressing their own kind for the glory that power allows. Fate had deemed, however, that the groping hands and curious minds of the greater world inevitably would find our islands.

Early on a Tuesday morning, January 20, 1778, a few men of the village went to the stone of Kane, one of the pantheons of our gods, to hold their private communion. Their woodland sacred refuge harbored a single stone. It was situated high on the slopes of Waimea, on the island of Kauai, the northern-most island in the chain of eight major islands. When they stood to begin the day, they looked down to the bay and gazed wistfully out to sea toward the land of our Polynesian ancestors, the mythological Kahiki. Their hardship was not what they wanted of life.

But then their hearts skipped. Far off on the horizon they saw two floating islands, whose billowing white sails resembled the banners of their god Lono, the god of replenishment and new beginnings. It was Captain James Cook, the English explorer, with his ships Discovery and Resolution. The bubble of Hawai'i's long isolation had burst. In the flurry of activity between the ships and shore, between chiefs and officers, between sailor and warriors and sailors and native women, the first of the nation of mixed-breed Hawaiians was conceived. The traffic between the ships and shore never stopped. The fleet was in; the women swam out in schools to sample the favors of the white men. To the delight of the crews, the bark cloth covering of the women melted away on the long swim out to the ships.

Chiefs offered food, water and artifacts for the trade of nails, hardware or clothing they admired. The feather cloak was exchanged for the goldbraided cotton or dress uniforms of the officers. In some ways the trade was a steal: The cloak required decades of painstaking work by the commoners to tie the millions of feathers to the sennet backing, plus the stalking labors of the trappers to snare and pluck the few feathers from each bird collected.

(Ms. Beamer continues her text in a "collective" first-person tense -*Author’s note.)

These pioneers from the industrial world shattered our native Stone Age naiveté. Ironically, 700 years earlier we were the daring explorers of the Pacific, but our chiefs had grown fat, lazy and dissolute and retired to fight among themselves. They were content to live with the indulgences they commanded from the conquered commoners. Under their reign, our primitive Stone Age life never advanced: 1,778 years after Christ was born, we had no wheel, no written language, not even the use of hieroglyphics. We farmed not with rudimentary plow, but with an 8-foot pole stick. We never could break through the upper ceiling of our primitiveness. Creativity was stultified; the same methods were repeated over and over again. Across the seas the Western world was in the Industrial Age, nearly 6,000 years ahead of our progress.

Civilizations with a surplus of slave labor become mentally and creatively lazy. The oversupply of disposable manpower often delays any need to pursue more efficient, productive and humane use of a people's energies. Human life was easily replaceable and of little worth. Our same old ways were recycled and overused in the coconut cocoon. While people of other cultures traveled beyond their horizons to interact with each other, to develop new technologies and learn new languages, we talked to ourselves. We did not even converse with other Polynesians. When our chiefs visited the "floating islands", they knew we had fossilized ourselves.

When Captain Cook arrived, we still lived in grass huts and our temples were open rock platforms. One of the king's advisors described our stone workmanship as just a little more advanced than the dam-building work of beavers in comparison to the awesome Mayan and Egyptian multistoried, massive pyramids and temples of chiselled, fitted stone that had existed for thousands and thousands of years. The magnificent European cathedrals with stained glass were started in the year A.D. 1100, the same time the chiefs had arrived in Hawai'i.

The 2,000-mile Great Wall of China was started 700 years before the first migrations to Hawai'i. Now the isolation and backwardness was ended.

Captain Cook charted Hawai'i onto the atlas of the world. The chiefs and commoners were fascinated with the world just introduced to them and were eager for more visitors. The intrusion into the archaic bubble by the tall ships, called the floating heiaus or temples, stimulated a dormant desire to learn and create. A year later, when Captain Cook returned to repair a broken mast at Kealakekua Bay on the southern end of the island of Hawai'i, he was slain, his flesh eaten, his skull given to the high chief, and some of his bones and hair kept for his godlike mana.

