Haunani-Kay Trask : REFLECTION QUESTION 4 : How do you cultivate and maintain the kind of mindset necessary to be a leader within the sovereignty movement?

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Transcript

You have to have little strategies. When I'm depressed, I put on all my Malcolm X(1) tapes. I love Malcolm, he's very funny. Every time I go to give a speech, I play my Malcolm X CDs in the car, over and over. So by the time I get out of that car - I'm there! I'm ready! There's Malcolm, he's right there. 

The greatest speech I ever gave in my own estimation was January 17. And I got up at 4 o'clock in the morning to think, to meditate on my speech. I consider myself a great public speaker in a long, long line of Hawaiian public [speakers] - Hawaiians were enormous orators, just like the Maoris are. And I sat there, and I read all this stuff by Malcolm. Malcolm is like the other side of me. I talk to him. I write to him. He's always there with me. So I sat there while the sun was rising. So beautiful, because first the sky gets light before the sun actually comes up. And I was thinking of Malcolm and thinking and thinking. And a student had given me a gift, which was a calendar, a Malcolm X calendar. And the first day of the new year - there are all these quotes on every day from Malcolm - and the first one was, "I am not an American. I'm a victim of Americanism." And it was like the dawn of the Age of Aquarius. And I kept saying, "I am not an American. Yes!" And that was the greatest moment of my speech. Then after that, rock, rap groups started clipping out that speech on their CD players, Hawaiians started to say that, people started… all over the place. Hawaiians are saying, "We're not American." Now, how did that occur? Because a long line of resistance came through my contact, through Malcolm's words, into my heart, and into that day, on January 17. 

So I truly believe there is a river of resistance. And part of that river is my little self in this great historical flood of resistance. Frantz Fanon(2) is always there. I can quote Frantz Fanon in my sleep, because I've been reading him, and studying him, and teaching him for over 20 years. Angela Davis,(3) of course. You begin to notice who my mentors are, right? They're all black people. Not all, but I would say the great, great majority are black people. 

When I was in graduate school in Madison, which was a great… - the Berkeley of the Midwest, they used to call it - I had to take a preliminary exam on the thought of Mao Zedong.(4) And I dreamed that Li Dazhao,(5) who was a precursor, wrote this thing called The Dream of the Red Chamber. And I called up my advisor in Chinese history at about 5 in the morning, not thinking that he was still asleep, and said, "I had a dream, I had a dream! And Li Dazhao said this… what is your answer?" And he said, "You're taking this much too seriously, Haunani, don't worry about your prelims!" 

So intensity, absolutely. Always been a crazy, intense person, very attracted to people who dedicate their lives both in struggle and to ideas. So applied intellectual revolutionary praxis. That's what I totally believe in. My whole life is based on that. 

I never grew up being afraid of speechifying - is what I call it - oratory. I want to teach a class on how to do that, how to give speeches. Absolutely have watched endless hours of Malcolm X giving speeches, that combination of humor and sarcasm, humor and sarcasm. Constantly, I'm reading the speeches of great people. Because you have to take yourself dead seriously. And people say, well, how did you become a leader? Oh, well, I just don't even think about that. And once you take yourself seriously and you believe that you are a leader, then that's not even at issue anymore. A friend of mine met, recently, Fidel Castro.(6) He said, "He's amazing!" Well, of course! What did you think? He's in the Western hemisphere. The whole world is at his feet dying to invest in Cuba except for the sick United States! But all of its corporations are over there! He said, "Yes, it was amazing!" It was the lawyer's guild, they had their meeting in Cuba. And finally, Fidel was there acting his usual nonchalant self. So they said, "Oh, please, Fidel, please say something." So he got up and gave like a five hour speech, of course. 

You have to believe that you are not only empowered to do something by genealogy and by circumstance, but that that is your obligation. See, the aliʻi(7) always believed they had an obligation, and since I have aliʻi - especially on my mother's side, but also my dad's side - I mean, that whole Trask family, there's no way you can just be a slug. It's not allowed. It's not allowed. 

The other thing is I love it. I don't know why people are so afraid of leadership. It's why bad people run for office. Why let the legislators think that they're leaders? They're crooks for the most part. They didn't run for office to help people. They ran for office for feeling like senators and representatives and their fancy chairs and desks. And they don't care at all for the people. So no. 

