00:24

Jamaica

Ask me about the Mauna (mountain) and I will tell you about 30 kanaka (native Hawaiians) huddled shivering in an empty parking lot, praying the lahui (group) would answer the call.

Jamaica

I will tell you about 2 nights cot-sleeping directly under a sky scattered in stars, and air so clear, every inhale is medicine.

Jamaica

How every morning I woke to a lahui kanaka (native Hawaiian group) growing as if we were watching Maui (ancient God) fish us one by one from the sea.

Jamaica

Ask me and I will tell you how on the third morning I watched this 30 became 100 then 100 became 1000, then 1000 became us all.

Jamaica

Ask me and I will sing the song of our mana wahine (powerful women) linked arms and unafraid who stood in the face of a promise of sound canons and mace.

Jamaica

Ask me and I will tell you that I have been transformed here but I won’t have the words to quite explain.

Jamaica

I will say I don’t know exactly who I will be when this ends.

Jamaica

But at the very least I will know that this ‘aina (land) did everything it could to feed me and that will be enough to keep me standing.

01:40

Jamaica

I think about my role as the poet as having power to make people feel.

Jamaica

If it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, if it doesn’t conjure a memory, if it doesn’t give you chicken skin, the poem’s useless to me.

Jamaica

A poem is as good as it resonates.

Jamaica

And when I find resonance with people, I feel affirmed, I feel a pilina (connection) with them.

Jamaica

Pilina is the word that we use to describe any kind of relatedness.

Jamaica

But it also means to be like...stuck to something.

Jamaica

I think we’re starving for intimacy generally.

Jamaica

As Hawaiians, even more so there’s been this incredible disruption of pilina in ourselves, our land and the people around us.

02:30

Jamaica

Between 1778 when Captain Cook arrived, and the over throw in 1893, we lost 90% of our population due to disease.

Jamaica

90% of our population just died.

Jamaica

That’s an apocalypse.

Jamaica

The world transformed.

Jamaica

And the ones who lived struggled through this incredible transformation of land and resources, and rights and privileges and living on their land.

02:58

Man

We are Hawaiian people! Natives! This is our life!

03:03

Jamaica

So there is history of exploitation that mirrors what’s happening on the mountain.

Jamaica

For the last 10 years, a conglomerate has been trying to build a telescope on top Mauna a Wakea.

Jamaica

This would be the 14^th telescope on that mountain built without the consent of the Hawaiian people.

Jamaica

Mauna a Wakea, the fight to protect her.

Jamaica

I don’t think any of us are anti- telescope.

Jamaica

But I will say that Hawaiians understand that science that requires desecration is not ethical.

Jamaica

And it’s not science. It’s development.

03:43

Hawaiian woman 1

We are not American. We are not American. We are not American.

Hawaiian woman 1

Say it in your hearts. Say it when you sleep. We are not American. We will die as Hawaiians. We will never be Americans.

04:03

Jamaica

Raise your hand if before reading for this class you had never heard of or experienced the wonderful, exciting trauma that is Haunani K. Trask.

Jamaica

It’s a travesty, the way that I grew up being taught about poetry.

Jamaica

Because I thought it was the dumbest thing in the world.

Jamaica

I thought it was useless, I thought it was old white dudes meditating on their perfect old white dude life.

Jamaica

Umm, so why would that have meaning? It’s not relevant to anything I was experiencing.

Jamaica

It couldn’t talk to me as…as a young, queer Hawaiian woman and help me understand like…that I was okay.

Jamaica

Then, when I was 16, a friend introduced me to slam, and a whole new world of poetry opened up for me. I was hooked. By the time I was 18, 19, I was writing almost exclusively about Hawaii, so colonization, the overthrow annexation, the loss of our language, the loss of a lot of our cultural practices.

Jamaica

For a long time, I didn’t ever want anyone to read my poetry.

Jamaica

Because I grew up in Hawaiian language immersion school.

Jamaica

My concept of my spelling and my grammar is like that shit’s atrocious.

Jamaica

And that used to really bother me because I thought it meant I was stupid.

Jamaica

So I didn’t want people to read the poems.

Jamaica

I just wanted to perform them.

05:06

Jamaica

(performing poetry) The sea is rising, and in my tiny Honolulu town, that means underwater homes. There was a wall of water taunting my homeland.

Jamaica

I was really lucky that I kind of got pulled into this slam poetry competition.

05:21

Jamaica

(performing poetry and audience clapping) One stop two three…

Jamaica

The poems were so close to me that I wanted to perform perfectly.

Jamaica

Not just to win but to like do justice to the poem.

Jamaica

At some point it became really clear that I could talk about Hawai’i on a microphone.

Jamaica

And if I did it as a poem, people would listen.

Jamaica

Like, I could get a lot of people to listen.

05:51

Jamaica

What happens to the ones forgotten.

Jamaica

The ones who shake my heart from their rib cages.

Jamaica

I want to taste the tears in their names.

Jamaica

Trace their souls onto my vocal cord so that I can feel related again.

Jamaica

But our tongues feel too foreign in our own mouth, we don’t dare to speak out loud.

Jamaica

So we can’t even pronounce our own parents’ names.

Jamaica

And who will care to remember mine if I don’t teach them.