After hearing of this incident, other ships avoided the ports in Hawai'i for the next few years. But the inter-island war drums continued to beat without pause. The four major island rulers, Kahekili of Maui, Kahahana of Oahu, Kamehameha of Hawai'i and Kaumualii of Kauai -fought for absolute control. The deaths of commoners mounted without care in the battles. when Kahekili moved to Oahu to quell a rumored conspiracy and capture King Kahahana, the streams near Moanalua on Oahu overflowed with the bodies of ruthlessly slain men, women and children. Legends chronicle a house that was subsequently built for the king from the baked bones of the victims.

Kamehameha and Kaumualii were anxious for the return of the tall ships. They had immediately recognized the value of the superior knowledge and arms of the foreigners to help in their conquests. Meanwhile, a very conspicuous new segment of our population was born. On Kauai and Hawai'i, light-skinned toddlers were proudly displayed. But the white sailor had left not only the handsome offspring of mixed breeding; they also had deposited in our women their diseases, the sailor's pox, called syphilis and gonorrhea. The infected in turn transmitted the viral plague to the native men and the chain of sexual contamination spread with epidemic speed. All the children were infected; the native and the mixed were congenital carriers of the dormant killer monster. They would harbor the virus in their systems for generations and not know when the poised killer would strike them or their descendants. It would take 170 years to find the cure: penicillin.

In 1781 when the ships began to return, Kaiana, the first Hawaiian chief to travel abroad, presented Kamehameha with a cannon, muskets, and other light arms from the captain of the ship Iphegenia. A Chinese crew member remained to become part of chief Kamehameha's growing retinue of foreign advisors. In 1790 the crew of the ship Fair American was massacred in Olowalu, Maui. Kamehameha had retaliated for an attack on the natives by the ship's Captain Metcalf. He confiscated the ship and its arms. At the same time, he saved Isaac Davis, the lone, barely surviving crewmember of the Fair American. John Young, a bosun, from its sister ship Eleanora, also was taken captive.

Davis and Young, both poorly educated with not more than a third grade education, were designated Kamehameha's tutors for foreign matters and his tactical strategists in warfare. Kamehameha himself had never traveled outside his Stone Age islands. He gave Davis and Young titles, wives of rank, generous awards of land, subdivisions for rule and thousands of commoners as chattel to work their lands and provide for their every need. He did this with all of his foreign advisors as an incentive to keep them satisfied, to buy their loyalty and set them above the commoners in rank. He moved with deliberate haste to collect a storehouse of white man's long-distance fire weapons and fast ships. In his first full-scale battle with arms, his drums and banners called 1,200 of his warriors to the front at Iao Valley on Maui.

The cannon named Lopaka, ("Robert,") made its debut. It had been removed from the Fair American. The first wheeled cart in Hawai'i, crudely made by John Young, transported Lopaka. In 1790, Hawaiians had never before used the wheel, yet already there was a railway in England. The cannon was poised to strategically drive the defending troops deep against the precipitous valley walls. The slaughter was total. The blood of the defeated flooded the streambed. Thousands of bodies were left to rot without benefit of burial. Generations’ later, skeletal remnants were tacit reminders of the magnitude of the massacre. His growing stock of armaments and ships could not now be matched. The wars Kamehameha initiated took as many or more lives than the new diseases that our people could not fight off.

A ship named Britannia (Britain) was built for Kamehameha. He had purchased a number of assorted small ships from the captains in port. The swarm of his canoes blackened the waters for miles. Cadres of his men were trained to use "the red mouthed" fire arms. He was ready to continue his conquest of the island chiefdoms. He developed alliances with porting captains who gave him use of their vessels in the battles against his adversary chiefs. He had a decided advantage: the Captains needed to curry his favor because he was chief of the main Big Island harbors of Kailua and Kawaihae, so they helped him secure Lahaina and Honolulu. Seventeen years after discovery, in 1795, the white man's technology allowed Kamehameha to become the king of all the islands except the northern-most Kauai.