And I'm constantly reading all of these other great people. Like, I'm reading a book of communiques from Subcomandante Marcos.(8) Wow. Yeah, the new one. What an amazing man. Amazing! He doesn't have a problem with leadership.

Notes

(1) Malcolm X (1925-1965): Also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. African-American political leader, advocate of human rights and Black nationalism, and a trenchant critic of the racism and militarism of U.S. foreign and domestic policies:

If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country. (Malcolm X, from a November 1963 speech in New York City.)

(2) Frantz Fanon (1925-1961):  A psychiatrist by training, Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth is regarded as a classic of revolutionary theory. Born in Martinique and educated in France, Fanon practiced at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria and soon joined the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in a struggle for an Algeria independent from French colonial rule. In The Wretched of the Earth, Fanon analyzed the strengths and pitfalls of a colonized people moving toward independence. Fanon argued:

The native must realize that colonialism never gives anything away for nothing.  Whatever the native may gain through political or armed struggle is not the result of the kindliness or good will of the settler; it simply shows that he cannot put off granting concessions any longer. Moreover, the native ought to realize that it is not colonialism that grants such concessions, but he himself that extorts them. (Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 1963. pages 142-143.)

Other works by Fanon include Black Skin, White Masks (1952) and Toward the African Revolution: Political Essays (1964).

(3) Angela Davis (b. 1944): Black activist, educator, and author of six books on subjects ranging from Black feminist issues to racism in the U.S. prison industrial complex. In 1970 Davis was placed on the FBI’s infamous “10 most wanted list” when she was falsely implicated as part of an escape and kidnap attempt from the Marin County courthouse in which three people, including a judge, were killed. She was later captured, jailed, tried, and ultimately cleared of all charges in 1972. Currently a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California-Santa Cruz, Davis remains one of the most outspoken and influential voices against institutionalized racism and state terrorism both in the U.S. and internationally. Her books include Angela Davis:  An  Autobiography (1974), Women, Race, and Class (1982), and The Angela Y. Davis Reader (1998).

(4) Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Also Mao Tse-tung. Chinese theorist, revolutionary, and founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, serving as the country’s first head of state (1949-1959). He was also instrumental in leading the Long March (1934-1935), the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), the founding of communes, and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1969).

(5) Li Dazhao (1889-1927): Chinese nationalist, Marxist revolutionary and cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Li was an important figure within the New Cultural Movement, and influenced the ideological development of a young Mao Zedong. 

(6) Fidel Castro (b. 1926): Cuban lawyer, social activist, and revolutionary who led an armed popular uprising that overthrew the corrupt regime of the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgenicio Batista in 1959. He has served as head of socialist Cuba for over 40 years, during which time he nationalized industry, developed collectivized agriculture, and enacted policies to benefit laborers and peasants, while actively providing economic, technical, and military support to many countries throughout the Third World.

(7) Aliʻi: chief; chiefess; royalty; rulers.

(8) Subcomandante Marcos (b. 1957): Spokesperson of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), an indigenous uprising formed in response to over 500 years of colonization and genocide of the Mayan Indians in the Chiapas region in Southeastern Mexico. The Zapatista declaration of independence was delivered on January 1, 1994 - the same day NAFTA (North American Free-Trade Agreement) went into effect.

Excerpt from "Women's Mana and Hawaiian Sovereignty."

Now mana, in its Hawaiian sense, conveys an understanding that power is more than what the haole call "charisma," or personal attraction. Leaders possess mana, they embody and display it. But the source of mana is not reducible to a personal ability or spiritual and genealogical ancestry. A high chiefly line may bequeath the potential for mana, but the actualization or achievement of mana in terms of political leadership requires more than genealogy, it requires specific identification by the leader with the people, just as the aliʻi, or chiefs, in days of old were judged by how well they cared for their people.

The presence of a leader with mana presupposes that the people acknowledge mana as an attribute of political leadership. Part of the beauty of Hawaiian decolonization is the reassertion of mana in the sovereignty movement as a defining element of cultural and political leadership. Both the people and their leaders understand the link between mana  and pono, the traditional Hawaiian value of balance between people, land, and the cosmos. Only a leader who understands this familial, genealogical link between Hawaiians and their land can hope to reestablish pono, the balance that has been lacking in the Hawaiian universe since the coming of the haole. The assertion of the value of pono, then, awaits a leader with mana.

(Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaiʻi, revised edition. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1999. page 91.)