WEBVTT

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OK, the next poem.

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I'm going to read a poem
by Haunani-Kay Trask called

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An Agony of Place.

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And I miss her, in any case.

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She's still around.

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I haven't seen her
in a long time.

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And she's Kanaka Maoli
Hawaiian of my generation.

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Really known for her
scholarship and her activism

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as a native Hawaiian,
and one of the leaders

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of the Hawaiian
Sovereignty Movement,

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and has written monographs
and this wonderful book

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From a Native Daughter:
Colonialism and Sovereignty

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in Hawaii, and two
books of poetry.

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So she helped found there
at the University of Hawaii

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at Manoa the Kamakakuokalani
Center for Hawaiian Studies.

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And the Hawaiian islands, this
whole country is occupied.

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This was occupied by
American businessmen who

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saw an opportunity, and
they dethroned the Queen.

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They took over the
islands not that long ago.

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And so this is her
poem An Agony of Place,

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which is considered paradise.

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And millions of
tourists go there

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without knowing anything of the
place and the tourism industry,

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even though it brings income
for the American businessmen.

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The land suffers and
the people suffer.

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An Agony of Place.

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"There is always this
sense: a wash of Earth.

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Rain, palm light
falling across ironwood.

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Sands fine and blowing
to an ancient sea.

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I hear them always with
fish hooks and nets,

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dark long red canoes gliding
thoughtlessly to sea.

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And the still lush
hills of laughter

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buried in secret caves,
bones of love and ritual

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and sacred life.

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A place for the manō, the pueo,
the 'ōʻō, and the smooth flat

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pōhaku for a calabash of
stars flung over the Pacific.

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And yet, our love suffers
with a heritage of beauty

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in a land of tears,
where our people go

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blindly, servants of another
race, a culture of machines

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grinding vision from the
eye, thought in the hand

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until a tight silence
descends wildly in place."

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