Now the lands, chiefs and the people were under his absolute control. Trading vessels were regularly docking in Hawai'i looking for replenishment of food, water and women. Surrounded by foreign advisors of every nation, Kamehameha was ready to take advantage of the opportunity to trade for the goods he coveted. An entrepreneur in the brothel business, Kamehameha sold our fairest half-breed women to accompany the captains as bedmates. He also took his cut of a Spanish dollar for each port bedding with his women. Those who became pregnant with child and including those who accompanied the ship captains were dropped off at journey's end without the support of the king or the captain. Kamehameha deposited the payments for their services into his personal treasury. The increased port traffic also appealed to thousands of the young native men. The enterprising Kamehameha conscripted crews from his commoner slaves, as had been done in the selling of the African slaves. The Hawaiian men were sought after as crew because of their renowned seamanship and were sought after as laborers by the Hudson Bay Trading Company chartered in England to carry on fur trading with the Indians of North America. Their work camps were dotted along the western coast of the American continents. He sent a group to Guadalupe, two islands in the West Indies, to trap for seal skins.

The going wage rates for the men were from $5 to $10 a month. Crewing offered a chance for the commoners to escape the repressive drudgery under the chieftains and to satisfy curiosities that had been starved and thwarted for years by isolation and suppression. So many were leaving that a law was passed to prevent the exodus of the men needed as subjects by the king. The first annual count of the out-migration had exceeded 10,000 men; many had not returned. The part-Hawaiian inhabitants at the port stops from Alaska to Chile are the descendants of the first crewmen or commoner slave laborers sold to ship captains by the Great King of Hawai'i. Those who did return had their souvenir accumulations, their prized issued seamen's gear, foreign wear and any wages earned confiscated by the king. So they were back to their loin coverings of bark cloth, landless and penniless. But now they were restless and less compliant; they had seen the greater world.

Kamehameha also did all he could to encourage the British and Americans to remain in Hawai'i. At the cost of the commoners' livelihoods and the denuding of our forestlands, he purchased stockpiles of goods, ships and arms. His warehouses were filled with European and Oriental luxuries. Unfortunately, most of the hoarded goods rotted in storage. He never shared his wealth with the people. Stone houses were built for him. He abandoned the loincloth for slacks, striped shirts and velvet waistcoats. But he still surfed and swam in the nude. He sent his war-scarred magnificent yellow-feathered mamo cape to King George III. In turn, he received gifts of ornate European court uniforms.

The other chiefs also surrounded themselves with white or foreign men. They took white names: Keeaumoku became Cox, Kalanimoku became Billy Pitt, Kuakini was Adams. Others proudly tattooed their white names on their bodies. Paradoxically, the white advisors were given Hawaiian names: John Young became Olohana and Isaac Davis, Aikake. The sale of western clothing to the royals was most lucrative. Cloth was the most sought after item in trade. The royals sent the commoners to steal for them and the commoners wore the leftovers of their theft or the results of trade with the sailors, usually in the loan of their women.

When Kamehameha met Kaumualii to receive the cession of Kauai, in 1810, he set aside his European wear and appeared in his golden mamo cape and helmet for the ceremony. His wives were European, wrapped in silks, and his entourage dressed in Windsor court uniforms. His son and heir, Liholiho -Kamehameha II -was garbed in a European dress uniform complete with a plumed hat. Kaumualii, King of Kauai wore a red, gold-braided European cloak topped with his feather helmet. So in 1810, 33 years after Cook had landed, the Kamehameha dynasty was invested. Kamehameha ruled Hawai'i as a distant British colony, the Raj in Hawai'i.

Captains Vancouver and Cleveland were typical of the overwhelming British economic intrusion. They brought the cattle, sheep and conspicuous curiosities. The chiefs were envious and bewildered. Kamehameha was not exempt. He liked this new world. He immediately envisioned the islands under the dominion of Great Britain. In 1794, with the permission of Kamehameha, Vancouver raised the Union Jack, the British flag at Kealakekua. In 1812, Kamehameha designed his own flag, almost a replica of Great Britain's, with the Union Jack placed in the upper left quadrant. Vancouver taught the king's chiefs to recite the motto "Kanaka no Beretani" or, "We are the men of Britain." Indeed, the rulers after that were British copycats. No longer were they and the king, kanaka to Hawai'i, the men of Hawai'i. The Windsor coat of the court of St. James replaced the feathered cape. The succeeding Kamehameha and monarchical dynasties, though resplendent dandies in their British royal finery and demeanor, were impotents.