Jamaica

This is all I have of my family history that’s real.

Jamaica

And now it’s yours.

06:23

Jamaica

(reciting Hawaiian names) `O Elroy Thomas Leialoha, he kane. `O Claire Kuulei, he wahine. Noho pu laua `o Jonathan Kamakawiwo`ole Osorio, he kane. `O Jonathan Kamakawiwo`ole Osorio, he kane; `O Mary Carole Dunn, he wahine. Noho pu laua a hanau `ia `o Jamaica Heolimelekalani Osorio, he wahine. (Elroy Thomas Leialoha and Claire Kuulei gave birth to Jonathan Kamakawiwo`ole Osorio, a boy. Jonathan Kamakawiwo`ole Osorio, a man, and Mary Carole Dunn, a woman, gave birth to  Jamaica Heolimelekalani Osorio, a girl).

06:40

Jamaica

Do not forget us.

Jamaica

Mai poina (donʻt forget).

Jamaica

The poem I performed at White House took 10, 15 minutes to write.

Jamaica

So the good poems come fast

Jamaica

They just like fall out of you

Jamaica

To write from a place of inspiration, it’s like fast paced, your heart rate shoots up, like there’s actual adrenaline involved.

Jamaica

That can feel really invigorating.

Jamaica

I was really lucky to have lot of those moments that I thought that’s what writing was, and it made it really hard to have the discipline to keep writing when I didn’t have pure inspiration.

Jamaica

I think that’s the part of reason I stopped writing and performing.

Jamaica

Not only did it become kind of a chore and even like a pressure to produce for other people, but I felt like I had run out of things to say.

Jamaica

And I run out of new ways to say old things.

Jamaica

People would ask me to perform somewhere and I would want to say no, because I hadn’t written a poem in three years.

07:42

Jamaica

So then after months and months of waiting we got the call. And so our people, we packed up our bags, we stepped away from our jobs because the TMT was going to start construction on top of Mauna Kea and we decided that we weren’t gonna let them.

Jamaica

So, to block the transport of construction equipment, a of us chained ourselves to the cattle guard on the Mauna Kea access road.

Jamaica

We’ve been here since about 3:30 this morning locked in, and they are about to dispatch police officers to come forcibly remove us.

Jamaica

This is an invitation to share this message, to come down and to bring your mele (chants/songss) and your aloha and your kapu aloha (non-violent protest), to come malama kia ‘aina (care for the land).

08:28

Man 2

(mumbles) We cannot allow this to happen. TMT must go away…TMT must leave Hawai’i.

08:39

Elder Woman

My brothers, where is your hearts!

Elder Woman

Let them be.

Elder Woman

You choose money, over us kanaka maoli (native Hawaiians).

Elder Woman

How can you do that?

Elder Woman

Look what we have to do!

Elder Woman

You guys make us do this!

Elder Woman

Leave them alone!

Elder Woman

Leave them alone.

09:20

Friend 1

Do a poem.

Jamaica

Do a poem? Right here? Right now?

Friend 1

Let’s go

Jamaica

A poem?

Friend 1

Yeah

Friend 1

Drop it girl

Jamaica

I got a long one

Friend 1

yes

Friend 1

We got a lot of time

Other friends

Kumulipo! (poem title)

09:38

Jamaica

Itʻs 1876, and David Kalakaua not yet crowned, not yet anointed or kinged, penned a song at the request of (King) Kamehameha the 5^{th ,} Walter Kapu`aiwa.

Jamaica

Hawai’i Pono’i, a new national anthem, a new symbol of strength,

Jamaica

a new promise to the kanaka maoli (native Hawaiians) of Kalakaua’s generation that like those before, they will stand and fight for the right to noho au puni.

Jamaica

Today we call this resistance

Jamaica

Back then we just called it pono (righteousness).

10:06

Jamaica

Being there, I had a voice again, I had something new to say

Jamaica

I’ve written a lot of poems for the Mauna (mountain) this week.

Jamaica

Umm, I might just read them.

Jamaica

Ask me about the Mauna (mountain), and I will tell you the mo’olelo (story) of 8kanaka (people) chained to a cattle grate.

Jamaica

And the kokua (help) that sat beside us

Jamaica

Aunty says she sees hope in me

Jamaica

And I watch her overflow

Jamaica

Says she dreamed of this day.

Jamaica

When you write a poem or a song in Hawaiian, it’s no longer yours.

Jamaica

You don’t have ownership over it

Jamaica

It belongs to the person you write it to.

Jamaica

That’s kind of the beauty in all this, all the poems I’m writing...they belong to Mauna A Wakea

Jamaica

To me in many ways, they are all just the same poem

Jamaica

Mauna Kea and I are getting to know each other

Jamaica

You know, it’s like falling in love

Jamaica

This morning, all I have is the magic of a Mauna

Jamaica

Caught in the sight of the sun,

Jamaica

As we are teased by treachery of time

Jamaica

All I have is the honesty of this weight

Jamaica

Weighing minutes stretching across the hardening curve of my spine, all my words caught in the cracks of my breath, hands curling into their own heat.

This morning,

I have nothing here to hold you with,

and you still as constant as the summit,

with all your magic rising beside me,

holding out your hands to catch everything I am and then not quite yet.