Apparently it was the royal blood that was tainted and weak, not the commoners' blood. Except for Kamehameha, none could breed successors and after only 82 years of rule the monarchy was overthrown.

(The betrayal of Queen Lili’uokalani, by American plantation owners is yet another episode in the long and tragic history of mercilessly exploited Hawaiian people - *Author’s note.) In order to rule a nation with a fast-escalating foreign population from worlds they had never seen, they needed to resort to foreign advisors who assumed major decision-making authority. Still with monarchical authority, our spendthrift rulers bought ships, pretended to be British, built palaces for themselves, but died off within 82 years, leaving no issue. They provided little for the future well being of the land and they exploited the common people whom they left dispossessed and displaced. The landless chattels were forced to harvest sandalwood and cultivate produce to pay for the royal indulgent fancies of foreign ships and goods.

The height of indignity was when our royals took the bark cloth our people produced for their wear and sold it to the captains to calk the leaky planks in their ships. While the common folk starved or barely survived, the royals lived in extravagant abundance. Their growing entourage sometimes exceeded a thousand. The best way to escape destitution was to be a royal hanger-on or fawner.

The rule of our islands under one king severely affected the common people more than it affected any other segment of the islands. They became vagabonds in their own land.

* * * * * * * * *

(Author's End note:) To quote once again the prophetic warnings of our Third President, Thomas Jefferson: "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered."

America Beware!!! History DOES repeat itself. Is such a fate courting our complacent nation this very moment?

Addendum

1) The contents of the preceding installment have been excerpted from a book titled THE ROYAL TORCH, researched and authored by Billie Kawaiola Beamer, who has not only a Hawaiian heritage but also English, Irish, Spanish and Chinese. As well as being an author, she is an educator, administrator, Assistant Professor at the University of Hawai'i, Director of U.S. Census, Chairman, Hawaiian Home Lands Dept., Assistant Director of Parks, independent video producer – SOUL OF HAWAI’I, Radio Commentator, Golf Professional. Information regarding the aforementioned book can be gotten by contacting: Agent: Billie Beamer, 1031 Nu'uanu Ave. #1502, Honolulu, Hawai'i, 96817.

The author of this current treatise takes no responsibility for any errors, prejudices or controversial statements made by Ms. Beamer. It is not my wish to offend or mislead any of the good Hawaiian people who have become my friends and confidants over recent years. I have it on good authority, however, that this author and researchers intentions and resources are sincere and accurate, so I have included this material in the present treatise as it serves as a remarkable allegory for what has and is essentially occurring in our own society.

2) Ms. Beamer's personal comments regarding the aforementioned historical novel are as follows: "Without Manono's encouragement (the spirit of a woman warrior) that we publish another perspective regarding the nature of our past as a Hawaiian people, this book would have remained a voiceless protest festering within me. Selective romanticized historical perspectives have made difficult a realistic understanding by the too few remaining Hawaiians. The trite defenses against truth by the uninformed, such as: "Why tell it now?" and "What is your source?" or, "I don't get my history from reading books." discourage appreciation of the need for the different perspectives found in literature. Understanding is difficult when protective fantasy has no referenced source on which to base a refutation, or when non-readers base perception solely on their lifetime experiences.

Reading about our past is imperative. This story and others like it, must be told to help people construe more insightful perspectives and to help the many resigned hearts beat wildly free again." (The present author suggests that contained in the previous comments is some valuable advice which, when given proper consideration, might benefit us all.)

3) Having spent nearly half my life exploring and living in and among the islands and people of the South Pacific, and half that time again in the islands of Hawai'i, I feel confident in commenting that while we haoli (Anglo-American foreigners) would be quick to point out how much the native Hawaiian "standard of living" has improved since we "invaded and overthrew" their government, we might note that we are possibly overlooking the fact that their "quality of life", which is directly related to their spiritual values which in its turn is proportional to their relationship with the "aina" (land), has been stolen and redistributed by the Federal and State governments and the major private corporations based in Hawai'i. This travesty of justice and governmental arrogance has, to this day, left many thousands of Native Hawaiian people, who are the rightful and lawful stewards of this land, homeless and landless in their own islands, with little hope yet of recovery or recompense.